As I was reading the story, I got repeatedly frustrated at
all of the characters because they're so stuck in their ways. No one ever seems
to challenge the situation they're in or try to work around it. They take their
first impression and build all of their actions around it. Gregor is the most
obvious example of this - when his father is in debt, he just automatically
assumes that it's his job to pay it off on his own. As we later find out, Gregor's
father is by no means too feeble to pay off his own debt, but Gregor assumes he
is and so gets a job that he hates without even consulting his family. Even
though he could probably get another job that paid just as well that he didn't
hate so much, Gregor doesn't even seem to consider that he could pay off his
debt any other way.
Once Gregor becomes the sole breadwinner, his parents and
sister are content to sit back and let things go on as they are, even though
they're in an apartment that they hate and have lives with no real purpose. Even
though they seem to love Gregor, at no point do they offer to earn money of
their own to help him out. In a way, I felt like Gregor's family fails him by
not offering to make his life any easier. It even seems like they stay in the
apartment all day - no friends or outside activities are mentioned. Are they
actually happy like this? Don't they get bored? Until the very end of the book,
Gregor's family is content to mooch and stay in a pointless situation.
Once Gregor becomes an insect, it really bugged me (pun intended)
that he never questions why this happened, or if/how he can change back, or how
he can make the most of his new life. He tries to continue on his same old
track, even when it becomes obvious it's not going to work. It's like watching
a wind-up toy run into a wall repeatedly until it stops. Gregor just accepts
the fact that his family doesn't really care about him, and he just goes along
with whatever would make them most comfortable. If I were Gregor, I'd be furious
and I'd try as hard as I could to communicate with my family. Can't Gregor...I
don't know, move his bedsheets into the shape of letters? Scratch words into
the wall? There has to be some way for him to let them know he's in there.
Instead, he pointlessly resigns himself to the way things are.
As the book goes on, Gregor's family at least begin to show
some more creativity and independent will. They have to get jobs (as someone
mentioned in class, this can be seen as either a good thing or a sign they're
going to become like Gregor. I choose to think of it as a good thing) and take
responsibility for their own lives. Throughout the book, they've lived in an
apartment that they hate, simply because Gregor chose it and they never stopped
him from choosing it. After Gregor's death, the story moves outside the
apartment for the very first time, and they finally live someplace they
actually want. They take the day off (again, they write Gregor-like apology
letters, but they don't seem to agonize over it like Gregor would; they just
skip work and then go out into the city and enjoy their freedom).
I really like your analogy, but I think the one-track structure of the story is intentional. We talked about how Kafka's writing is dream-like, and in dreams people don't question why things happened or really try to change them, they go along with the constraints in as creative a way as possible. I also feel that The Metamorphosis is meant to be a tragedy, and a key element of tragedy is that sense of 'it didn't have to be this way' and 'if they did this one thing differently...' If everything in The Metamorphosis went along with real-world logic, it would lose the tragedy and become flat and cliched.
ReplyDeleteI do like your point and never really thought of it that way myself, but I would have to say that Miriam is right. I feel that this book was intended to be the long short story that it is, where a fairly linear plot line is developed and ended quickly. If Gregor had been able to do any of the ideas that you suggested like scratch words in the wall, it would have forced Kafka to create a much longer book, which I doubt is what he intended.
ReplyDeleteI do like your point and never really thought of it that way myself, but I would have to say that Miriam is right. I feel that this book was intended to be the long short story that it is, where a fairly linear plot line is developed and ended quickly. If Gregor had been able to do any of the ideas that you suggested like scratch words in the wall, it would have forced Kafka to create a much longer book, which I doubt is what he intended.
ReplyDeleteYou're touching on one of the distinctively weird aspects of experiencing Kafka's literary world--the people, even the ones who aren't magically transformed, are often weird and a little "off" in these subtle ways. The implication here seems to be that it isn't just that they are like this as people, but something about the way they live (the "modern condition") seems to make them this way. Gregor, in a sense, has been *trained* (no pun intended, either) to think immediately of work in any situation; he's been rewarded (quite modestly, but still) for devoting his life to work in this extreme way. Part of the "dreamlike" atmosphere is that Kafka's people both resemble real people and don't--there's this hard-to-define strangeness about much of what they say and do.
ReplyDelete