The opportunity to write this book review is a little accidental. That day, I saw a beetle on the roadside. It fell to the ground and its small legs paddled in vain in the air. I squatted down and looked at it for a few seconds, and the famous opening in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis suddenly popped up in my mind. After returning home, I reread this thin novel and found that there were many things that I couldn’t comprehend when I was young, but I understood them all this time.
This book tells an extremely absurd and extremely true story: Gregor Samsa, a salesman, woke up one morning and found himself turned into a huge beetle. From that moment on, he changed from the mainstay of the family to a burden filled with fear, disgust and eventual abandonment. The family went out for an outing with relief after Gregor’s death, shifting from initial sympathy and care to later indifference and disgust.
Kafka wrote, “One morning, Gregor Samsa woke up from a restless sleep and found himself lying in bed and turned into a huge beetle.” When I read it for the first time, I just thought it was ridiculous. How can a person become a beetle? After rereading this time, I suddenly realized that the “deformation” of many people in reality did not happen overnight, but was worn out little by little. You may not have a shell and multiple thin legs, but you may wake up one morning and find yourself a functional existence, a tool that is only seen when you are useful.
In the process of reading this book, the first thing that came to my mind was not how miserable Gregor was, but myself. I feel like that beetle at many moments. That feeling is not really being disliked or humiliated by my family, but a more inner fear: in any relationship, I am afraid that I am “useless” and afraid of being disliked, even if others don’t really dislike me. This fear is like a thin shell wrapped around me. It can’t be seen at ordinary times, but it will become particularly hard at some moments. For example, when I was sick and asked for leave, I was worried that my colleagues would think I was dragging my feet. For example, when my family encountered financial difficulties, my first reaction was “how much can I do?” I am used to using “what I can do” to measure my own value, and I also acquiesce that others are measuring me with the same scale.
Gregor is much worse than me, but I feel extremely familiar with his inner activities. After he became a beetle, he was worried not about his health, but about being late for work. He hid in the room and heard his family talking about the economic situation in a low voice, and his heart was full of guilt and pain. He even thinks that “he must disappear” is his responsibility. When I read the sentence “He thinks of his family with gentle love”, I have mixed feelings in my heart. He loved those who wanted to get rid of him until he died. Is there any cruelty to himself in this kind of love? I can’t say it clearly. But I know that the sense of despair that “even I feel that I should disappear” is not completely strange.
The coldest part of the book is when his sister said, “We must find a way to get rid of it.” What scares me is not the ruthlessness of his family, but that I find that I can understand them. If I were a member of the Samsa family and faced a huge beetle every day, how long would my patience last? Will I say the same thing on a tired night? I dare not think deeply about this question. But it is because I dare not think deeply that I can see more clearly how fragile the so-called human dignity and value are.
The night I finished reading The Metamorphosis, I thought of the beetle on the roadside again. I don’t know whether it flipped over or was crushed by passers-by. Kafka never gave Gregor a chance to recover. Gregor died in loneliness, and his family went out for an outing with relief. The sun is shining, and life opens a new page. The ending is so cruel that it is not like a novel, but more like a prophecy about all of us. In a world that values “usefulness” too much, everyone may find themselves becoming something else one morning. The value of this book is not to give an answer, but to let us stop and think about what we have become before the metamorphosis occurs.
This is also why I recommend everyone to read The Metamorphosis: it is like a mirror, reflecting the deepest fears we dare not face in our hearts.
