The Metamorphosis

En esta corta novela seguimos a Gregorio, un comerciante bien posicionado quien despierta un día transformado en algo parecido a un escarabajo.
Desde el momento de su transformación, es tratado con escepticismo, desdén y miedo por parte de su familia. Con el paso del tiempo dejan de ocuparse de su alimentación y bienestar, lo mantienen encerrado en su cuarto, fuera de la vista de criadas y visitas.
Gregorio pierde su movilidad y capacidad para hablar, lo que hace pensar a la familia que es incapaz de comprenderlos por haber alcanzado un estado más animal que humano.
El protagonista siente a la vez como pierde todas las facultades y características que en un principio lo definían. Su cuarto ya no tiene los muebles que veía cada mañana al despertarse, es incapaz de ir al trabajo y se ha convertido en una carga para los demás, en una vergüenza.
Antes de la metamorfosis, su trabajo constituía el sustento económico del hogar, el era quien había comprado la casa. Todas sus ganancias eran destinadas a los demás desinteresadamente. Apoyaba los sueños de su hermana y ayudaba siempre en su poco tiempo libre.
En el libro podemos apreciar el triste y terrible destino de Gregorio, quedar despojado de su humanidad y recibir el desprecio e indiferencia de aquellos a los que sirvió.

I totally understand the concept of “Kafka dreams” now! Imagine waking up in the morning to find you've changed into a giant bug. From that, your parents hate you, and your sister resents looking after you.

I can't say I particularly enjoyed the writing, although that might be unfair to say as I read it through an intepretor. I did enjoy the story and glad I read it.

What does your soul look like?
This masterpiece novella can be interpreted in many ways – as a symbol of isolation and/or depression, as a literal example of speciesism and so on and so forth. When I started reading this literary piece, I was quickly drawn into Gregor's minuscule world which slowly turns upside-down and larger than he could have imagined.

The ending, while expected, left me with a sense of hollowness – because as the cover blurb states, ‘Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.' The story of Gregor is heart-breaking beyond words – the shallow veneer of his ‘happy' existence is cruelly left exposed and Gregor is left gasping for air, as well as the fact that his sister Grete backstabs him – it can be argued that the deuteragonist of the story is so critical to rationalizing the story that she might as well be labelled as the co-protagonist. The subtextual metamorphosis that Grete undergoes, I would argue, is more important than Gregory's own – but that is the beauty of the novella – you can interpret it in many different ways and all of them would be equally valid.
A masterpiece of prose, visual imagery, allegorical storytelling and subtexts, The Metamorphosis truly lived up to its reputation as one of the best short works in modern literature. Another one of those ‘classics' that doesn't disappoint.

A objetividade da apresentação da metamorfose de Gregor nos coloca imediatamente dentro do universo da história, quase que à força, o que acaba funcionando bem pra um texto curto como esse.
Apesar de ser tratado como criatura e se tratar como incapaz, a narração transparece ao leitor a humanidade ainda pulsante em Gregor, pintando os maus tratos da familia com tons de crueldade e a descrença de Samsa com matizes de pena e melancolia.
Por vezes me vi na autodiminuição de Gregor em prol da felicidade da família e na privação da própria liberdade, criando pra si uma prisão nunca reforçada pelo ambiente em si (não foi exatamente uma observação feliz rs).
Mesmo com um tom monótono e objetivo, Kafka ainda conseguiu me tocar com suas insinuações sutis e suas cenas viscerais.

Wow, I mean... how did someone even come up with this concept? And then somehow write it such that it was legit sad by the end.

There's really nothing much to summarise with the plot: Gregor Samsa wakes up one day somehow transformed into some kind of venomous bug or beetle. This book is about how this altered state of things affect his own mentality, as well as how his family copes with it.

The book starts off being absurd and comical at the beginning, but in the second and third parts of the book, when the Samsa family has to rally around the beetle-that-used-to-be-Gregor, that's when you get some amazing moments.

Take when his mother, Mrs. Samsa, is thinking about leaving his room furnished as it always was so that “when Gregor returns to us, he finds everything unchanged and can forget the intervening time all the more easily”, despite the fact that as a beetle he would have actually preferred having an emptier room to scurry around in. Or when his family try to feed him, but giving him human food which he could not appreciate.

The end result is a deeply thought-provoking work that can be read as an allegory for so many things.

A premissa de Metamorfose é extremamente simples: um filho adulto de uma família se metamorfoseia em um inseto (de certa forma). Essa premissa, contudo, leva a várias outras metamorfoses, sendo a mais interessante para mim a desumanização de um antigo filho e irmão. No fim, parece que ele nunca foi nenhuma dessas coisas tão facilmente ele é descartado pela família Samsa. O livro é ainda mais interessante, pois ele nunca desumaniza o novo inseto. Fisicamente, ela não é mais humano, mas conscientemente acompanhamos seu definhamento de um modo nefasto.

Sadly the version I have of this is badly translated and I found some of the sentences were grammatically incorrect or so convoluted my eyes started to get heavy. However, I'm certain if I read this again I'd score it higher. I grasped a good deal of what Kafka was trying to convey and the idea of your family being repulsed by your change, attempting to care for you out of duty then slowly resenting you is worse than the physical change itself. The constant worry about work, finances and the rest of what he thought would be his return to human life was so easy to judge from an outside perspective. I just wish the copy I bought had been better, if it turns out their all written that way then I'm out

This is the book that awakened the reader in me once more. I absolutely devoured, cried, sobbed and frowned with this book but I absolutely loved it too. It's my favorite classic, it is also my only read Kafka book and I have a feeling it will stay that way.

I still think about this book more often than not.