DE Weekly: Kafka, The Metamorphosis, & Absurdity
Below is an archived email originally sent on June 30, 2025.
Kafka, The Metamorphosis, & Absurdity
What if one day you woke up and everything changed? Not because of anything you did, or of anything anyone else did to you, but for no reason at all. Even worse, what if you woke up and you weren’t you anymore?
Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis deals with an extreme example of just such a scenario.
One morning, Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up to find he has been transformed into a giant insect. He’s in his bed, in his room, in his house, but he’s not him anymore. He looks down and sees little legs wiggling about, and a large, unfamiliar body.
“What’s happened to me?,” Gregor thought. “It wasn’t a dream” (2).
Despite his situation, Gregor tries to wriggle himself out of bed to get ready for the day. He’s missed his train for work and has to see to his responsibilities.
Calling to him from outside his locked door, his family knows something is terribly wrong. He sounds unlike himself, sick and unwell. His younger sister Grete begins crying, suspecting something has happened which will bring hardship on the family.
As of now, “There was no need to worry about things like that yet. Gregor was still there and had not the slightest intention of abandoning his family” (11).
He tries to remain calm in the moment and show his family that he is alright; indeed, he wants to show himself he is alright, too. He finally makes it up and gets used to his new little legs, “. . . and he was soon believing that all his sorrows would soon be finally at an end” (18).
After much difficulty, Gregor manages to open the door to his room, and his family and colleague who were behind it finally see the state he is in: that of a giant insect.
Disgusted, repulsed, and terrified, they retreat as if afraid he might hurt them.
Gregor himself retreats into his room, and over the next little while, stays in there so as not to frighten his family. Only his sister visits him to drop off food for him to eat and attempt to make his room more comfortable for his new living situation.
With nothing but time now, Gregor thinks of his life as it was before this incident. He used to be a provider, the sole breadwinner for his household. “But what now, if all this peace and wealth and comfort should come to a horrible and frightening end?” (22).
To pass the time, he pushes a chair up against the window and climbs up onto the sill to stare out of it. “He had used to feel a great sense of freedom from doing this, but doing it now was obviously something more remembered than experienced, as what he actually saw in this way was becoming less distinct every day” (30).
His mother and sister first remove furniture from his room to try and give him more space to crawl about, then return the furniture and begin to use the room as a storage dumping ground. Over time, he is neglected, unfed, unloved, his family still disgusted.
“Sometimes he would think of taking over the family’s affairs, just like before,” he thought (45). But that was not to be.
After an altercation with his father that ended up with a thrown apple lodged in his back, and an encounter with some houseguests who were not supposed to see him, his family discusses how they must get rid of Gregor.
After this conversation, Gregor crawls back into his room and resolves not to bother his family anymore.
“It is true that his entire body was aching, but the pain seemed to be slowly getting weaker and weaker and would finally disappear altogether . . . He thought back of his family with emotion and love . . . Then, without his willing it, his head sank down completely, and his last breath flowed weakly from his nostrils” (57).
Gregor finally dies.
Once the maid finds him and informs his family, they can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief, “And, as if in confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions, as soon as they reached their destination Grete was the first to get up and stretch out her young body” (62).
For Gregor’s family, this was a new beginning.
So… just what exactly is The Metamorphosis about? What message, what philosophy (if any) was Kafka trying to get across?
Like any story, there have been many interpretations since it was first published in 1915. Some extrapolate a religious interpretation, others a psychological one, still others a sociological one.
Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov said he views “the central narrative theme [as] the artist’s struggle for existence in a society replete with narrow-minded people who destroy him step by step.”
Perhaps some of these are true in some regard, and I do like Nabokov’s theory as a metaphorical interpretation of the story.
What do I think The Metamorphosis is about? When I read it, I do so through an existential lens.
To me, it’s effective to read the story as a representation of the human condition and human experience in the world; this is especially true for Kafka’s time (early twentieth century) and even truer, I’d argue, for our own time.
Imagine this: you are a man working not for yourself, but because you are responsible for a family. Your ability to provide is your identity, what makes you useful. You wake up one day and you lose your job. What are you now?
This could lead to a profound crisis of identity; over time, you could feel alienated, dehumanized, and like your life is now pointless and meaningless.
Apply this to any facet of identity outside of your job, and it can still be true. That’s how I like to read Kafka in this story. After all, the existentialists argued that what you do in day-to-day life can become what you are, so losing your day-to-day could just as likely change what you are.
Lurking under the narrative of the whole story is the notion of absurdity. At the end of the day, Gregor’s situation––waking up as a giant insect and not being able to change back––is absurd.
There is nothing Gregor can do to change his situation. Nothing he can do to change his existence. He cannot appeal for help. That is the definition of absurdity.
Then again, aren’t there things like this in our own lives? Aren’t there facets of our lives we cannot change, parts of our past we cannot get or take back? Perhaps Gregor’s plight is not so uncommon as we might think.
“You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” –– Franz Kafka
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
In case you didn’t catch on, this story (along with his other, just as equally absurd ones) are where the term Kafkaesque comes from, and what it means. Now you know.
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