The invincible denial of Death : After Jesus, Kafka, new master of irony

My existentialist interpretation of the Metamorphosis.

When I have finished this book, I intended to understand why Kafka wrote this novel, and besides why he entitled it The Metamorphosis. Firstly, I thank that he choose this title because the metamorphosis of this down-to-earth and hard-working young men, Gregor Samsa, was the process that guide us through all the novel. But after a second look I understand that this metamorphosis wasn’t the point of the novel. That is to say that the transformation of Gregor into a huge cockroach starts the whole story, but this transformation do not evolve later. Gregor becomes a cockroach, and that is all. There is no more to say about him. We don't intend to understand why or how it happens, it is just like that.

So if Kafka's aim is not to present us the transformation of Gregor, why has he choose him as first character? Why do we have to see all the plot through his eyes? I supposed that is in order to show something to us. And as this first character stay locked in his bedroom during all the story with a single occupation -listen to his family daily life – I conclude that Kafka places us in Gregor's head to observe an other metamorphosis : the Samsa' family's one.

Placed in this new perspective, I begin to understand a meaning of this novel. In this perspective, Gregor is not interesting anymore, he is not the first character anymore, he is no more a character actually. Gregor is only a thing, a phenomenon; a brutal, inexplicable, unfair and terrifying irruption of Death in this predictable family life. Roughly, Gregor Samsa disappear from the surface of earth. Page after page, Kafka show us the metamorphosis of this ordinary family stricken by death.

The whole aim of the author is to show that even if those characters are really close to death (symbolized by the cockroach), they refuse to accept it, because they don't accept to consider their own most experience, their ineluctable death. The transformation of Gregor is just a way to reveal this denial.

And this strategy is very rewarding! We can see each member of the family intending to develop new strategies to avoid to consider the “cadaver” decomposing in the middle of their flat. They all do as much activities as they can, to avoid to even think through the day. Nevertheless they permanently consider that everything that happen to them is due to Gregor' transformation. They constantly despair about their own situation instead of facing it (they work harder to feed themselves but they don't take the resolution to move in a cheaper flat). In an eternal complain made of “Why this tragedy strokes us?” “If he could die, everything would be easier...” the family invent a myth of fatality, against whom they can't do anything.

On a kierkegaardian perspective, this denial of reality is ab-surd, it deny the existence of death and existence, full stop. They deny Gregor's death because they fear their own death, but obsessed by this perspective they refuse to use their freedom. They deny their will and live an inauthentic life.

And when the very expected death finally occur, the characters believe in a true remission of their situation, they believe they will get back to the statu quo ante. The end of the novel is not really clear on that point but we can imagine that is going to happen. They think they can replace Gregor, and above all Gregor' salary in marrying their daughter, and they really can.

Kafka did not give the sense of this novel, so everyone has to discover it meaning, and there are maybe more than a hundred interpretations of this novel, but I really see him as a master of irony, like Socrates or Jesus of Nazareth in Kierkegaard's work. He uses the cockroach as a mean to reflect one expectations and fear toward himself. I think it is a ay for him to show the absurdity of our lives, and his own despair toward the absurdity of his own life, which he is really aware of.