Why does a person turn into an insect? ... A reading in Kafka's novel The Transformation

On a rainy winter night in Prague, in 1912, the young novelist Franz Kafka came up with the idea of ​​a new novel, in a direct way and as a literary habit for Kafka as it appeared in his first novel “The Judgment” and all his subsequent novels. Kafka enters a foundational moment in the life of his heroes and fictional characters from the sentence The first, Kafka begins his novel, “When (Gregor Samsa) woke up one morning, following troubled dreams, and found that he had transformed in his bed into a giant insect. He was lying on his back, stiff as a shield, and when he raised his head a little, he saw his stomach swollen, It is dark, divided by stiff curved lines, and the cover is barely stretched over its top, and is almost slipping off completely. And its numerous, massively delicate legs, given the enormity of his body, continue to vibrate, in a movement that he sees and he can do nothing about. ”This is so simple and ordinary, Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself losing his human form.

Any calamity, and any existential dilemma, can befall a person uglier than transforming from a person into an insect. Kafka embodied this transformation with a terrible dimensionality, whereby he made events proceed as if they were normal and without the slightest wonder, as if it was normal that any of us in this world might turn into An insect without reason or justification, Gregor does not ask, “What happened to me?” Rather, there was no objection on his part to this transformation, all that distinguishes this transformation is that he understood it and was humanly aware of it, that is, Gregor keeps his human consciousness inside the body of an insect, Perhaps here was the whole tragedy of Gregor Samsa.

At first glance, the first thing that occurred to Gregor on this terrifying morning was that he needed to move to catch up with the seventh train so that he would not be late to his work schedule.

After several unsuccessful attempts to get up from his bed and try to stand up, “it suddenly occurred to him how it would have been so easy if someone had come to help him. Two strong people - think of his father and the maid - would be enough, and they would only have to insert their arms under his arched back. To get him out of the bed, and then bend over carrying them and leave him, and wait until he stands upright on the floor, where the presence of the small legs, as he hopes, will acquire some meaning, but regardless of the fact that all the doors are closed, would he really make a call for help? He had this idea, he could not restrain a smile, despite the extreme distress in which he was.

Gregor did not like his job as a traveling salesperson, rather he was waiting for the day when he submitted his resignation, to devote himself to doing the things he liked, perhaps learning music, but it is his family precisely that needs his work, especially after his father lost his business and accumulated debts on the family, the house rent and his sister's expenses All this pushed him to continue his job, according to Gregor and his family as well, Gregor's job is the most important thing they own, and then everyone was concerned about the company's reaction to this delay, almost the first, since Gregor joined the company five years ago.

In his room, Gregor was still struggling with his control over his new body, until the company dispatched its chief of staff to the home of the Gregor family, who met him with great respect and esteem, where Gregor's mother, Mrs. Samsa, assured the chief of staff that since he started working at the company he had done nothing at all except Work, and at night if he was able to read something, as he used to read the plans of the trains that were used by virtue of his job as a traveling salesperson, the company in turn did not allow any employee to be absent at all, and if an employee justified his absence with illness, the company sends its own doctor. To whom all people were healthy, there was never sick, but always lazy.

With the insistence of the chief employee, the insistence of the family, and the little sister's crying, fearing that Gregor would lose his job and the family collapsed, Gregor was so prejudiced against himself until he was able to get out of his room and stand in front of them with his new appearance, so that everyone met him with more horror and disgust, the chief employee went in horror, and his mother was nailed And his sister, while the father attacked Gregor forcing him to return to his room, and there inside his room again, from where he would not get out again, Gregor for the first time clearly realized the depth of the crisis in which he found himself.

Gregor lost his job, his career collapsed completely, and became a dependency on his family after he had spent his life and health in their way, and from that moment on, Gregor began to deal with himself not only as an unemployed member of a struggling family for survival, but as an insect, with violence and great disgust towards Self, when his father abstained from dealing with him completely, his mother and sister wavered between tenderness and aversion trying to bring food into his room, Gregor was trying to hide under the sofa, so as not to disturb them with his appearance, while they were trying to stay alive.

"If Gregor had at least been able to speak to his sister and thank her for all that she was doing for him, he would have been able to accept her services with full satisfaction. As for the situation as it is, those services would make him hurt."

(the shift)

One of the defining moments in the novel begins when the mother and sister decide to empty Gregor's room of furniture and all of Gregor's valuable belongings while he was in his human image to take advantage of the price, to help the family meet some of the financial burdens, Gregor hides under the sofa when they enter the room as he used to, and with the start of the operation Emptying the room Gregor hesitates Is this what he really wants, “Would he really want to let the cozy, comfy bedding room his family inherited turn into a cave, but in it he will also quickly forget his entire human past? That he's actually about to forget him? Then he decides to keep one of the pictures hanging on the wall to remind him of his old days, hoping to return to it, his sister and his mother who lose consciousness as soon as they see him again crawling on the wall towards the picture, the father intervenes cruelly, trying to kill Gregor, as he kills any insect At home, after a violent chase between father and son, Gregor was seriously injured. “The last thing he could see was the violent opening of the door of his room, and his mother coming out of it in a hurry, directly towards the father, to surround him with her arms, completely uniting with him, and her hands were placed on neck

The father - then Gregor lost his eyesight - begging him to spare Gregor's life.

Gregor's suffering and the suffering of his family continued a lot, and incidents of misunderstanding and disgust were frequent, as with the deterioration of the family's financial situation, the psychological burden was increasing more and more on the sister and mother, the family in one of its attempts to hold together rented one of the rooms to strangers, hoping for an increase in income, and in one of the Evenings, the family gathered with the tenants in the hall, the sister played the violin to entertain the tenants, who seemed to them to show signs of indifference and dissatisfaction, which frustrated the little sister. Gregor noticed this from behind the door of his room and tried to go out to encourage his sister. Given the abominable living conditions in this apartment and they leave immediately, here is the fall in everyone's hand, so that the same sister who went out to console Gregor declares that the family should get rid of Gregor.

“My dear parents, it cannot be like this. You, perhaps, do not realize what we need to do, as for me, on the contrary! I do not want, in front of this monster, to utter my brother’s name, so we have to try to get rid of it. We have done everything possible for human beings to take care of him, bear it, and have the necessary patience for that, and no one, I think, can blame us ... She is right a thousand times, the father said, and the mother did not chase. "

(the shift)

Gregor lost the last thing left in life, the love of his sister and his mother, his aunt with an overwhelming desire to vanish and disappear after hearing this family conversation and seeing with his own eyes his sister and father's desire to get rid of it, and with his mother's approval, he entered with great difficulty into his room, and realized that "now he is impotent." Absolutely about the movement. This did not surprise him, rather what seemed to him completely unnatural was that until this time he had been able to move around on these small and very thin legs. Other than that, he felt some relief. Indeed, the pain was widespread throughout his body, but He had the impression that the intensity of his pain was gradually subsiding and diminishing and that it was eventually fading away completely. He had lost his sense to a great extent on the mangled apple embedded in his back and in the sore around it, which was covered in fine dust. He remembered his family with tenderness and love. The idea was a necessity. His disappearance had become more entrenched in him, perhaps than with his sister.And he continued his mysterious meditations in a state of tranquility, until the clock of the tower was announced three in the morning.He witnessed the light beginning to spread outside, in front of the window, then his head fell to the ground against his will and from his nostrils, he set off, Athen, his last breath. "

Gregor was a young man dedicated to his work, in the service of his family, and he gave himself, time, health, and psychological stability to be ideal in front of the authority of work, the family, and society at large, but the essence of these human relations between Gregor and his community was a utilitarian relationship, based primarily on Gregor's economic benefit to his family and company. What value does Gregor's presence have in life outside the economy. The family, which consists of parents Samsa and Sister Griti, forgot that this being is Gregor himself.

Kafka raises the problem of the transformation of human relations from a relationship based on mutual benefit, whose value derives from a person's ability to serve society, to a tense relationship that tends toward hostility after the erosion of the economic activity of the human being and the degradation of the value of his existence to the level of insects, and insects have no role in the process of life. Here Kafka's vision of man appears, at a time when man may turn into a worthless insect in human society. We have lived with this hero the cruelty of transformation and his dehumanization, and his being thrown into that room that has become a dark hole in which he lives in existential alienation and the struggle between his innate need for Love, life, self-contempt, death and desirability.

The novel presents a form of economic alienation of man in a family belonging to the petty-bourgeoisie within an industrial society, where Gregor's physical transformation is a sign of his individual rebellion or rather his lack of integration with a stolen life that has lost its true value, but what appears to us from the end of Gregor and his family's overtaking him is that Failure to integrate or individual rebellion does not help anything, and ends with its owner in the dustbin of history, while the same social conditions remain as they were, but we must not overlook that the fate of man in our world is still always threatening to fall at any moment to the bottom, and he becomes himself An inferior insect, the tragedy of Gregor Samsa is not in his transformation into an insect, but in the absence of faith in the value of life and hope, as his family decided to sacrifice him, without ever coming to their minds that he was the one who sacrificed everything for them, without thinking that he will one day return To his nature, he just needs a little time, hope, and some love.

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