Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous creature, and his first worry is that he’ll be late for work. Franz Kafka’s 1915 book is one of the most famous and most debated works of modernist literature, and it remains strange, funny, and painful in equal measure.
In this episode of Theoryish, we dig into The Metamorphosis and ask what the transformation actually means. Is it a story about alienation under capitalism, a man who has already been reduced to his function as breadwinner before he ever grows a shell? A study of family dependence and the way love turns conditional the moment someone stops being useful? A parable of illness, disability, and contempt? Or somethign that resists interpretation altogether, as the term “Kafkaesque” suggests? We look at Gregor’s slow erasure, the family’s shifting response, the role of work, shame, and guilt, and why Kafka insisted the insect never be illustrated.
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