Kafka Against the Machine-
“The Metamorphosis,”
Kafka’s
depiction of the relationship of Gregor Samsa with his family in the
Metamorphosis is one of obligation and is functionally a transactional one. Samsa
is a reactive individual who has no core sense of self. This story is the
struggle of a man against the expectations of his nuclear family and the
business world. It is the years of life lost in paperwork and drudgery; it is
the banality of the existential reality of the mass majority of those who have
enough to not starve but never enough to be free. Freedom is some chimera,
redefined and chased by thinker after thinker. Kafka is intellectually
press-ganged into existentialism, though he does not write non-fiction, his
themes gallop with the same impulses that were afoot in the early twentieth-century
European literary scene. Kafka’s theme regarding the human condition in
the Metamorphosis is that the state of the individual in the modern world is
one of a social robot
The
man, especially the young man in a familial setting, is expected to provide. In
this case, he is providing for his sister and his parents rather than a wife
and child. His boss is unforgiving, as we learn when he visits the home. Sales
is not a forgiving profession, driven by market forces outside of the control
of any single person. The salesman must sell or die, so when Gregor begins this
transformation, which could be seen as a sickness, he dies in the eyes of the
profession. The need to work for a firm is a modern one, driven by the need for
personal capital to survive. But this is not a modern office job, but a job
which takes him on the road. Most sales related professions have a commission
based salary. If this is the case, Mr. Samsa is working on a knife-edge.
It
is not our vices which repeatedly assail us, but our virtues. In Gregor Samsa
we see the results of a person doing the right thing and being destroyed in the
end as a result. Shame itself motivates Gregor to stay in the room, even as
those in the house begin to shut him away as a horror. The call of his mother
is half-reminding, half prodding- to slave on for the good of the tribe at the
expense of his individual health. He is being driven by circumstances before he
has even had time to properly take in the changed facts of his existence. All
of his vital energy was spent on others with not a second’s self-reflection
about the actual nature of his relations in his life. Gregor had been lurking
in that confused space that we call the now, unable to collect the past nor to
rise to any future. He has done everything society expects of him, and the
expectations of that time are greater than what would be accepted in the
present day.
Note
that Gregor has worked for five years without a sick day. This is surely a
stroke of luck, but of course, the larger institutions will be business as
usual, even when this particular example of a Kafka-esque circumstance is
presented to them. His boss shows up to berate him through the door. It is
implied that the chief clerk could be harassing them for debts, and his sister
Greta is crying. This is a lower middle-class life on the precipice of falling
back into poverty. The chief gives him a speech, filled with high language and
outrage, essentially saying he cannot believe that Gregor is now not working.
He was entrusted a cash payment, conceivably for travel, and he is now
barricaded behind a door, answering only yes or no. No one is trying to
understand, except for his sister, who is lost in fearful sorrow. Her reasons
likewise could be varied. We learn his work has been unsatisfactory. This is
at-will employment before the term mattered, before the labor movement fought
to the near death to ensure there were employment laws. The insect was
forbidden from being depicted on the cover, which the initial publisher wanted
to include.
In
response to the queries of the chief clerk, Gregor indicates that he did not
report this indisposition to the office since he wanted to get over it. His
perceptions have changed. He wounds himself to escape the room, gripping the
key in his mouth as he has lost both his hands and the use of opposable thumbs.
The father is angry when Gregor scares the literal wind out of the chief,
seeming to threaten his son with physical violence. Gregor is chased away by his
father, only able to make a hissing noise in retaliation as he is pushed back
by a stick. He has lost speech, and is now an animal, indeed, to call him an
insect, usually an insult, is descriptive. He cannot communicate, something we
take for granted and even assume is happening. Something is always lost in
translation, but he has even lost the use of language. One suspects that giant
insectoids do not have vocal cords. Yet again, this condition mirrors afflictions
or different states of psychological health.
Treating
the mentally ill or deformed by simply locking them away in private was
practiced widely in eras where scant public health infrastructure was in place.
People were kept hidden and fed scraps until they died, regarded as shameful
things by their families. The difference here is the fall into madness or
insect form, depending on the actuality of what is happening here. This was an
era when mental health spas came into being, and he could at least hope for
decent treatment. Bedlam was the fate of those who underwent this process in
centuries past, a word which carried with it such dread that it has become a
synonym for pandemonium and a literal hell.
Since
Gregor cannot communicate, they assume he is stupid and do not attempt it.
Gregor ruminates on the past, seeing lost chances for himself and his family.
He secretly planned to send his sister to study music, a dream he could not
fulfill himself. Even before becoming a massive beetle or roach, he was only
living vicariously, which is common. This is Kafka exploring the lack of self
which is inherent in the socially programmed people that populate modern
societies. Whether it is the touch of documentarian or didactic in purpose for
some grander point which Kafka has in mind, one can see the two approaches
blended together seamlessly. Gregor only works. He has no wife, no child, and
no real dreams of his own. He has no thought of doing great things, and cannot
afford the time to self-reflect.
He
was a drone in the societal structure and dominance system that is the nation
state, and now he is an insect in an unfurnished room. He was an insect; he now
is a literal insect. In reality, nothing has changed other than the physical
actuality. His family loves him, but it is a distant love borne of wider
property relations. It is not the single person who is alienated, but the
family itself is alienation. The family which brings one into the world and
that exists in ideal circumstances to usher one out of it if one can avoid
being thrown into the dust-bin of a nursing home. Gregor never reads, he isn’t
a hero, and he has none. He is a domesticated ball of potential. He practiced
the value of respecting one’s elders but in the end, is left a decrepit insect
in his home, pushed aside as he scares away renters. Those things that literary
professionals would regard as traditional characterization are absent because
the life of Gregor Samsa is a vacuum. He is so financially broke that he is
broken as a person, and cannot find time for finer things in life. Mr. Samsa is
a work-horse, and when he can no longer work due to turning into a beetle, the
family he has been caring for reacts by renting space in the house and trying
to shut him away. Opening their home has a distinct economic sense- they are
living off of his money and need to make up the difference.
You
can invert the biblical parable and say, ‘One cannot serve both God and Mammon
unless Mammon is, in fact, God for the majority of the earth.' Money is key to
this story, more so than any strange spiritually barren theme. Kafka,
intentionally or not, has written something that socialists of the day would
understand. Gregor dies, and the family moves on in a way that makes his
various sacrifices a pointless endeavor. The premise and interactions that make
up the Metamorphosis have an under-appreciated commentary on social relations
and the effect of property on these relations. Money is at the center of the
story, so the critique is not as hidden as one would initially suspect.
Sources:
October 21st.
2015, Josh Jones
