The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka - Episode #1- I'm a bug! - a podcast by Christy and Garry Shriver

The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka - Episode #1

 

Hi, I’m Christy Shriver.

 

And I’m Garry Shriver, and this is the how to love lit Podcast.  We’re glad you’re listening- thank you.  We hope you enjoy exploring  great writing with us, and I want to remind you- if you enjoy our work please forward an episode to a friend.  Obviously, it’s by sharing that we all grow and build- which, as the last series on American documents informs us- building is always the goal.  Today, however, we are leaving the Americas, and entering the beautiful and historically rich Bohemian city of  Prague where we will meet one of its notable native sons, Franz Kafka- in order to look at his famous novella “Metamorphosis”.

 

Of all the writers we’ve done so far, I have to admit, Kafka intimidates me the most.  And it’s not just because he’s one of the most analyzed writers on earth after Shakespeare and the writers of the Bible- although that’s a factor.  But kafka gets in people’s heads in a way that is different than other people- the world he creates is a world that we all live in, but at the same time we’re all terrified of- to some degree. Everyone can find themselves in Kafka, and yet- who wants to admit to it- his world feels like a nightmare- in fact, some people call it surreal or dreamlike, except it isn’t. 

 

Which takes us to the term that carries his name kafka-esque- Even if you haven’t heard of Kafka or read his work, you may have heard of or even used the term ‘kafka-esque”- a term usually meant to express an experience that is absurd, ridiculous, nightmarish yet terrible.

 

Yes- it does mean that- but in some ways- it means more than that- and it embodies something all of who live in the modern world understand.  What Kafka tries to show in all of his works is how the modern world is both absurd, frustrating, cruel but ridiculous to the point of funny.  He also wants to show us that we are in part responsible for the messes we make in this world.   For example, I remember when I was kid in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, we were at the mall (which unlike in the US is a really nice place to go) and I wanted to purchase a hamburger.  I went to the counter and asked for the hamburger, the lady said- you have to go over there and buy a ticket at that other counter, then you come back here with your ticket.  So, I went to the other side of the store to the cashier and asked for a hamburger- the cashier said they didn’t have hamburgers only cheeseburgers.  I asked if I could have a cheeseburger with no cheese.  She said she didn’t know,  she was just the cashier.  I’d have to talk to the manager.  So, I went to the manager, waited in a third line, to ask to purchase the cheeseburger He gave me permission, but wrote me a note that I took to cashier.  I bought the cheeseburger, but then had to go back to the first lady who then made my burger- she had to conference back with the manager- I waited quite some time, but somehow it had cheese on it and I had to take it off myself- that situation is kafka-esque- frustrating, angering, nonsensical- pointless- but it was all about the bureaucracy of modern living- the thing thst’s supposed to make things easier.  But, it’s also funny if you think about it- so much so that I remember it. 

 

I think everyone has a story like that.  I remember when I left my job at Shelby County Schools to go to a private school, I then decided to take a part time job from Shelby County Schools at their Virtual Academy.  When I went to fill out the application, they asked for a letter of confirmation of employment from my previous employer- and I told them- but YOU are my previous employer.  They said, that didn’t matter, I would have to go to downtown office and get the letter regardless.  Kafka-esque- a expression of a system that is a tyranny without a tyrant and serves no one but itself to paraphrase the great German-American political theorist Hannah Arendt. 

 

The machine is in charge.  And the machine isn’t a person- it’s a frustrating. Nothing.

The legacy of the term kafka-esque describes what has evolved from this unusual man- he knows how to express the frustrations and discouragments of modern life metaphorically in the most vivid and horrifying ways.  There’s so many different directions we could take in exploring Kafka, and we’ll do our best to highlights the big ones.  The real scholars- which is not us-btw- will tell you all of his works kind of piece themselves together like a sodoku game and if you read all of them they somewhat fit together to create a unified vision of the world- and I, obviously agree with that assessment, although I’ll admit I havent’ read all his works- although honestly, there aren’t THAT many full length works- most of his writings are letters, but even his fiction consists of a lot of short stories.  But the novella Metamorphosis is the most well-known. 

 

I want to add- if you’re not up for an entire novella, or even a short story- there is one fun way to explore the ideas of Kafka.  I think his aphorisms are pretty great.  If  you’re in a long line with nothing to do, take out your phone and google kafka quotes or kafka aphorisms- they’re awesome even without all the context of a story. 

 

They will make you think for days- he says things like

 

 “It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
? Franz Kafka, The Trial

 

 Or this one “A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.”

 

“He is terribly afraid of dying because he hasn’t yet lived.”
? Franz Kafka

 

“There is an infinite amount of hope in the universe ... but not for us.”
? Franz Kafka.................So Kafka!

 

Here’s one - “By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”- that should inspire a high school graduate .

Or “I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.”

 

-yikes-Lots of them are dark like that, but not all of them- at all.  Some of them are just self-reflective.  There are at least 109 of them in a single book that max Brod published after Kafka’s early death, but I’m getting ahead of myself in the story. Here’s one brings us back to Kafka wrote  “The task of literature is to reconnect us with feelings that otherwise might be unbearable to study, but which desperately need our attention.

 He said, “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”- I like thinking of Kafka that way- and that really does give, at least me, a direction as to how to approach Kafka’s books- not just Metamorphosis.  The literature he wrote addesses those places in our hearts that are problematic and difficult to address- but that desperately need our attention- to use his language.  Kafka wants to help- at least that’s how I see- and I know that’s arguable-  his works clearly have no moral- and maybe I’m hopefully committed to finding a moral  in everything- even if it isn’t there- but I do find his writings helpful- in their own kafka-esque way- in that can help navigate difficult emotions- because like it or not- almost all of us will feel the gut-wrenching soul-sucking feelings of alienation, powerless-ness and claustrophobia- and just by articulating them, making these feelings into metaphors, I think we can gain control of them- and perhaps take control of our own narratives- conquering our demons- so to speak- something Kafka himself was never able to do.  So- if that’s not a long introduction to this most mysterious man, let us introduce you to Franz Kafka, his world, his works in general and then break down his most famous tale= The Metamorphosis- Garry- his world.  What can you tell us?

 

For starters- Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague which at that time was the Capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  For those of us from other parts of the world who get lost in East European Geography and historical landscape- he’s from what today we call the Czech republic, a country that has only existed in its current state since 1993- a relatively new country.  Since the Austro-Hungarian kingdom, it’s been taken over by the Nazi’s who made it a part of the Sudetenland, and then the Russians who made Czechoslovakia a part of the Eastern European block.  This part of the world is the stuff fairy tales are literally made of with beautiful landscapes and castles.  The history is culturally rich, but Franz Kafka was born into it at a time when Europe was unknowingly getting ready to blow up with two world wars.  Prague was in the midst of the worst of it- especially if you were born a German speaking Jew in a land where Germans are a minority and Jews were a minority of the minority- and anti-semitism was not just a feeling some people had, but it was politically and culturally enforced- every other sentiment was increasingly silenced, not allowed and eventually punished. 

 

He was in Prague for almost all of his life- interestingly, where he lived Jews were 85% of the German speaking population, but only 7% of the overall population- most people were Czech. And of course, like most Eastern Europeans- even today, he was a master of more than one language.   He spoke Czech, German, Yiddish and he was pretty good at Hebrew. 

 

In terms of his personal life,  His father, Hermann, was a self-made man from the interior of Bohemia who had grown up in poverty to become a well-t0- and well married businessman in Prague, the big city.  Franz’s mother, Julia, was from an elite Jewish family, but personality-wise she was very weak-willed, introverted and not really willing or able to fight for her kids. 

 

That’s important to bring up because Franz’s relationship with his father seems to be the obvious heart of a lot of his writings- some more directly than others.  Herman Kafka was a physically large and strong man, he was accomplished because he made a lot of money in business when he started out with nothing- but he was an abusive person- he was, domineering and hurtful- Kafka tells a story when he asked his father for a drink in the niddle of the night and his father got up, picked his up, put him outside on a balcony  in the cold, and left him there.  He was mean and this is at the heart of Kafka’s writings about authority in general, so it’s worth mentioning pretty early on.

 

Well, the psychology of Kafka is so deep, and Kafka, as a student of Freud went there in his writings, but there are so many social forces that are swirling around the world at this time in Europe that also are worth mentioning: Germany, France, Denmark, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russia, are all producing incredible bodies of thoughtful work. not just politics but also in philosophy, theology and psychology.  First let me say, because most of us have heard of Archduke Franz Fernidand, the gentleman who’s assassination sparked the beginning of WW1 in 1914, he lived in a castle one hour out of Prague- and that of course, changed the world, but Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud who’s work was very familiar to Kafka was also born in today what we call the modern day Czech Republic.  Writers like Nietzche, Kierkegaard, Marx, Martin Buber- thinkers that started movements and introduced terms like existentialism, Freudian, Marxism to name a few- deep thinkers are changing the landscape about how people are thinking about the world, talking about the world, and as we’ll see in Kafka, writing about the world. 

 

The impact of industrialization cannot be understated either- Europe had been industrializing for almost 100 years and this has led to a lot of dehumanization of workers which is common in any industrial revolution including the United States- this dehumanization results in bureaucracies that are the marker of this new- non-agricultural, impersonal, big-city mass-produced world- let’s just say-Kafka is living the opposite of what Thornton Wilder creates in Grover’s Corner- if you listened to our podcasts about our town, and it is cold and unfriendly to many. 

 

The world in turning modern- changed not just how society organizes itself or how far away they lived from each other- but how people understood themselves.  I know this is not a perfect analogy, but I think of it like this- when I was 17, I left Brazil and came to the US- a totally different world for me.  When I first got here, the first thing I noticed is that no one talked to each other in the US and I didn’t see any human beings walking around.  Back home you could see people People everywhere walking, sitting outside at bars, waiting in lines for buses, but in the US all I saw were cars going in and out of garages, atm machines, I had never even pumped gas before- before there was a human for that.  Back home, every day we went to the bakery to buy bread from the same lady, there was a hot dog stand in the park across the street, and all my friends hung out in the plaza in front of my house.  The US was isolating to me- I had trouble figuring out how to make connections, and it made me feel like an outsider, even if my passport was blue like everyone else’s- to me that’s the feeling Kafka creates for us in his characters.

 

Yes- actually that’s every small town kid coming to the big city- and that’s the effect of industrialization- modernization that lots of us experience when we move and ironically Kafka describes having never left his own home.  Kafka had a hard time moving out- he went to college, law school, got a job as a lawyer then at an insurance company all without leaving home.  He only moved out of his dad’s house when he was 31, and even then he went home every day to eat until he was 40 (one year before he died).

 

Kafka was a small guy, skinny apparently, and this really made him feel bad about himself.  H was also kind of shy and lonely, it seems to me- although he is one of those people that when you get know him is a lot of fun- and his friends, work colleagues and even bosses have said all kinds of good things about him.  He is also one of those guys that has the ability to make close friends and when he does-those friendships are cemented for life.  For me, one of the best friends I could imagine a person hacing is a friend like Max Brod.  Max Brod, first of all was famous- or at least well-known.  But he saw the best in Franz- he saw that Franz had a contribution to make to the world and really encouraged him to write.  And then when he did, Max had the connections and the pull to get Kafka’x work published.  Another fun thing that Max did that I think is great is that he got Franz out of Prague.  They went to Switzerland together and Italy and Paris- how wonderful!! 

 

Max also introduced Franz to one of the woman he would be engaged to........ twice

 

Well—I’m just going to say this- Kafka is not as bad with women as Percy Shelley, but from the guys we’ve studied, he’s the second worse.  He was a terrible boyfriend- just the worst!!-And of course, it’s all speculation so, I’m not going to elaborate, but he might have had some real bad inner demons in that regard. 

 

True- and poor Felice Bauer bore the brunt of it.  The amount of correspondence between these two is incredible- over 500 letters and cards.  He wooed her and doted on her in the. mail- but as soon as the relationship got physical- he pulled back- she would try to win him, but eventually she’d let it go- and then he’d go back to writing and woo her all over again.  After he finally asked her to marry him, he literally wrote in his diary that “he felt like a chained convict.

 

I’m glad they did break up- horrible, but apparently so productive for his writing.  He wrote “The Judgement” in a single night two days after writing a letter to Felice for the first time, and he even dedicated it to her- which was incredible really- this was his break out work- and dedicated to her- at least she got thst out of the relationship- a small bit of imortality.  “the judgement” got published and got him noticed as a writer.  Kafka always thought the judgement was his best work- he described it as “a great fire”- it was somewhat autobiographical- and in it he says everything he wants to say to the world.  It’s kind of awful to me- it’s about an awful father who’s son announces he’s going to get married and the father sentences him to death- so the son goes and drowns himself.  He writes Metamorphosis  not long after that-

 

 but back to untrue love- two years later he broke off his engagement to her, and low and behold he was able to write another masterpiece- this is the The Trial, the full length novel that is probably his most famous  after Metamorphosis, it might be his most interesting work- but it’s so dark- some would say toooo much.  In that book, the main character, Joseph K, wakes up to find out he’s being arrest for an unspecified crime and never knows what he did for the entire book until he’s strangely executed. 

 

Anyway, we’ve gotten to the place in his life where he writes the work we’re interested in, and usually, I just quit discussing an author’s life at this point because that’s the historical set up, but in Kafka’s case- I do think it’s worth finishing out the biography of his short life.  One reason is that his life is so much of an expression of what his writing is about- if you see his life as sorting out the angst of life- and I kind of finding myself thinking of his writing like that- rightly or wrongly. 

 

Psychologists have a lot to analyze with kafka if they want to unpack his life.  There is no doubt, so much of his resentment and frustration is really centered around his relationship with his father who appears to have been so cruel to him.  One of his landmark pieces of writing, which by the way he writes after breaking off yet another engagement to a girl named Julie Wohryzek who his father didn’t like because she was from a poor family- anyway he writes his father a 47 page letter when he really releases a lot of anger about his treatment as a child.  He describes in his letter details of abuse that would make anyone ashamed.  However, he doesn’t give the letter to his father.  Instead he gives it to his mother and tells her to give it to him.  She does not.  She reads it, returns it and basically said his father didn’t need the stress of reading that.  Kafka never attempts to deliver it himself, yet the letter is a part of his body of work.  There’s also the idea that he only wrote three full- length novels but never finished any of them.  He wrote extensively about hating his job at the insurance company, but he never tried to change jobs.  He had several relationships with women, and women did seem to really like him, but he didn’t seem to enjoy the relationships all that much.  He broke off three engagements – and the last girl he tried to marry right before his death- was twenty years younger than he was, an orthodox Jew who he moved in with- and her father refused to allow the marriage.  This is six months before his death of tuberculosis which had plagued him for SEVEN years before he died.  At the end of his life he moved to a sanitorium  because it was too much for his parents to care for him, he wrote, instead of spoke his last words, I assume because the tuberculosis left his throat in unbearable pain, but he wrote to a Dr. Klopstock- “Kill me, or you are a murderer.”  So, there is a lot to unpack for those who like to do things like that. 

 

 

And what I find so amazing and so admirable- is that he would have been long forgotten just like the other millions of Eastern European Jews whose lives were going to be cut off weren’t for his friend Max Brod.  All three of Kafka’s sisters, by the way, lost their lives in Nazi death camps- as I’m sure he would have had he not died of tuberculosis.  But Max Brod made Kafka- he saw, believed in and preserved his greatness.  And on another point of irony- Kafka gave him all of his works before he died and told hin to destroy them- but Max didn’t saying if he wanted those destroyed he wouldn’t give them to me, and so Brod became the founder of Kafka’s fame.  He published more than 100 articles, epilogues, reviews and four books.  He dramatized his novel Amerika.  He finished  and edited the novels that were unfinished.  He wrote a book that was translated in English called “Franz Kafka, a biography.”  And so, Kafka was able to surve the purge of the Nazis and was discovered by the French existentiaists really, and his legacy just kind of took off. 

 

Okay- well- that seems like we covered that pretty well.  Shall we start with Metamorphosis.

 

Let’s do it, but I have a couple of disclaimers- like I said at the beginning, Kafka invites so many different interpretations of his work- we will not do them all justice.  Personally I tend to favor the existential perspective in looking at the book, so next week, I’m going to talk a little bit about what existentialism is because I think it gives us a great framework to get something practical out of reading the book (but those are my biases talking).  Another popular to look at this story is psychologically- but Kafka made so much of a point of saying his stories were not psychological studies- even though they seem like they should be- I tend not go down that road too much- even though I don’t know how not to make this story about family dynamics to some degree.  So, all that to say, the story is divided up into three part-s we’re going to discuss each one separately- hopefully leaving you with enough to think about that you can take your interpretation of this story as far as you want to take it- which is infinite it seems.

 

Okay- disclaimer made- shall we talk about the title “The Metamorphosis”

 

Yes- and let me say one more thing- this book is written in German- which means- when we read it in English, we’re only getting a fraction of meaning from the original- and apparently this book is really difficult to translate.   The Title “Die Verwandlung” means, the change, the transformstion, the metamorphosis-
 

Which of course captures the abrupt and harsh turn events described in the first line.  Garry read for us this line.

 

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

 

And what do you always say about the first line of a book???

 

So much to say- and like we’ve said many times- the author gives the story away in the first line- and this is not exception.   Frist of all the tone- it’s so deadpan.  And that is going to be how this book is characterized all the way thorugh.  Kafka writes his novels about the most absurd thing as if he were writing a bureaucratic report about the  delivery of a specific number of eggs to the Kroger in South Tallahasse, Florida.  It’s not emotional.  He’s not upset.  He just “found himself”. 

 

The second thing to note is his name- now some critics have noted that kafka and Samsa kind of sound alike maybe like a cryptogram or something, and this story is really about himself- which may be true- but I think what’s more interesting than that is that the word in the Czech language for alone is sam, and the word for I am is “jsem”- which to me is at the heart of what this story is about.  He IS alone. 

 

Well, then we get into the idea of dreams- a Freudian idea that Kafka was interested in.  Freud says that dreams are the pictorial language that speech once was- literally the metaphors hidden in speech. And that dreams are a manifestation of deep psychological forces the dreamer is wrestling with.

 

True- and there is where all of Kafka’s stories feel like dreams.  Isn’t it the thing of dreams where you wake up and you’re a bug or something? And in the sense that this vermin is a metaphor of something at some level really is going to be what the reader ultimately will take away from the story- Kafka wants to make clear  that in our story- this isn’t a dream and at the end of the story- he’s going to wake up and it’s all- oh- hahahaha- in this story- it’s not a dream- he’s really a vermin.

 

And that is what makes it terrifying- imagine waking up to be a vermin- an unidentified life-size bug. 

 

Which reminds me of a passage in the trial- if you remember kafka’s other book.  In that book, the character says that waking up is the riskiest moment of the day- which is a funny thought.  He goes to explain that if you can get past that, you can defend yourself from the onslaught of whatever might come- but how can you defend yourself in that original moment- the character says, “once that was well over without deflecting you from your orbit, you could take heart of grace for the rest of the day.” 

 

And yet, he isn’t going to describe what these dreams were about ever.  Although we are going to find out before the end of the first page that he hates his job, but he’s totally obsessed with it. He’s a traveling salesman but hates the “torture of traveling, worrying about changing trains, eating miserable food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate.  To the devil with it all!”  Is that what this is all about?  To the devil with it?

 

That’s one interpretation.  Many have said that turning into a bug is the ultimate- screw it- I’m done!!!  It’s an act of rebellion to your family, your employer, anyone who is making you like like this- I’m done with all of it.  But that takes us to the last part of the sentence “monstrous vermin.”

 

Now, I have never studied German so I am way out of my league talking about this, but the German word used here is “ungeheuren  ungeziefer”- and I am told this phrase has no literal English translation.  So- what does it mean- well for one thing look is the prefix ‘un’- there are two of those it’s a negative prefix just like it is in English just like in the word “unfit” or “unkind”- it’s the opposite of that.  The word Ungerheuren means monstrous- colossal -massive- incredible- that sort of thing-The word ungeziefer means a pest and vermin for sure but it means a little more- The word “geziefer”- and I know that’s not pronounced properly- but it’s a high German word that means an animal meant for sacrifice.  So, in a sense what we are seeing expressed here perhaps is thst he woke up a nasty gigantic thing that is not worthy even to be sacrificed anymore. You are repulsive- unclean- unfit to be seen.  And so we have to wonder- is that how he already saw himself as a person- is this transformation a physical transformation of something that already existed.

 

And if you felt like you were perceived in this way- why wouldn’t you just be a bug- in a sense to say- well- if you think I am- thus I am.

 

Indeed- and all of this takes us to the big idea that will dominate the entire book- and that is this idea of isolation- what is it, what does it feel like, what do we do with it, can we escape it, do we even want to. 

 

Look at Gregor- he’s aliened from his own body.  He’s alienated from his family- he’s alienated from his species. 

 

And this is where we see kafka talking to philosophers and thinkers of his day through his stories.  Martin Buber (Boober) a Jewish theologian, and remember kafka is Jewish- published a book a bit late in ‘23, but we can assume his ideas not unheard of- but Buber’s idea is that human life only finds its meaningfulness in relationships.  Well, this idea is being tested by being a bug- one that is unclean, unfit to be in relationship with others.

 

And this we have sentence one- shall we move to the entire first page.  Garry read it for us. 

 

Read the first page

 

Let’s look at the setting- the entire book will consist mostly of being in this one room.  He does get into the living space of the rest of the house briefly, and then the family will leave the apartment entirely at the end- but for the nost part- it’s in one room- and in a sense this will create for most readers whether you think about it or or just feel it but there’s a sense of claustrophobia.  Ugh- the walls are coming in and I can’t get out- this is how most of the world felt during the covid- pandemic.  One fun fact- btw- one critic I read noted that Gregor’s room in this book is an exact duplicate of his room at his parent’s house.  In a different work Kafka says about living in this room, “When I lay on the sofa the loud talking in the room on either sode of me, by the women on the left, by the men on the right, gave me the impression that they were coarse, savage beings who could not be appeased, who did not know what they were saying.” 

 

But, here we are, as readers, trapped in this room with Gregor- we, as readers, will never get out of this room- because our point of view, although not written as a first person narrative, will always be Gregor’s point of view.  We will know Gregor’s thoughts and his thoughts only.  We will see things as he sees them, and this way only, and we will sympathize with him- and him only- all the way to the very end.  We are the bug- but then again we aren’t. 

 

And of course, he reminds us that- “It was no dream.”  We aren’t imagining this- this is real.  We get a look around the room, we will see a small table, fabric samples for his work, a picture of a lady in a fur hat in a fur boa that he’d cut out of a magazine and framed.  There’s a window, and the weather is gloomy.  Yet- what caught my attention is that he’s not alarmed that he’s a bug.

 

Not at all- he’s worried about going back to sleep and then the logistics of getting out of bed as bug.  None of which freaks him out- although his legs squirming do seem to gross him out just a bit.  And we are going to see a little bit of slapstick comedy- the kafkaque- so to speak- because this is going to get absurd- he can’t get out of bed- he’s awkward in his body- some people describe it as funny, but I find it frustrsting.  I get frustrated with Gregor because I want him to take this problem more seriously than he does.  I don’t want him to blow it off or pretend it doesn’t exist.  I’m annoyed by his passivity.

 

And of course, these are all the psychological webs Kafka is weaving into this short narrative.  Are we bugs in our own lives?  If we were, would we like it?  In what sense would it be a relief?  At what cost would it come?  Would we like it? Would we be willing to live like that?  What would we do?  To what degree would we be like Gregor and if we were, what would the outcome of that be?

 

And that’s why I like to look at this book thorugh existential eyes- because to me- that’s very existential and it makes me tired.

 

Ha!  Well, in that case, maybe it’s time for a break.  Next week, we’ll tackle a little intro to existentialism and look at part one and two of this kafka-esque- novella- the metamorphosis- Remember, if you enjoy our work, please share our podcast with a friend or colleague and don’t forget to scroll down to the bottom of your podcast app and give us five star rating.  When you share, we grow- thank you for that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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