The Metamorphosis

I'm no literary scholar, but I still want to document my thoughts.

A weird story, but so effective. For the longest time, I kept getting from this story themes of mental illness and how othering that experience can feel and how it changes how people see you. Well, the consensus doesn't seem to be that those were the themes being explored, but I did want to mention it.A part of the story that had me quite shocked was how much emphasis Gregor put onto his work and going back to work, even in the face of such a shocking transformation. Work was giving him a sense of purpose, direction, and worth (for self-worth and worth in the eyes of his family).My takeaway is that the more isolated he became and the less like a human his family treated him, the further away his humanity felt. I also enjoyed how his death also allowed for a metamorphosis in its own right to occur to the family and its members.

This edition in particular has a wonderful introduction (although slightly spoilery!), a timeline of his life, some background information, and multiple critical essays about Kafka as an author and The Metamorphosis in itself.

Overall, it was a good time. It's short, but I loved reading it slowly, with pen and tabs in hand.