The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

The Birth of Gregor Samsa’s Tragedy

“Quite generally, only music placed beside the world, can give us an idea of what is meant by the justification of the world as an aesthetic phenomenon. The joy aroused by the tragic myth has the same joyous sensation of dissonance in music. The Dionysian, with its primordial joy experienced even in pain, is the common source of music and tragic myth”
Friedrich Nietzsche | Birth of Tragedy

Benno Wagner describes Franz Kafka as “Nietzsche’s first true reader” due to his work’s exposure of Nietzsche and Kafka’s common fear of a lack “of control over life and language” (Wagner 84, 118). “The Metamorphosis,” published in 1915 by Franz Kafka demonstrates the impact of the mentorship of Nietzsche’s work towards Kafka. Gregor Samsa, the short story’s protagonist, awakes one morning to find himself transformed into an indecipherable creature and struggles to grapple with his unexpected loss of humanity and isolation until his inevitable death brought about by starvation. Kafka describes the elongated death and abandonment of Gregor, who’s trapped in a poisoned and perverted form.

The pertinent content of “The Metamorphosis” evokes a horrorish reaction when separated from Kafka’s scientific writing style. Gregor awakes in a new form, seemingly without warning or reason to explain his circumstances, nor any hope of search for a solution. Kafka writes, “He was lying on his back–which was hard, like a carapace–and when he raised his head a little he saw his curved brown belly segmented by rigid arches atop which the blanket, already slipping, was just barely managing to cling” (3). From the first paragraph, the plot introduces the terrific through the loss of self and bodily autonomy. The reader clings to Gregor’s narrative due to the usage of third person, omniscient narrative that draws them to emotionally sympathize with him, and as a result, they closely witness this nightmarish transformation’s theft of Gregor’s ability to communicate as well as his loss of desire or hope of it.

Within the first chapter of the story Gregor’s panic strips away his last outward semblance of humanity, his voice. Upon the visit from the Chief Boss who threatens to terminate Gregor due to unsatisfactory work performance, his current lateness, and the disrespectfulness of refusing to leave his room to greet him, Gregor attempts to explain his actions. He proclaims, “I shall open the door at once, this very instant. A slight indisposition, a fit of dizziness kept me from getting up”, but his voice becomes incomprehensible to the people around him, that of a non-human, of a monster (Kafka 10). Gregor’s family has no means to understand Gregor whom the transformation renders lost and separated from human connection with his inability to speak comprehensively.

In addition to the means of communication, Gregor loses sight of other essential qualities of humanness in his isolation. Gregor loses the natural drive to create, to make memories, to exist in any complex manner. He’s chained by his loss of ambition and hope which is his only chance of finding contemptment in his life after transformation. On the morning that Gregor first awakes, he observes a piece of art he created. “This picture showed a lady in a fur hat and fur boa who sat erect, holding out to the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her entire forearm had vanished” (Kafka 3). Kafka describes the woman with the fur boa eliciting an image of elegance, elegance crafted by Gregor. The wood carving symbolizes Gregor’s desire or hope for romance, but as the transformation progresses Gregor soon doesn’t care at all for the portrait. He only remembers to protect his masterpiece upon his mother’s observation in which “He sat on his picture and would not give it up” (Kafka 29). Literary scholar, Haraway hypothesizes that the desire to reproduce and assimilate into society are a vital component of human nature, but without reminder Gregor seemingly loses these characteristics as represented by his fleeting desire to preserve his woodcarving until another, his mother, verbalizes his fading sense of humanness before him.

Clearly, Gregor’s transformation functions as a tool of dehumanization. It minimizes Gregor’s character into something invaluable. Perhaps, this theme is most exemplified in the way that Gregor’s character is named throughout the story. Kafka refers to Gregor after his transformation as an Ungezeifer, which translates to un-vermin, a play on the german insult un-human (unmenschen), as a Mistkäfer or dung beetle, and as es, the third person, neuter pronoun (3,36,41). While trapped in his inhuman form, no one ever refers to Gregor by his name. His entire being has been ripped away from him. Gregor’s entire self has been stolen by unforeseen and indescribable circumstances that infiltrated his life early one morning.

The constant themes of loss touch upon a common fear. Gregor metaphorically dies before the story begins by having already lost all that makes him human. It should leave the reader petrified or horribly sad for Gregor who awakes one morning without any means to connect to his normal life. However, the story leaves little the same impression as a horror novel would upon the reader. Rather, the majority of the text elicits little emotional depth due to its distant, clinical tone. The third person perspective guides the reader to follow along with Gregor’s linear narrative, a narrative that numbly perceives the events affecting Gregor and that focuses on a return to duty over exploring the traumatic, emotional impact of the transformation. Following are two translations of the same excerpt, one in the Norton English translation by Susan Bernofsky and one in the original German text.

“Unfortunately it seemed he had no real teeth–so how was he supposed to grasp the key?–but his jaws turned out to be surprisingly strong; and with their help he actually succeeded in causing the key to move, paying no heed to the fact that he was no doubt injuring himself in the process, for a brown fluid ran out of his mouth and down the key, dripping onto the floor”
Kafka’s Metamorphosis, pg.12

“Es schien leider, daß er keine eigentlichen Zähne hatte, – womit sollte er gleich den Schlüssel fassen? – aber dafür waren die Kiefer freilich sehr stark, mit ihrer Hilfe brachte er auch wirklich den Schlüssel in Bewegung und achtete nicht darauf, daß er sich zweifellos irgendeinen Schaden zufügte, denn eine braune Flüssigkeit kam ihm aus dem Mund, floß über den Schlüssel und tropfte auf den Boden”
Kafkas Die Verwandlung Zt.20

In translation, Bernofsky focused on transferring the most complete sense of meaning, diction, and tone as possible. In the translator’s note she claims that she strove to preserve the motif of “ruhig/unruhig. Ruhig denotes “calm,” “peaceful,” “quiet,” “tranquil,” “at ease,” and unruhig its opposite” (xvii). Kafka’s language offers details that construct elaborate images, but remains detached through a lack of feeling that forces a haziness upon the pose. Bernofsky successfully portrays this calmness within the translation. For example, in the quotes depicted above Gregor is described to be twisting a key, while actively harming himself, but the text shows no elicitation of a reaction or sense of pain. The only evidence of Gregor’s injury is the brown fluid that flows from his mouth, but with no acknowledgment of the negative emotions associated with wounds the text remains numb.

In his discussion “Metamorphosis,” in Lectures on Literature, Nabakov, a new criticist, argues that the story is grounded through sympathizing with Gregor who provides a sense of objective reality in his inner monologue despite its fantastic reality. He writes, “No poetical metaphors ornament his stark black-and-white story. The limpidity of the style stresses the dark richness of his fantasy” (Nabokov 283). In addition, Nabakov stresses the cohesiveness provided by the repetitions of threes throughout the thematic structure: three chapters, three lodgers, three servants, and three people in Gregor’s family (283). However, the same relatability of Gregor provides for the elimination of the absolute horrorish aspects of the story. It fractures the relationship between the content and the tone, rendering the text broken. Within the fundamental structure of “The Metamorphosis,” rests not unity as Nabakov forces, but rather a broken sympathy, a musical dissonance. The terrific and fantastic content sharply clashes against the blurred and numb tone manufactured from Kafka’s scientific language, producing an all enveloping curiosity that marvels at the meaning of such a fracture.

The theme of dehumanization remains constant through the story’s entirety, but the reader accepts its consequences alongside Gregor due to the numb narration. Kafka emphasizes the role of Gregor’s dehumanization through exhibiting its consequences in the three most feelingful and prominent scenes. More floral narration than through the rest of the story inserts a melodramatic affect that feels foreign and oppositional to the remainder of the text’s scientific specificity.

In the first chapter, Gregor emerges just before the climax of the introductory section upon his boss’s aggressive visitation, revealing his new form to his family. His mother dramatically reacts. Kafka writes, “She took two steps in Gregor’s direction before falling down in the midst of all her billowing skirts, her face vanishing completely where it sank to her bosom” (13). The writing in this excerpt flows more eloquently than the dry text priorly examined, and thus, offers the reader an opening to emotionally connect with the text as Gregor’s mother begins to sob after the supposed death of her son. The action of this chapter continues with Gregor’s father abusively forcing Gregor back into his room. He “administered a powerful shove from behind, a genuinely liberating thrust that sent him (Gregor) flying, bleeding profusely into the far reaches of his room” (Kafka 17). Immediately after the transformation that represents the dehumanization of Gregor, his family beats him with a stick out of fear until he becomes trapped within his enclosed bedroom. This scene stands out amidst the majority of the blurred and indifferent text, a sharp contrast that probes at the significant role of dehumanization within the meaning of “The Metamorphosis.”

In the second chapter Gregor flees from his room’s boundaries yet again. Grete, his sister, chooses to remove the furniture from Gregor’s room with the assistance of their mother to provide Gregor more space to crawl about. She wishes to remove all that could remind Gregor of his human life, his possessions, his desk where he might have worked, even his portrait of the lady with the fur scarf. A comment from the mother evokes a brief relapse of Gregor’s sense as he realizes he’ll miss the reminders of his humanity that are being taken away and so he emerges from his hiding place to attempt to protect his wood carving. However, his mother, upon seeing Gregor’s transformed form again, “fell back upon the settee, her arms spread wide as though she were giving up everything” (Kafka 29). Yet again, the dramatic depiction of Gregor’s mother falling in despair enters Kafka’s tale, demonstrating the true element of tragedy within the horror that depicts no fear. The chapter ends with the father pelting Gregor with apples that embed into his flesh to chase him back to his room. This action sequence thus highlights Gregor’s abuse.

Finally, the third chapter provides the last scene of action, when Grete’s violin music draws Gregor from his room in a twisted fantasy where he dreams of enticing his sister into the room with him where her talent would be sensually appreciated. But when a boarder staying with the Samsa family notices Gregor’s lurking presence, chaos erupts. In a climatic speech Grete cries, “things cannot go on like this. Even if you two do not realize it, I most certainly do. I am unwilling to utter my brother’s name before this creature, and therefore will say only: we have to try to get rid of it” (Kafka 41). In the third action scene before Gregor’s death, the final thread of Gregor’s humanity is cut. His sister who refers to him as “it” with the neuter german word, “es” servers all familial connection with Gregor’s monstrous, vermin-like form and insinuates that it should be an insult to Gregor to call such a creature by his name (41).

In brief, the three action scenes where Gregor leaves his small prison-like room remain the only continuous sequence that unites the fractured story, so Nabakov was correct to assert that repetition of threes unified the text, but he neglected the obvious dissonance through the remainder of the text. These three scenes are ruthlessly depicted by Kafka’s language, “powerful shove,” “bleeding profusely,” “electrified,” “embedded in his back,” “shocking pain,” “grievous wound,” and “violent nodding” and thus, diverge from the overall tone (17, 30-32, 40). They distinguish the importance of dehumanization to “The Metamorphosis” by including the only true emotional value that grasps the reader in these scenes.

The question as to what inspired the constant dissonance through Gregor’s death then emerges. A complete interpretation of “The Metamorphosis” remains contingent upon the socio-political circumstances in Europe leading up to WWI as even though “The Metamorphosis,” wasn’t published by Kurt Wolff Werlag until 1915 in Leipzig, during the Great War, despite the fact that Kafka completed its writing in 1912 during a work conference (Reitter 67, Bernofsky XVIV). This places the story’s writing process during a period of anti-semitism as well as during the rise of industrialism and capitalistic society, both of which could easily have provided the inspiration for the conflict in “The Metamorphosis.” In fact, one could argue that “The Metamorphosis,” is simply a literary rebellion against the systems and prejudices that degraded and dehumanized Europeans in the early nineteenth century.

In the deconstructionist article, “Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature: The Components of Expression” Deleuze and Guatarri propose that “The Metamorphosis,” is a literary masterpiece, not because of its cohesion or structure, but because of its skill in disguising its lack of conflict behind numb prose describing the fantastic and horrid life of Gregor to evoke pity. Viewing Kafka as a political author they describe how he draws his ideas from his rhizome of letters and transcribes them into writing completed in Prague German, a minor language that has the ability to show more strange or minor uses than a major language would (Leitch 1371 ). Thus, Deleuze and Guattari presume that Kafka’s language and therefore his work is subjected to political aims. They write, “The other proceeds by dryness and sobriety, a willed poverty, pushing deterritorialization to such an extreme that nothing remains but intensities” (Leitch 1374). The minor language limits Kafka, but the style it initiates also provides him the tools to create intensities, to create powerful criticisms against society.

Guttari and Deleuze describe Gregor’s transformation as a form of escapism fantasy, of animal-becoming. They indicate that “for Kafka, animal essence is the way out, the escape route” (Deleuze 598). Gregor’s transformation provides him with an escape from his arborous life. Similarly, as noted by Iris Bruce in “Kafka and Jewish Folklore,” traditionally in Jewish folklore the concept of metamorphosis was utilized as a part of the cycle of transgression, punishment, and redemption (153). Within the beginning of the 19th century anti-semitism was on the rise, especially with the Russian Beliss Affair in 1912 that propelled Jewish hatred and fear (Preece xviii). The same codes on proper Jewish behavior, ostracization, and genocides that had begun centuries ago were to continue in Kafka’s life, a blatant display of dehumanization towards him, a Jewish writer. With these two ideas in mind, it can be seen that Gregor’s transformation provided redemption for Gregor from a hateful society and the punishment he endured for his religion in the form of prejudice. Gregor’s father at the end of the second chapter further supports the appearance of rebellion against anti-semitism in “The Metamorphosis.” Kafka writes of Gregor’s father, “He had filled his pockets from the fruit bowl on the sideboard and now was tossing apple after apple in Gregor’s direction” (31). The apple can be viewed as symbolism for part of the Jewish belief, a reminder of man’s original sin for stealing the fruit, and Gregor’s father imposes this symbol on Gregor. He, one of Gregor’s only connections to the civilized world, ruthlessly throws apples at Gregor as if in punishment. Gregor’s metamorphosis saves him from the impact of anti-semitism, but even it can’t fully shield him from its pains, and so he feels the pained bite of the apple and in the story’s end, faces death.

The blatant and constant anti-semitism can only be escaped in transformation, and even then prejudice follows Gregor by the hands of his own father. This continual degradation of Gregor implants itself into his mind and seemingly pervades its functioning in the way Gregor obtains an acceptance for the biases that his life subjects him to. Shortly after Gregor’s father grievously wounded him with the apples, Kafka narrates, “He was compensated for this worsening of his condition by what seemed to him a perfectly adequate substitute: as evening approached, the door to the living room, on which he would start keeping a sharp eye an hour or two beforehand, would always be opened so as to permit him, lying in his own dark room and invisible form the living room, to watch the entire family sitting at the brightly lit table” (Kafka 32). Gregor’s family allows Gregor to sit in the dark room while death takes him and permits him to watch them live in the light, to watch them begin to thrive as his death approaches, and Gregor views this as a gift. He readily accepts the bare minimum, having no will left to grapple for light of his own. Continual prejudice has broken his soul.

In addition to elements of redemption against anti-semitism, “The Metamorphosis” also offers a criticism of capitalism and the growth of industry. While some scholars attempt to ignore the impact of Kafka’s work as an insurance worker, Benno Wagner observes that Kafka claimed, “the whole world of insurance itself interests me greatly” (20). Kafka worked as a head of an Austrian insurance company that strove to reform worker safety statistics and insurance protocol. Stories of injured workers and their unfair problems constantly circulated in Kafka’s mind due to his occupation. This exposure acted as a breeding ground that planted ideas of revolution against capitalism in Kafka’s literary rhizome. Everything Kafka wrote, whether intentionally or not, was influenced by his opinions on the new economic system that was strongly developing in the early nineteenth century. Thus, his writing was influenced by his belief that “the spirit of an ever-spreading bureaucracy is the circulation of ultimately unintelligible script of one sort or another, whether office or family language” (Corngold 10). Kafka viewed the world through a lens that attributed much to the economic system that governed it and the way it molded people’s choices. People were numbers on an insurance document to him, and it is this statistical view of life that Kafka argues against in his literature. This view appears in Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis,” in the way that Gregor faces a tragedy imposed by capitalism and suffers through it with the mentality imposed by being taught to feel less than, as imposed by anti-semitism. Gregor embodies the impacts of various systems of prejudice and disadvantage, conflicts that only death can resolve.

Within the story, Gregor Samsa’s primary problems revolve around his position in society and his stress over the roles he must fulfill to maintain that position. Upon the initial discovery of his transformation Gregor frets not for what doom this even means for his life, but only about having missed his alarm and being late for work. Despite waking up in a new body, Gregor thinks, “Heavenly Father!…Could the alarm have failed to ring? Even from the bed one could see it was properly set to four o’clock; it must have rung” (Kafka 5). Gregor’s obsession with work demonstrates that Gregor has succumbed to capitalism. He feels a need to work an inhuman amount for survival in society. It has taken over his life, possessed his desires, and poisoned his very being. Kafka writes, “What a quiet life my family has been leading,’ Gregor said to himself, and as he gazed fixedly into the darkness before him, he felt great pride at having been able to give his parents and sister a life like this in such a beautiful apartment” (18). Gregor is the reason his family lives a lavish upper middle class lifestyle, a lifestyle that he provides by constantly working as a traveling salesman and paying off his father’s debts. He faces abandonment and devastation, and yet, the advantageous financial situation of his family is what occupies the majority of his mental capacity and makes him most proud. His priorities and values have been warped by the influence of capitalism that has seeped its way into Gregor’s life and pervaded his very means of living.

The poison of capitalism and industrialism that has stained Gregor and provoked his transformation as the only option of escape harms not only him however, but also seeps into the livelihoods of his family. His family struggles to maintain their position once Gregor’s transformation steals his ability to provide for his ailing father, mother, and sister. To continue on they must set forth in their own lives in search of independence, triggering the maturation of Gregor’s sister. However, none of them find true happiness or peace until Gregor’s death has transpired, until the stain of capitalism has left their home. The day after gregor’s death transpires, his family travels to the sea, and Kafka writes, “And when they arrived at their destination, it seemed to them almost a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions when their daughter swiftly sprang to her feet and stretched her young body” (47). Grete blossoms within the last pages of the story without the extraneous stress imposed by caring for Gregor, a responsibility that she took upon herself, despite her lack of belief that the creature in question was Gregor at all. The family in relief choses to move “to a new apartment; they now wished to take a smaller and cheaper but more convenient and above all more practical flat than their current one, which had been picked out for them by Gregor” (Kafka 46). Gregor has died, cleansing the poison of capitalism from the Samsa family, a phenomenon that their decision to leave their too large and too grand house exemplifies. Rather than work themselves to excess to maintain their living situation, they choose their own prospects and disregard societal expectations and move to a smaller home where they can more comfortably live. Free from Gregor’s influence, they simultaneously gain freedom from the restriction on their happiness imposed by capitalism. Free from Gregor, they regain the right to live.

Therefore, Gregor’s trials merely represent the myriad of problems that society dictated to him. His lack of self-esteem and willingness to accept whatever abuses his family attributes to him demonstrate the way anti-semitism has fractured his confidence, and his fixation upon work and constantly progressing in society, even when faced with death demonstrates that capitalism has poisoned him. The nineteenth century and its modernism has poisoned Gregor making him into a perverted version of himself. In fact the only non-perverted component of the text is the unity attributed by the three scenes of action that establish a linear narrative.To account for this perversion, “The Metamorphosis,” contains an ever-expanding rhizome of plausible interpretations due to the vast expanse of social dilemmas occurring at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and quite possibly Kafka intended for each of them to be interpretable. The design of an entire piece of work around the traumas of modernism infuses the work with a melancholic tone that Kafka only narrowly avoid by his use of numb narration, but come the story’s end and Gregor’s death it still evokes the emotional devastation of a tragedy, which prompts the question as to what motivation does such a dreary and clinical text provide the reader to have reread it to modern day? What aesthetic pleasure does the text that manufactures a tragic effect provide to allow it to stay alive in the field of literary theory and study for so long?

In “The Birth of Tragedy,” Friedrich Nietzsche works to decode the motivation to read tragedy and the factors within it that function in its creation. He seeks the history and meaning of tragedy, an art form that originated in Ancient Greece and reached such a prestige that Aristotle himself analyzed its composition. To do such it must first be confirmed that “The Metamorphosis,” pertains to the tragic genre. As has been explained the story narrates the slow death of Gregor Samsa in a weirdly static and dissonant chronology, other than three distinguishable scenes of action that highlight the dehumanization towards Gregor. The text relies upon feelings of clinical depression to communicate the hopelessness and impending doom of Gregor. Therefore, the text quite clearly aligns with the tragic genre over others it could be attributed to, particularly the horror genre.

Nietzsche enumerates that two parallel art impulses, the Apollinian and the Dionysian, must meld together to successfully create tragedy. The Apollinian refers to the more distinguishably ordered, picturesque, and distinct components of society and art, the ones that can be absorbed through the senses. Nietzsche writes, “Under the Apollinian dream inspiration, this music reveals itself to him again as a symbolic dream image” (49). The Apollinian component of tragedy presents a tangible image through description. This appears in “The Metamorphosis” in the scientific and precise descriptions that offer a clear image of action and sequences. In contrast the Dionysian component refers to the more chaotic element of art, the one that offers the reader the room to feel intuitively, even if not a precise image. “The Dionysian musician is, without any images, himself pure primordial pain and its primordial re-echoing” (Nietzsche 50). Gregor’s emotional narrative, centered only on his thoughts, thoughts that form no image, provide “The Metamorphosis,” with this impulse and introduce the path to deep melancholy come the story’s resolution at Gregor’s death and his family’s completion of the grieving process. The following quote from “The Metamorphosis,” balances the use of both the Apollinian and the Dionysian impulses within the climax of the tragedy in the story.

“He thought back on his family with tenderness and love. His opinion that he must by all means disappear was possibly even more empathetic than that of his sister. He remained in this state of empty, peaceful reflection until the clocktower struck the third hour of the morning. He watched as everything began to lighten outside his window. Then his head sank all the way to the floor without volition and from his nostrils his last breath faintly streamed.”
KAfka 43

The first portion of this excerpt exhibits the Apollinian impulse in the text. Gregor apologetically recalls his impact on his family and decides he must leave them for their own prosperity. However, despite the severity of the subject, little disappointment traverses the page. It reads numbly, separate from the notion of familial abandonment and generates little to no images for the reader. The beginning of the quote relies on abstract concepts that emulates the effect of the Apollinian impulse through accounts of Gregor’s thoughts. They’re straightforward and rigid, concrete without room for interpretation or imagination. In contrast, in the second portion of the quote a calm image of the night gracefully forms. One can imagine the darkness beyond the window, the stars, the gentle glow of a clock amongst it all, a peaceful painting for Gregor to behold as death takes him. It is before this image that Gregor can be seen despondently melting to the floor and deflating with his last breath. This image which emulates the Dionysian impulse provides the necessary component for sadness and tragedy to be evoked. It offers a glimpse of Gregor’s lifeless form and demonstrates the impact of the prior seemingly emotionless perspective expressed. Together these components function to provide a combination of groundedness and abstractness. The clarity offered by the Apollinian impulse prepares the emotional contribution of the image of the Dionysian. While the Dionysian allows the mind to form pictures and images that couldn’t otherwise be created, the Apollinian functions to make it comprehensible.

Nietzsche then claims, “the poems of the lyrist can express nothing that did not already lie hidden in that vast universality and absoluteness that compelled him to figurative speech” (55). Even without intention, Kafka’s work portrays the turmoils of the early nineteenth century, the anti-semitism he suffered, and the impact of industrialism that he witnessed. “The Metamorphosis,” symbolizes the disadvantages of this era in the format of Gregor’s transformation. This picturation of these issues in society were visible in the structure of the story, were made comprehensible, despite their abstractness as a tangible emotion, pain. The Dionysian visualized the potency of grief caused by this era and the narrative of Gregor provided the Apollinian grounding required to be feasible.

However, this does not yet explain the aesthetic pleasure that one could gain from this piece of literature, the motivation to read a tale that numbly narrates devastation, that only feels like depression, a state which most wish to escape. Nietzsche writes,

“Both derive from a sphere of art that lies beyond the Apollinian; both transfigure a joyous region in whose joyous chords dissonance as well as the terrible image of the world fade away charmingly; both play with the sting of displeasure, trusting in their exceedingly powerful magic arts; and by means of this play both justify the existence of even the “worst world.”
Nietzsche Birth of Tragedy

The implementation of a chaotic emotion and feeling balanced with grounded organization through images allows for dissonance to arise. Commonly used in music, it grates against the other notes, stands in sharp contrast, and elicits feelings of anxiety in the listener. The literary element of the Dionysian functions the same. It provokes fear in the reader as the dull text envelops them in a blurry space, muddled with confusion. It drives their adrenaline forward as Gregor is abused and clears their consciousnesses to make room for sadness upon his death that acts like a musical resolution when the tonic is finally played. Only after Gregor’s death does his family return to normalcy away from the perversion he poisoned their home with. Kafka writes, “Then all three of them left the apartment together, something they had not done for months, and took the electric tram all the way to the countryside at the edge of town” (46). Only Gregor’s death can cleanse their home of the sins of the nineteenth century. Only death can offer resolution, the grand swelling of the chords as the dissonance finally absolves.

This resolution when reading, when Gregor’s suffering ends, provides pleasure in the tale. No happiness has been reached for Gregor, only his family who are more often portrayed as villains than victims due to their violent abandonment towards Gregor. It ends the clear, masochistic telling of grief, providing an overwhelming sense of relief, providing the aesthetic glory of “The Metamorphosis.”

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