the metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
The origin of kafkaesque. The story about a person getting transformed into a bug.
April 1,2025
last update: 2025-08-10
Reading Kafka is a strange experience. There’s an uncomfortable feeling, especially with Metamorphosis, that you’re being told a story that is both completely impossible and deeply, uncomfortably true.
The Story is told fro the first person. Gregor Samsa’s eyes.
Before he woke up as an insect, Gregor was already living in a kind of cocoon, one built from duty and expectations. He was a traveling salesman, a job he hated, working to pay off his family’s debts. His life was not his own. It’s a suffocating feeling to even get to part where he becomes an insect (There’s lot of hypothesis about the insect being a cockroach, beetle, or a bug, I think Kafka describes a beetle). Almost like, You look in the mirror one day and don’t recognize the person staring back. For Gregor, the change was just made physical. His bug-form was just the outside finally matching the inside.
That’s a terrifying thought. The story begins with this bizarre, impossible event—a man becomes a bug. But the really scary part isn’t the shell or the little legs. It’s the feeling that this transformation has been coming for a long time. He was being prepped for being crushed by the weight of life.
Then there’s the pain of how his family reacts. It’s a quiet, slow-motion horror. The love you thought was unconditional suddenly has terms and conditions you never saw coming. I think about his sister, Grete. At first, she brings him food, a sign that the brother she knew is still in there. But soon, it becomes a chore, and her care turns to resentment. It makes you ask a hard question about life: who would stick around if you could no longer be useful? When you can’t provide, or entertain, or be the person they need you to be, who is left in the room with you?
The deepest ache of the story, for me, is being trapped inside your own head. Gregor still has his human mind, his memories, his love for his family. He hears them talking about him, wishing he would just disappear. He wants to scream, “I’m still here!” but all that comes out is a little insect screech. It’s the ultimate loneliness. It’s the feeling of being fundamentally misunderstood by the very people you thought knew you best. You’re isolated not in a cave, but in your own body.
It’s like your “Allegory of the Cave” in reverse. Gregor doesn’t go from a dark cave into the bright sun of truth. He’s dragged from the familiar, dreary cave of his human life into a new, more horrifying cave of his insect body. There’s no enlightenment, only deeper isolation. And his old life, as miserable as it was, is a constant reminder of everything he has lost. That life is always a part of him, a ghost that haunts his little room.
So what do you do when your world collapses like that? When the person you thought you were is gone, and you’re left as something monstrous and unrecognizable? Gregor just… fades away. He dies believing it’s the best thing for his family. And maybe that’s the story’s final, chilling question. Is that all we are? A collection of responsibilities that, once shed, leave nothing behind? Are we all just one bad morning away from becoming a burden, a thing to be swept away so that others can move on?
I’ve been on a more positive streak in life without these dark thoughts from Kafka. 10/10 don’t recommend this for people already in a dark place. It’s a good read when you’re interested in the irony in life around you. In every other way kafka is counterproductive.