Hey Stackers! I recently finished rereading "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka after many years, and it was a great experience. Afterward, I delved into some research on the symbolism within the book and wrote down my thoughts about it. I'm excited to share it with you, hoping that you'll find it interesting too!
"The Metamorphosis" begins with the undeniable statement that Gregor Samsa has been transformed into an insect the size of a man. This change is not attributed to any specific cause, though Samsa himself, if he still inclines to ponder the question, sees it as a consequence of his exhausting and futile life as a traveling salesman-a life owed to his family's debts, which he had taken upon himself to erase. In the end, it is he who is wiped out, and at the same time, his family's prospects seem to improve, as if all their problems were his fault.
Just as it is unquestionable that these events are not a dream (as noted at the beginning of the text, the entire story spans exactly one year), it seems equally likely that the explanation for the novel event is allegorical. Samsa (whose name bears some resemblance to Kafka's) feels like an insect and thus symbolically becomes one. This does not mean, however, that the transformation is merely symbolic within the story: there are numerous, unambiguous reasons to understand the metamorphosis as entirely real.
But like any symbol, the transformation of a man into an insect has its own dynamic. Towards the end of the first part of the story, we see Samsa trying to change the direction of his body to return to his room. However, he cannot do this easily because his many legs require complex coordination for even the simplest movement. This seems to symbolize the complexity of thought that can make even previously simple goals seem like challenges that require meticulous effort to achieve.
Samsa, whom we have every reason to consider the most cultured and sensitive member of his family and the surrounding community presented in the story, ultimately cannot avoid coming into conflict with these people and being perceived as an outcast, a lost cause.
Just as he bore the burden of his family when he was still in human form, he ends up bearing the burden that is now entirely his own, and after his death, a new chapter begins for his relatives. Meanwhile, he gradually loses all connection with the human world. First confined to his room, the furniture is removed, possibly to be sold, with the irrevocable judgment that he will never need it again. In his last attempt to return to the human world, even as an insect, he is violently rejected by the strangers who have become tenants in the house. Most importantly, he is betrayed by his sister, which he realizes too late, sealing his terrible fate.
The whole story could be seen as an allegory of the destruction of a sensitive being by an old wound. The new wound on his back, caused by an apple thrown at him by his father (perhaps a biblical reference), seems to be a belated echo of an older wound that existed when Gregory was still human. His once perfect (though already metaphorically nearsighted) vision becomes so limited that he can barely see beyond his window. He becomes someone who must hide when food is brought to him, the subject of whispered conversations outside his confinement.
However, all these events may simply be the next phase of an old misery, a misery that we do not read about and that Gregor does not touch, just as he does not touch the spot on his body with white spots that sends shivers down his spine when he first touches it. In a way, his story is similar to that of the evil customs officer in "One Thousand and One Nights," who is imprisoned from the beginning and remains imprisoned, perhaps under even worse conditions, though we never learn why he was imprisoned in the first place: similarly, Gregor's original wound is even more repressed, not only by others but also by himself.
It can be said, then, that the story begins with the aftermath of that wound, which seals his fate. The initial symptom no longer exists, or if the transformation itself can be considered a symptom, it occurs with the complete repression of any concern that might once have led to insight into the deeper cause of the current situation, even though, of course, only that insight could ever offer a way to reverse the current horror.
In this sense, the final outcome of the story, Samsa's death, is assured at the very beginning, just as Kafka himself died years later of tuberculosis, which he also saw as an "emblematic wound.