The transformation

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Title page of the first edition with the year 1916

The Metamorphosis is a story written in 1912 by Franz Kafka . The story is about Gregor Samsa, whose sudden transformation into a vermin more and more inhibits the communication of his social environment with him until he is considered unsustainable by his family and finally perishes.

With a volume of around 70 printed pages, it is the longest of the stories that Kafka considered to be complete and published during his lifetime. The text was first published in 1915 in the October issue of the magazine Die Weißen Blätter under the editing of René Schickele . The first edition in book form appeared in December 1915 in the series The Youngest Day , edited by Kurt Wolff . Only Kafka's novel fragments were received to a comparable extent.

content

first section

Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to find that he has been "turned into a monstrous vermin". At first he considers this transformation to be temporary and only slowly faces the various consequences of his involuntary metamorphosis . Initially unable to get up and out of bed, Gregory reflects on his job as a traveling salesman and Draper: The wasting activity of a "never sincerely becoming human traffic" in it totally takes to complete. If he were not the sole breadwinner of the family who has to work off the debts of his bankrupt father, he would resign immediately and speak to the despotic employer "from the bottom of his heart". As it is, however, he is entangled in apparently insurmountable economic dependencies. Samsa does not gain self-worth from his commitment to the family, there is only one passage of "pride", nor does he derive demands on the family or does he question the fact that he has to work off his father's debts.

Because Gregor Samsa is also expected this morning at his place of work, but because of its vermin shape the room the family home can not leave the morning appears in the course officer , a supervisor Gregory, on Samsas to be outraged by the unexcused absence of his To inquire about employees and insist on their immediate appearance. When he sees the transformed man who has dragged himself with great effort to the door, he takes flight. Gregor tries to get in touch with both his family and the general manager; however, incomprehensible animal sounds remain the only thing they can hear. Gregor's family reacted in horror and the father drove the animal back to his room under threats and violence.

second part

With Gregor's unexpected incapacity for work, the Samsa family lost their financial livelihood overnight. Only later does it become clear that she still has considerable savings that Gregor hadn't known about. Inevitably, the situation within the family is now reversing. Gregor's sister Grete had a good relationship with him until his transformation . He was even about to finance her studies at a conservatory because he was touched by her violin playing. With the transformation, she becomes the one who provides him with food in return. Although she shrinks at the sight of him, Grete pulls herself together and takes care of Gregor's food. With initially loving attention, she tries to find out which foods he eats and which he does not like.

The remaining human traits of Gregory are gradually being replaced more and more by animal behavior. He begins to accept his new identity and crawl across the floor, walls and ceiling. When his mother and sister are clearing out his room - with the ulterior motive of giving him more freedom of movement as a "beetle" - Gregor desperately tries to save a portrait on the wall (the "lady in fur") that he especially loves. So when he clings to the picture to protect it, his mother faints at the sight of it. The sister rushes to the mother's aid with medicine bottles that she fetches from an adjoining room. Gregor follows her and is injured in the face by a falling bottle. When his father, returning home from work, throws apples at Gregor angrily, one of them gets stuck in his back and seriously injures him.

Third section

In the weeks that followed, Gregor suffered from injuries to his back and face and hardly consumed any food. He is increasingly neglected by the family and his room becomes a storeroom. In order to secure their livelihood, the other family members have looked for a job and are taking in three sub-tenants in their apartment. But Gregor is isolated more and more from her life. The living room door is only left open for him in the evening so that he doesn't feel completely left out when the family is among themselves, because the lodgers eat out every now and then.

One day his room door stays open despite the presence of the lodger. Taking advantage of this fact and lured by Grete's devoted violin playing in the living room, Gregor crawls out of the room and is discovered by the unsuspecting people present. The three sub-tenants complain angrily about the unsanitary condition of the apartment and terminate their lease on their feet. On the same evening, the family has finally had enough of living with the giant insect. The sister, who has taken care of Gregor so far and who has taken on mandatory tasks (such as cleaning the room or feeding), is the first to express an express wish to get rid of the vermin. She can no longer recognize her brother in it and calls him "it". Gregor then begins to realize that he is no longer wanted and dies, completely emaciated, before the next sunrise. On the same day, in response to Gregor's death, the father resolutely expelled the lodgers from the apartment.

The story ends with a family trip by tram into the sunny open air in front of the city. In a relaxed atmosphere of optimism one speaks of a new beginning and an imminent change of residence, and the parents recognize in their mature daughter a blossoming, young woman on whom all their future hopes rest, and they remember “that it is now time for a good one too Man to look for her. "

characters

Gregor Samsa

Gregor Samsa, the main character of the transformation , is a cloth merchant and business traveler. Although he hates his job, he has been working without illness for five years, namely since his father went bankrupt. He hopes to be able to pay off the family's debts and gain recognition within the family. At first he succeeds in doing this, but after a while a habit developed and the money is simply accepted. However, his sister remains quite close to him compared to his other family members and he wants to pay her a conservatory . He uses what little free time he has to study timetables, fretwork and reading the newspaper. He describes his mother as caring and gentle, but she can hardly empathize with her son. She thinks that Gregor loves his job and therefore does not get to know a partner or restricts his free time. In doing so, however, she fails to recognize his true motives. When Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning as a vermin (which is a fact within the plot), his role is reversed: he changes from being a provider to being in need of help. His otherness was already there, however, through the transformation it only becomes obvious. While he can still communicate with his fellow human beings at the beginning and has changed only little otherwise, with the exception of his body, the transformation progresses in the course of the action. The physical metamorphosis is followed by the psychological one. He begins to control his body and feels joy climbing the walls and the ceiling. In addition, the view out of the window is an important pastime; However, since he can no longer see much in his condition, the view mainly reminds him of earlier times. In a naively optimistic manner Gregor hopes for an improvement for a long time until he finally gives up this hope. Gregor mostly glossed over the inhuman behavior of his family towards him. At the end of the story, Gregor is becoming increasingly neglected, he gives up personal hygiene and no longer takes any food. After an attack by his father, a rotten apple stuck in his back, which then catches fire and severely restricts his freedom of movement. But when his room degenerated into a storage room and his other care continued to decline, Gregor began to resist. Gregor's sex life is limited to fantasies, such as the "lady in fur". In addition, in one scene he feels an incestuous attraction to his sister. In the end, Gregor Samsa dies emaciated and neglected.

father

Gregor Samsa's father is in early retirement after an economic failure, while Gregor is paying his debts. Despite his presumably relatively young age, he does not bother to find work. Immediately after Gregor's transformation, but before he finds out about it, the father shows himself to be pragmatic in order to "free" him from his room. Shortly after the transformation, the father presented himself to Gregor with a hostile clenched fist and in the further course of the plot he appeared again and again to be aggressive and oppressive towards Gregor. This is also the reason for the frequent psychoanalytic and biographical interpretation of the transformation . Similar to other works by Kafka, for example The Judgment , a central father-son conflict can also be identified here, in which the father appears dominantly and aggressively. For example, his father bombed Gregor with apples and seriously wounded him. In the meantime he remembers that Gregor is his son and, following a “family duty”, accepts the presence of the vermin. After his daughter said that Gregor had to be eliminated, he agreed and confirmed her opinion. After Gregor's metamorphosis, he takes a job at a bank, receives a uniform and once again helps to support the family.

mother

The mother is very close to Gregor and is described by him as caring and gentle. However, her knowledge of Gregor's emotional life and his attitude to his work is very limited: She suspects that Gregor liked his work very much and that he therefore severely limited his free time. After the transformation, she is worried and badly shaken, but does not dare to look at Gregor or to take care of him. Later, when she has collected herself a little, she wants to take care of Gregor, but is initially prevented from doing so by her father and later by her sister. In the family as a whole, she plays a very subordinate dependent role. The mother suffers from asthma but begins sewing for a fashion store and doing other people's laundry.

Sister - Grete Samsa

Gregor's younger sister, Grete Samsa, did not play an important role in the family until Gregor's transformation, but she had a good relationship with Gregor. Before the metamorphosis, she was considered a useless girl by her parents and then matured into a self-confident, marriageable woman in the course of the story. After Gregor's transformation, she saw the opportunity to make herself indispensable in the family and knew how to use it skillfully. So she begins to take on the tasks that arise around Gregor and to keep her mother from doing them. Overall, there are the following explanations for their behavior:

  1. She hopes Gregor will recover so that he can take care of the family again.
  2. It positions itself in the family.
  3. In some cases, real closeness could play a role, but it then decreases.

She was the first to say that Gregor was no longer her brother and was too much of a burden for the family. Therefore, it must be seen as a problem and eliminated. A biographical parallel to Franz Kafka's sister Ottla Kafka , who was an ally against his father , is often interpreted, until she later turned against Kafka.

Interpretations

Like most of Kafka's works, this story arouses the inclination of many interpreters towards religious ( Max Brod ) or psychological interpretation. It is particularly popular to interpret The Metamorphosis as an expression of Kafka's father complex , for the first time by Charles Neider in The Frozen Sea (1948). In addition to the psychological interpretation, sociological interpretations also enjoy a large following, who see the Samsa family as a reflection of general social conditions.

Vladimir Nabokov rejected such interpretations, arguing that they did not do justice to Kafka's art. In contrast, he undertakes an interpretation that is based on artistic detail, but categorically excludes all symbolic and allegorical levels of meaning. Against the popular father complex theory, he cites his observation that it is not so much the father but rather the sister who should be considered the cruelest figure in the story. She is the one who betrays Gregor. As the theme of the story, he determines the artist's struggle for existence in a society of philistines that gradually annihilates him. Concluding on Kafka's style, Nabokov writes: “The transparency of his style emphasizes the dark richness of his fantasy world. Contrast and uniformity, style and depiction, representation and fable are perfectly interwoven. "

Gerhard Rieck (1999) pointed out that Gregor and his sister Grete form a typical couple for many of Kafka's texts, consisting of a passive, more ascetic and an active, more instinctual figure. Such figures, which are actually difficult to reconcile with one another or even irreconcilable, but nevertheless form pairs, shape the work of describing a struggle (e.g. I and acquaintances, praying and fat) and also appear in The Judgment (Georg and his Petersburg friend), in all three novels (e.g. in the missing : Robinson and Delamarche) as well as in the stories A country doctor (country doctor and horse servant) and a hunger artist (hunger artist and panther). Rieck interprets these couples as parts of a single person (hence the almost identity of the names Gregor and Grete), ultimately as the two determining parts of the author's personality, and he sees the description of the struggle in both Kafka's life and his work between these shares.

Reiner Stach argued 2004. The transformation required no supportive comments, they THAT CONDITION and convince all by itself, seem to be closed, so perfect. It would undoubtedly have been included in the canon of world literature even if we had absolutely nothing to do with the author.

According to Peter-André Alt (2005), the shape of the vermin becomes a drastic expression of the deprivation -shaped existence of Gregor Samsa. Reduced to the fulfillment of his professional duties, anxious for his advancement, tormented by the fear of business mistakes, he is the creature of a functionalist working life.

In 2007 Ralf Sudau was of the opinion that the motives of self-denial and suppression of reality deserve special attention. Gregor used to practice self-renunciation and was proud to enable the family to have a secure, even idle existence. When, after his transformation, he was in a position to seek attention and care himself and to have to become a parasite, he did not want to admit this new role to himself and not let himself be disappointed by the treatment from his family that followed and after becoming heedless and even hostile. In self-denial, Gregor hides his disgusting figure under the sofa, and self-denying he starves himself out of this world, obeying the family's more or less undisguised wish. Because his gradual emaciation and self-reduction had the character of a fatal hunger strike (on the part of Gregor's unconscious and unsuccessful, on the part of the family misunderstood or ignored). Sudau (S. 163 ff.) Also outputs a selection of interpreters of the transformation (including Beicken, Sokel, Sautermeister and black). Then the narrative appears as an image of an illness-related leprosy, for a flight into illness or the outbreak of a neurotic symptom, as an image of an existence distorted by the profession or as a revealing staging that breaks up the facade-like superficiality of everyday living conditions and exposes its inhuman core. He goes on to explain that Kafka's style of representation is characterized on the one hand by a peculiar intermingling of realism and fantasy, by cosmopolitanism, reason and sharpness of observation, on the other hand by absurdity, peculiarity, and absurdity. He also points out the grotesque and tragicomic, silent film-like elements.

The narrative is also often viewed as inconclusive in research, and wrongly so, explained Fernando Bermejo-Rubio (2012) and derives his approach to interpretation from the fact that in The Metamorphosis the descriptions of Gregor and his family environment contradict each other. There are diametrically opposite versions of Gregor's back, of his voice, of whether he is sick or in the process of metamorphosis, whether he is dreaming or not, what treatment he deserves, of his moral standpoint (false accusations by Grete) and of whether that Family is innocent or not. Bermejo-Rubio emphasizes that Kafka ordered in 1915 that there should be no picture of Gregor. He argues that the absence of a visual impression is essential for Kafka's project, because anyone who portrays Gregor makes himself an omniscient narrator. Kafka also did not want it because the reader would be prejudiced by an illustration before his own reading process got underway. The fact that the descriptions are not compatible with each other indicates that the statement in the opening sentence cannot be trusted. The story becomes conclusive if one does not get caught up in this first sentence, but continues to see Gregor as a person, namely as a victim in a process of severe degradation.

For Volker Drüke (2013) the "decisive transformation in this story [...] is that of Grete". She is the figure to which the title applies. Gregor's metamorphosis was followed by "wasting away and finally death" - Grete, on the other hand, matured through the new family circumstances and took on responsibility. At the end - after the brother's death - the parents also notice that their daughter, who is becoming “ever livelier”, “has blossomed into a beautiful and voluptuous girl”, for whom the parents now also want to look for a partner. From this point of view, Grete's transition, her transformation from girl to woman, is the subtextual theme of this story.

reception

According to Hermann Wiegmann 2005, The Metamorphosis is “probably Kafka's best-known and most cited story”. There are numerous references to the narrative in popular culture as well . So the protagonist finds himself in the name of the bands Gregor Samsa and Samsas Traum . The composer Philip Glass refers to his piano works Metamorphosis . Films and cartoons also refer to The Metamorphosis , such as several episodes of the Simpsons . The first sentence of the story won second place in the 2007 competition “ The most beautiful first sentence ”. The short story Samsa in Love (in the short story collection From Men Who Do n't Have Wives ) by Haruki Murakami plays with Gregor's transformation back from a bug into a human.

analysis

Structure of the narrative

The following three-way division can be recognized:

  1. Moment of transformation : It is the end of Gregor's human and professional existence (dealing with Gregor's way of life; relationship to his profession as a traveling salesman / representative; connection between parents and work; reaction of the family to the transformation).
  2. Living together with the "vermin" : phase in which the "vermin" is included in the family (relationship with the individual family members, especially the sister).
  3. Gradual dying and death of Gregory : interest of the family in Gregory waning (independence of the family); physical decline and death.

The number “three” appears several times in addition to the three-part division: There are three lodgers, three room doors, three servants, and before Gregor dies, the tower clock strikes the third hour in the morning. After his death there are three family members and they write three letters.

Style and shape

The monstrous is described in detail and factually, almost in the style of a sober factual report. The unemotional narrative style and the content of the narrated form a sharp contrast that gives the impossible the quality of the self-evident and everyday. It is precisely this combination of bizarre events and apparently dry realism of the linguistic representation that makes the story particularly effective.

The novella is determined by the perspective of the protagonist, that is, the fictional reality is represented reflected by Gregor. The narrator himself only comes to light after the death of Gregory.

In each of the three chapters Gregor breaks out of his room once. Each chapter ends with a new wound or emotional offense up to his death. This structure highlights the process of its gradual isolation. Gregor's decline goes hand in hand with the rise of the rest of the family. Both run parallel and are mutually dependent. It is shown successively how a questionable, fragile existence perishes while a vital physique survives, similar to The Judgment and A Hunger Artist .

The motif of transformation

The unconditionality of the beetle motif in its fantastic unreality is perceived by everyone as a threat to everyday reality. The transformation into a vermin happens seamlessly as an “absolute beginning”: the sphere of everyday reality is directly confronted with that of the surreal. Despite his transformation, Gregor retains an intact sense of identity, even if his external way of life changes into an animalistic one. The usual radical separation between humans and animals is thus partially eliminated.

Not only Gregor's transformation is unusual, his reaction to it and those of his surroundings are too. The result is that the beetle motif becomes the all-determining element of the story and the entire world of transformation becomes a vermin world . Through the self-definition through the external perception of the "other", the family, Gregor's self becomes an absolute stranger. In fact, the so-called metamorphosis consists only in a radical aggravation of the pre-existing circumstances, the reversal of which is only apparent. Gregor and everyone else lacked insight into what happened to him: nothing new. This means that the transformation only makes visible what was already there. Disgust and disgust are the intensification of the humiliation and humiliation that Gregor always had to endure, but which has so far remained unspoken: The parents ignore Gregor's inner conflict and his dehumanization through work in the service of the family, and Gregor himself considers his willingness to deny himself to be one moral necessity. Fraud and self-deception go even further, as the parents are actually no longer dependent on Gregor's support because they now have enough savings - which they have, however, kept from their son until then. Only in Gregor's disfiguring metamorphosis into vermin does he become visible as a victim. And his desired liberation, which should have been a revolt against boss and father at the same time, only succeeds when it is no longer at all: at the moment of transformation.

Symbols

Window in Gregor's room
Connection to the outside world
Image of lady with fur
erotic experience for Gregor as a traveler (little contact with women), possibly also an allusion to Sacher-Masoch's novella Venus in Pelz
Room in the Samsa family's apartment
At the beginning, each person is assigned a door (three doors - three people)
Gregor's room
Crossroads for the family, as all of the people's rooms lead into his room
Gregor's door
Barrier between Gregor and his family; Protection from the attacking father
key
Control of the door and thus Gregor's contact with the rest of the family; changes from the inside out.
Gregor's room is the focal point
Every room has a door to its room; he is the family provider
Gregory's room as a fortress and prison
In the first section the family and the general manager are locked out of the room, from the second section Gregor is locked in his room again and again.
Father's weapons (stick, newspaper, apples)
Violence against Gregor
food
The beetle Gregor does not like to eat human food and is increasingly rejecting his animal food, which leads to complete emaciation and ultimately to death.
disturbed communication
Gregor is not understood by the family because of his beetle voice, but can understand their words.
Ostrich feather on the hat of the waitress
the ostrich feather is an Egyptian symbol for justice / truth; the unadorned description / designation of Gregor by the operator (to the annoyance of the father, who first tries to gain this point of view)
Sun at the end of the story
New beginning of the family
vocal association
the words Samsa and Kafka sound similar, although Kafka himself claimed that there is no deliberate consonance here .
sofa
Gregor the beetle keeps hiding under the sofa and uses it as a kind of retreat from his family. It symbolizes Gregor's complete and final isolation from his father (family) and society.

The apartment as a place of action

The Samsas' apartment is strikingly similar to the Kafka family's apartment in Niklasstrasse 36 in Prague (destroyed in World War II). Hartmut Binder has created a picture with the prepared floor plan of Kafka's apartment, which shows that the use of the individual rooms varies, but their arrangement was exactly adopted.

Reference to other Kafka writings

Also , the transformation can be interpreted in the context of the themes of Kafka's oeuvre. The comparison of a person with vermin comes from the diatribe his father Hermann Kafka spoke to his son's friend, the Jewish actor Jizchak Löwy , which Kafka addressed in his letter to his father . The actual transformation into an insect is already taken up in the early work Wedding Preparations in the Country as a wish of the listless groom Raban, who wants to escape his unpopular social duties. The transformation itself marks the beginning of a whole series of thinking, speaking and suffering animals. See, among others, A Report for an Academy , The Construction, and A Crossroads .

There is a close relationship with the Kafka amendment The Judgment . Both works were created in autumn 1912. Even the similarity of names Gregor and Georg is striking. The focus is always on a son who is fully committed to working for the well-being of the family or the father. In the case of the transformation of the protagonist of this lot can not bear eventually more and eludes him unconscious. In the judgment the son acts successfully, but not in the sense of the father. Both sons are asked to commit suicide openly or indirectly by family members and die.

Adaptations

Urs Lüthi : "Self-portrait as Franz Kafka while he was writing the novella The Metamorphosis ". Passerpromenade, Merano (2015)

Film adaptations (selection)

  • 1975 - The Metamorphosis , 55 minutes, directed by Jan Němec
  • 1978 - The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa , 10 minutes, directed by Caroline Leaf (animation film)
  • 1993 - The Metamorphosis of Franz Kafka , 30 minutes, director: Carlos Atanes (short film)
  • 2002 - Prevraschenje , 84 minutes, directed by Valeri Fokin
  • 2015 - The Metamorphosis , 20 minutes, director: Igor Plischke

Opera

comics

  • 2003 - Peter Kuper : The metamorphosis
  • 2007 - Robert Crumb and David Zaine Mairowitz: Kafka
  • 2010 - Eric Corbeyran and Richard Horne: The Metamorphosis

sculpture

  • 2015 - Kafka memorial stone by Urs Lüthi (bronze, 36 × 15 × 15 cm)

literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

Web links

Wikisource: The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka)  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter-André Alt : Franz Kafka. The Eternal Son , p. 331.
  2. ↑ Nina Hollstein: Kafka's “The Metamorphosis” - Dream or Reality? P. 13
  3. ↑ On the similarity with Kafka's biography cf. Christoph Höbel: The father-son problem in Franz Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' , p. 12.
  4. ↑ Franz Kafka: The Metamorphosis . P. 35, line 33.
  5. ↑ On the various interpretive approaches and their evaluation cf. U. Abraham, 1992.
  6. ↑ Vladimir Nabokov: The Art of Reading . Masterpieces of European Literature. Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Robert Louis Stevenson, Marcel Proust, Franz Kafka, James Joyce. Edited by Fredson Bowers. With a preface by John Updike. (Original title: Lectures on literature (1982). Translated by Karl A. Klewer). Fischer-TB 10495, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-596-10495-5 , pp. 313-352.
  7. ^ Gerhard Rieck: Kafka in concrete terms - the trauma is a life. Repetition motifs in the work as the basis of a psychological interpretation . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 978-3-8260-1623-3 , pp. 104-125.
  8. ↑ Reiner Stach: Kafka. The Years of Decisions , p. 221.
  9. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka. The Eternal Son , p. 336.
  10. ^ Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories . Klett, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7 . Pp. 158-162.
  11. ↑ Fernando Bermejo-Rubio: “Truth and Lies about Gregor Samsa. The Logic Underlying the Two Conflicting Versions in Kafka's The Metamorphosis ”. In: Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft and Geistesgeschichte , 86th vol., 3 (2012), pp. 418–479.
  12. ↑ Volker Drüke: "New plans for Grete Samsa". In: Transitional Stories. From Kafka, Widmer, Kästner, Gass, Ondaatje, Auster and other quick-change artists . Athena-Verlag, Oberhausen 2013, ISBN 978-3-89896-519-4 , pp. 33-43.
  13. ^ Hermann Wiegmann : The German literature of the 20th century . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, S: 111.
  14. ↑ a b Ralf Sudau. Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories , 2007 Klett Verlag, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7 , p. 166
  15. ↑ Reiner Stach: Is that Kafka? 2012, p. 118 ff.
  16. ↑ Reiner Stach: Kafka. The years of decisions.
  17. ↑ IMDb: The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa (1978) (accessed June 28, 2017)
  18. ↑ IMDb: Prevrashchenie (2002) (accessed June 29, 2017)
  19. ↑ Jan Brachmann, “Theses, Riddles. Jelinek: Pure gold. Dittrich: The Blind / The Metamorphosis. Berlin / State Opera in the Schiller Theater ”, in: Opernwelt , May 12, 2014, pp. 40–41
  20. ↑ kunstmeranoarte.org: MenschenBilder 2015 (accessed on November 2, 2016)