Customer Reviews

The Metamorphosis (Bloom's Guides)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Yes, literally. First read it around 40 years ago, and have since ever carried the image of poor Gregor, basically minding his own business, pitiful though it might have been, in what was once the Austro-Hungarian empire, and is now the Czech Republic, awaking one morning as a cockroach. It is a work of an incredible, macabre imagination. It is truly a unique scenario, and therefore a "page-turner," as you wonder how Kafka will play this story out. First, there is the reaction of Gregor himself, whose thoughts concerned the early morning train he missed; then he realized he had more serious problems. Then there are the reactions of the family members, the maids, his boss, and three boarders. How do people cope with radical changes - and few could be more radical that this - in their circumstances?

I had an immense sense of relief as I re-read this book. No, it didn't concern my luck at escaping Gregor's fate; it was my good fortune that I did not have to read this as an assignment for some AP high school English course, knowing that I'd be required to write a paper about the symbolism, with lots of Freudian psycho-babble about how this was a reflections of Kafka's alienation from his family, and that his sister's love of music really meant... No wonder the book received so many 1-star reviews; it was not entomophobia; it was a fear that one selected the wrong "scholarly" theory about what all this meant.

In reality, Kafka died young, and it is unlikely that anyone will really know his true motives and intentions. It remains an arresting story of the imagination; one that is enjoyable to speculate about, provided a grade is not at stake. It is a great tale for kids, better than many a "fairy tale," when you are making points about empathy for the less fortunate, including that for the non-human kind. Strange that some scholarly theory didn't try to connect all this to Buddhism; perhaps I did not delve deeply enough though. Although I continue to prefer his much more developed "The Trial," the sine que non of books about bureaucracy and justice, alas, with Gitmo et al, as appropriate today as then, this novella rates a full 5-stars also.