'Metamorphosis' ;: a meditation on "the abyss"... (The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka)

Name: Jay Pendragon

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Product:	The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
Date:	19/01/01 (280 review reads)
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I first read this book when I was 15 years old, I am 20 now and I fully understand it and appreciate it by leaps and bounds more than I did then. This is not so much a simple story about a bloke who wakes up one morning turned into an insect or whatever, this is an epic meditation on the dark recesses of our mind and levels of depraivity humanity is capable of reaching in the depersonalization of men in society. It is the loveliest letter ever written on isolation I have read besides Dostoyevesky's 'Notes from the Underground' and, being a classic of world literature, naturally is stigmatized as perhaps being too mainstream and passe.

However, Kafka's little masterpiece succeeds on many levels as a biting satire and psuedo-psychological study on the effects of isolation and degeneration. All themes and ideas not really new and still vastly unexplored as there are many facets to the abyss and each person's journey is uniquely their own.

The story as thus is as follows: Gregor is the bread-winner of his household, taking care of his unemployed parents and sister; he is prompt, dedicated and almost existential in his life and veiws( This taken into account, the book is permeated with countless religious allegories diametrically-opposed to the certain humanistic veiws Kafka intersperses throughout the novella.), but one fine morning he awakens to find himself transformed into a hideously revolting insect. As the story progresses, it deals with his degeneration, increasingly swift reversion to animalistic instincts and in the end reverts completely to his depraivity and primordial leanings- but not without a final enlightenment to his plight and eventual resignation to the inevitable. A great majority of it also deals with how various family members, employers and house-guests react to this more-than-bizzare situation.

It cannot be agreed upon whether Gregor has literally turned into an insect or if he is simply a deranged
man imagining himself as such, but I prefer to believe the latter; but half the fun is in the actual process of the reader deciding for himself. As for me, I believe Gregor is a sick man reverting to wretchedness and lechery, denying god and succumbing to the baseness of his character until finally being destroyed by it. But don't take my word for it, check it out and judge for yourself.

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