It's the end of Halloween here in US Pacific Time and I just was re-reading Kafka's The Metamorphosis.
I think Gregor Samsa was human the entire time. He had a mental break.
1) He was not an "insekt," he was an "Ungeziefer," from the Middle High German "ungeziber," an animal unfit for sacrifice.
2) Kafka insisted that Gregor "cannot" be drawn. A great way to maintain that ambiguity.
3) The narrator is a third-personal Gregor until he dies. Then it's a conventional omniscient narrator...
3 continued) The sobriquets of his family members change as his mental state degrades and then dies: Mother -> the woman -> Mrs. Samsa
4) Gregor is a fantasy version of a person experiencing severe mental illness. He becomes increasingly removed from reality (imagines climbing on the ceiling) and becomes a greater burden.
5) The charwoman is old and has seen mentally ill people locked up in rooms. Gregor is nothing new to her.
6) While she isn't fazed by Gregor, his family is ashamed of his breakdown and wants to lock him away along with the guilt they feel for their ungrateful, selfish treatment of him. Finally, Grete wants to move on, no longer wanting to care for her embarrassing brother. He should have killed himself if he'd really loved his family.
7) The original cover shows a man covering his face. Is it Gregor?
I think this version is actually far more horrifying. What do you think?
@mattsheffield this was more or less my reading of the book. My hearing, actually, because it was listening for an audiobook version that I understood it in this way, maybe in a more metaphorical way, hence your version makes more sense.
@antoinechambertloir I have always seen it this way, but as I've searched around a bit, I have been shocked how many people think he magically became a beetle.
This view completely dissociates Die Verwandlung from the macabrely twisted verisiimulitude of Kafka's other work, in my opinion.
@mattsheffield your view makes a clear connection from Der Verdacht to Die Verwandlung. The refusal from the parents to accept their son's life leads him to death.
@antoinechambertloir @mattsheffield I had a student who felt it was an awakening in Gregor of how he was being treated and used and that their treatment of him is expressed in how he refers to himself. Not so much that he has a breakdown, but that their feelings about him are revealed, and they are disgusted (and fearful) that he is now aware. Their paper was very well defended for a high school essay. A+ (with a few notes)
@athena_rising @antoinechambertloir Good for them!
To me, he has that realization but then blames himself. He can never lift them out of poverty, and he's about to get fired.
Something snaps and he realizes that despite all of his sacrifices, he is unfit for sacrifice, nothing more than a vile, pathetic creature no better than a dung beetle.
At last, after hearing Grete say he should only be a memory, he realizes that he can be fit--by making a final sacrifice.
