He thinks that Gregor Samsa actually turned into a Cockroach in the Metamorphosis

He became a janissary thus making him a t*rkroach

MOMMY!!!

that's why it's called the metaphormasis you retard

This.

>They think it was a metaphor
>a fucking metaphor
>a metaphor that doesn`t even make any sense since there`s no possible interpretation that conciles other`s changed views of him, the suddeness, his innard sanity and calm and his changed tastes
>they`re for reals
>good God
>they don`t get that it is a recreation of classical mythology in which people do something, just ANYTHING that some god might randomly punish them for, and get transformed into an animal or something
>these dimwits
>I can`t believe it

>they don`t get that it is a recreation of classical mythology in which people do something, just ANYTHING that some god might randomly punish them for, and get transformed into an animal or something

This doesn't seem to be right at all. Kafka was clearly alluding to Gregor being treated like "Ungeziefer" in a metaphorical AND a literal sense

OP is right, there's no moment where Gregor Samsa definitively has the anatomy of an insect. The descriptions are extremely suggestive and instead prod you into yourself finishing the image of him as a bug. For this reason Kafka asked his publisher to never depict the insect on the cover.

So, as for your proposed evidence: people can't get stuck on their backs? And there's certainly no mention of anything as specific as chitin in the story, at least in the German. Getting an apple stuck in him is strange but it is surreal enough on its own: he doesn't need to be an insect for its being lodged in him to "make sense."

The essence of the story is that his insectness is never rooted in 100% concrete details but always projected by his family, Gregor himself, and ultimately the reader.

Are you deliberately trying to misread the text? Why?
>AS GREGOR SAMSA AWOKE FROM unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. He lay on his hard armorlike back and when he raised his head a little he saw his vaulted brown belly divided into sections by stiff arches from whose height the coverlet had already slipped and was about to slide off completely. His many legs, which were pathetically thin compared to the rest of his bulk, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

"found himself" -- already ambiguous
"hard armorlike" -- muscular, stiff?
"divided into sections" -- abs
"many legs" -- how many is many? Can 2 legs seem like "many' when you're already thoroughly disgusted with your body?

It is not: he had 12 legs and a chitin exoskeleton and antennae and beetle pincers...

>it was a metaphor
>the apple somehow killed him

WEW
LAD

That's ridiculous. You're actively trying to pretend that it's not an obvious description of some sort of insect, why? So you can feel superior to people who don't read the text the same way as you do, like you're on to some intellectual secret that they don't get? That's ... as funny as it is sad. Nice try though.

Freshmen in high school are capable of coming up with the interpretation that he never changed. I know because one of my classmates did when I had to read it back in the day. Claiming user's point to be some esoteric theory designed to make him feel superior is basically just admitting you read at a middle school level.

I'm saying it's not an anatomically definitive description of an insect. It obvious creates the idea of Gregor as an insect but it also never gives lets go of the possibility that he's just horrified at his own human body. This is like Kafka 101, dude. Maybe it's just more clear in the German.

I'm not questioning whether or not someone can come up with the interpretation, I'm just pointing out that it's demonstrably wrong, as anyone with a post-highschool reading level can see.

Anything's possible if you read your own interpretation into the text. Maybe he was transformed into a tootsy-roll in denial and was so disgusted about it that he saw himself as an insect. The apple symbolises doctors trying to substitute him for a more healthy snack.

lol

Then what was that whole spiel about user trying to feel superior through some intellectual secret? All of his points seem solid to me except the part about the legs, and I have an easy fix for that: if the bug-like view of his body is only in his head, why not group his arms in with his legs? If you look throughout the text, the use of arms to communicate feeling by his family and other humans is actually quite a persistent theme. And here we have poor Gregor, with nothing but many "little legs."

Because this thread is "you don't read it like I do, look at these white women who I'm implying are laughing at you for being stupid". Are you unable to understand the context here?
Yeah all sorts of mental gymnastics are possible, doesn't mean they're not stupid.

What makes them stupid? If you only take literature at surface meaning, you may as well be reading genre fiction. Kafka is willfully ambiguous about any specifics regarding Samsa's new form, and you would have us believe there was no literary purpose for that ambiguity? Even if you are taking it as a literal transformation, you have to admit that we really have little other than educated guesses to figure out what he became. This interpretation also leads to strange questions about the world the Samsas live in. The clerk, who knows Gregor, flees in terror upon seeing him. The tenants, who do not, instead express curiosity and confusion when he emerges from his room. If the transformation is in his head, this makes sense: the clerk would recognize that Gregor was behaving erratically and fear for his safety, while the tenants would be meeting him for the first time and not necessarily understand that anything was wrong. What explanation presents itself if he's actually a bug? I've seen some say that in the world of the story this isn't a unique occurrence, but that wouldn't explain the clerk's terror. And if it were as strange as it would be in our world, that certainly doesn't explain the subdued reaction of the tenants. Long story short, I don't think you've put enough, if any, thought into the interpretive problems this story poses.

.. then that highschool freshman is an idiot too? How does that possible affect the veracity of the claim.

The interpretation that Gregor isn't actually transformed into a "monstrous vermin" is laughable.

It's hardly mental gymnastics to say that the heart of the story has to do with questioning whether Gregor Samsa is actually a bug.

You're inferring all sorts of things that aren't there. Just because Gregor has literally been transformed doesn't mean there's only one way to transform the story. What you're doing is reading it in such a loose way you may as well be looking for shapes in clouds. The idea that someone would flee in terror because he's feeling different about himself is absurd.

Monstrous vermin ≠ insect

I don't know whether to advise you to read more books or to just stop reading them altogether.

The point isn't necessarily about the veracity (though as you can obviously tell, I do find the theory worthwhile), but about user's accusation that it was meant to make others feel stupid. That accusation falls flat for an interpretation as widespread and easily stumbled upon as the one in question.

Thanks, for now on this is will be my new interpretation of the book, but i will use nutritionist instead of doctor.

Is it possible the trial is also a book about food? I will find it when i read it again.

Kafka always seemed like a starved young man, maybe we can go deeper. Maybe he wrote all his books with food metaphors while starving as a metaphor about his starving need of paternal love -- maybe his abusive father was metaphor about the abusive use of resources from the elites. Kafka was actually a political writer exposing the unequal society he lived in but had to hide the real meaning of his works in his daily life and father relationship.

This gives a whole new life to Kafka, i can almost feel myself enjoying his books from now on. Please hide this discovery from the marxists in the literature department, they will find a new misuse for the word kafkaesque.

...I suggest you reread the story. Feeling differently about yourself leads to behavioral differences, and it's well established from the first few sentences that Gregor is behaving quite erratically. It's particularly clear that when he tries to speak it comes out as some crazed noise (as anyone who's worked in a mental hospital can tell you, not a symptom requiring a transformation into a bug), and it's when he begins to speak that the clerk flees the Samsas' home. It's behavior, not physical appearance, that clearly influences the responses of outsiders to Gregor. Now consider the passage where the tenants first see him:

"The violin went silent, the middle of the three gentlemen first smiled at his two friends, shaking his head, and then looked back at Gregor. His father seemed to think it more important to calm the three gentlemen before driving Gregor out, even though they were not at all upset and seemed to think Gregor was more entertaining than the violin playing had been. He rushed up to them with his arms spread out and attempted to drive them back into their room at the same time as trying to block their view of Gregor with his body. Now they did become a little annoyed, and it was not clear whether it was his father's behaviour that annoyed them or the dawning realisation that they had had a neighbour like Gregor in the next room without knowing it."

Hard to jive with a literal interpretation of Gregor as an insect or other creature.

The apple didn't literally kill him. Gregor basically decided to die after his father says that he wished Gregor would leave on his own accord. To be fair the story is not clear about what caused his death, but it would be strange to argue that it was just a coincidence that Gregor died at that time.

>he thinks the apple killed him
Did you even read it?

He literally crawls on the fucking wall and ceilings. You CAN interpret anything ANY way you want and suggest that any part of any piece of literature is just a metaphor, doesn't explicitly happen in the story and is just an hallucination, in the narrator's/main character's head. But you're still a faggot, and doing this takes away the "solidness" of actual characters, events, and the reliability of the narration on which almost any book except Philip K. Dick's rests.

Does it even matter if he literally became a bug or not? It's all the same either way.

>Hard to jive with a literal interpretation of Gregor as an insect or other creature.
Yes, because we're not fucking reading a realist story in the vein of Flaubert or Tolstoy.

It's an expressionistic story with very weird things that happen in them, which is possible because it's a fucking story, it's not real. Trying to force it into realism is just indicative of your own contrarianism IMO.

Honestly, though, you're very intelligent and at least have interesting/not boring ideas, which is nice for lit.

Gregor is Schrodinger's insect

>he thinks most books have reliable narrators

Holy shit user, you don't just need to reread Kafka, you need to read more generally. And stay out of /sffg/, mmk? It rots the brain almost as badly as CBS sitcoms.

Thank you.

If you act in a strange way, you repulse people. You do not literally send them running scared, but just the fact that people's reactions are exaggerated in the story does not disqualify the theory. It seems that all of your arguments are based on such a fundamentalist interpretation of the books that there is no room for meaning.

It's a parable. Unrealistic things happen in parables for the sake of symbolism.

You're just cherry picking what reactions are "proof" and what are "exaggerated" simply to try and justify your nonsense.
>there is no room for meaning.
What bollocks. The book can have plenty of meaning without you having to deliberately misread the meaning he actually put in there.

I honestly don't know what the fuck you're talking about. I've read a lot of both experimental and nonexperimental literature. I think the reliable (no, not UNreliable, but RELIABLE) narrator is a trope of most fiction.

Even in cases where the narrator is biased by their own emotion, the supposition that they're describing certain events accurately is what most books rest on.

Yes, there are some where you can suggest some events don't happen. If it's suggested in the text this is true.

For example, in The Sound and the Fury, Quentin is very mentally disarranged. Should we say he doesn't actually help the little Mexican girl, that she doesn't even exist? The Underground Man is a repulsive fellow too and seems unreliable in terms of the bias he puts to things --- should we say that he never actually meets a prostitute and tries to take her in?

You can, it'd be clever, but ultimately it doesn't matter because we've already formed the image in our heads of these things happening and they've already affected us.

>the supposition that they're describing certain events accurately is what most books rest on.
Exactly, without this initial supposition literature would be absolute chaos. Interpretations would cease importance, and all would be lost to the realm of pure individuality. Not to say this doesn't exist to some extent already, and albeit fine on a personal basis, it would, most definitely, void the possibility of discussion of a single text.

W.H. Auden: "There is not a single metaphor in all of Kafka"

Doesn't he crawl on the ceiling

>having an interpretation that expressly contradicts the text

Yep. The sister and the mother even take the furniture out of his room so he can crawl around the walls with no obstacles

Interest flees and interpretation makes up for the weak allegory of Kafka's metamorphosis. The subject matter may develop resonance with those who ponder little; allowing the interpretation, instead, to fill them with intellectual positivity.
Whether or not gregors form was A or B matters not; the story itself with its varying connotations have but a shallow depth and are, IMO, unworthy of such a discussion.
Difficulty doesn't lie in interpretation but rather lives and breathes the matter of ideas.

I guess, if I were to really try, I could interpret this as some physical anomaly subservient to whatever mental trauma one may interpret him having experienced. But even with this, the physical reality of a bug existing within the text, or lack thereof, does not change the concluding interpretation of the text. One can see both the reality of this condition in comparison to real life regardless of human or bug form.

and therefore I don't recognize the necessity of this thread?
Does the context interpretation matter if the concluding interpretation remains the same?
and if so, doesn't that allude to some objective form of interpretation? I find that fairly unreasonable and rather unjustifiable.

hahahahahh

>Samsa literally crawling on the ceiling, eating trash and unable to use hands
>He hasn't changed physically at all!!!

Jesus Christ. Most of Kafka's works are set in a world not unlike ours but different. Think of the whole legal apparatus in the Trial. Everyone just treats it as normal while K is the only one surprised. Think of the neverending palace in the kaiserliche Botschaft. Think of the bucket rider. Think of the perverse punishment in the penal colony which is somehow not prevented by the superior. The irrational characters in Amerika, The story of a talking cat and mouse which is an actual parabel. It's supposed to be absurd. It's not our reality. Of course all these things have interpretable meaning, but they are given as facts within their world.
Acting like Samsa was not a literal bug is the equivalent of saying "it was all in his head!" That's reddit-tier interpretation. Of course it works, you can disregard anything as an unreliable narrator. That doesn't make it a good interpretation.

Behold: Of Mice and Men is about the schizophrenic George. Lennie is is violent Mr. Hydesque alter ego! Wow, it works!

>not unlike ours but different

Except where it describes him falling down any time it mentions him trying to "crawl" on the ceiling.

Christ guys...

No it doesn't. It mentions that over time he preferred the sensation of being on the ceiling more than being on the floor.

CRAAAWWWLIIING IN MY SKIINN

Well he can literally and metaphorically be a "vermin" at the same time

He actually transforms in the story, but this transformation only reveals what his family and the outside world really think of him

Yes, he prefers it, but he still falls. As he gets "used" to his body he just gets more used to falling and not better at crawling.

He literally transforms but the story is not about his literal transformation mainly. This thread is bait anyway

I remember it having said this too...
And if we're correct, and it does say he preferred the ceiling, then we're either forced to accept the factual relativity of kafkas world and insist he was a bug, or assume it exists all in gregors head; for if he wasn't actually on the ceiling, but preferred it to the ground, he must have been experiencing some mental trauma that would render him unable of proper conception. However, if the latter is true, then the concluding themes and all external aspects of the story cease to matter, and it becomes a text on mere mental illness... Which doesn't encompass, IMO, the reality of the text as a whole.

What? This contrived dichotomy doesn't make any sense at all.

Good post. Kafka's stories are best thought of as parables. If you think he didn't actually turn into a bug, you have been fundamentally misreading Kafka.

>Parables can't be ambiguous

So was Gregor just mentally deranged and throwing shit all over the walls and ceiling while lying on his back and mumbling to himself, then hiding under his bed whenever his sister came into the room?
Why does she provide rotted food for him to eat when she realises he doesn't like his favourite food anymore? Is that just a metaphor as well?
Honestly, Gregor doesn't seem to be disgusted with himself, he is a bit concerned but wanted to know what others would make of him before he formed any real opinion of himself.

The cleaning woman calls him a dung beetle. After he dies the three lodgers are called into Gregor's room to look at his corpse; isn't that pretty macabre for normal people? The cleaning lady takes care of his corpse... I think disposing of a dead body is a bit above the pay grade of a cleaner.
That said, the lodgers did react quite strangely when Gregor showed himself in the sitting room. They seemed to think they had grounds for some case against the family upon seeing Gregor. Did they think the family was abusing their crazy relative or did they just think there was a serious bug problem in the house? Why were they no longer confident of their power over the family the next day when Gregor was found dead? If he were recoginsable as a person, then surely their case against the family was even stronger now.

Why's that? It's rather simple...

>And if we're correct, and it does say he preferred the ceiling, then we're either forced to accept the factual relativity of kafkas world and insist he was a bug

B doesn't really have to follow A here. Why does he HAVE to be a bug in order to prefer the ceiling? And if he's instead a person who just thinks he belongs, like a bug, on the ceiling, it doesn't necessarily open up some rift of mental illness that obliterates all meaning of the text.

Yes, thank you.

This is a really interesting discussion though, almost Borges-like.

He was always vermin to begin with.

>He thinks it matters in analyzing the story whether or not its literally "real"
>shiggy diggy

this, him literally being a bug or not isn't really relevant either way

OP here, I hoped that the thread would evolve into you cunts posting more laughing women, but in reality this thread just showed me how many fucking idiots are on this board. Jesus christ, I really don't understand how anybody can think that the metamorphosis isn't about Gregor feeling reduced to something subhuman (an Ungeziefer, vermin) because of how he is treated by his family and how he acts himself. It's clearly a book about a man that has lost his honour and that feels less than human. I'm disappointing in you Veeky Forums.

overrated piece of shit

>Being this level one

His literal transformation in the story is a metaphor for his transformation in real life from a human to a verminous worker slave in real life. He was already rather close to a cockroach in his life before he was transformed, therefore it is fitting that this happened to him. But to act as if it's reasonable that he was never transformed at all is just stupid because the whole point of the story is to use a literal fantastical event to symbolize something in real life that many people can relate to and think about. You're just trying to look much deeper than you need to in this case, I'm sorry to tell you.

Maybe it's him going berserk and thrashing around the room, being all over the place, so they move the furniture, so they don't get damaged and so he doesn't hurt himself.

> he thinks metamorphosis isn't an example of magical realism

He was literally transformed into some kind of insect.

This thread is great though, I'm glad there's at least one board left on this site that isn't absolute shit.

pretty good bait thread op

Top kek

Could you show in the text where he is unambiguously non-human in form? So far nobody has been able to do that convincingly.

Seriously people, I was as incredulous and stubborn as you when someone first suggested it to me, but the story really doesn't give a definitive account of his physical transformation into any other type of creature. It is, as someone said, Schrödinger's bug: every inkling of his being insectoid is shrouded with ambiguity and double-meaning. Though the circumstantial evidence of his bugishness increasingly piles up, the door to his being physically unchanged is never actually closed. You have to look at the strangeness of the descriptions rather than how you remember it.

Examples:
- He finds the door with his "fühler," which means "feelers" more than "antennae;" anybody who translates it as the latter is failing the reader.
- The only time he is called an insect is when the maid calls him a "dung beetle," which is really being used pejoratively here. Not to mention that in all his insect-like behavior he doesn't actually act like a dung beetle specifically, i.e. do anything with dung.
- The scene where Gregor is most clearly described as hugging the wall is when his furniture is being taken out, but notably before his desk is removed. He then embraces the Venus in Furs portrait, which is previously mentioned to be above the desk. That is: what everyone is claiming as "crawling" could literally just be standing on his desk.

The story certainly begs you to imagine him as an insect, and certainly the behavior of Gregor and those around him would be more comprehensible and palatable if his body has actually changed, but if it hasn't, then the scenario is even more grotesque, isn't it?

>or assume it exists all in gregors head
I follow with this, as I realize the former doesn't necessarily come as subsequent.

No, it wasn't. He crawled under the tables and furniture.

>hard armorlike" -- muscular, stiff

lol

i'm dying

Maybe it's time you got a good night's rest for high school tomorrow.

Like, what the fuck. His first thought is that he's late for work; and everyone treated him like that kid who does shit to get attention/being part of the gang

Is this how far Veeky Forums has fallen? There are concrete descriptions of Samsa's transformation, but the type of insect is never specified. It is obviously metaphorical, but within the context of the novella the transformation has actually happened.

Dude what if I'm a metaphorical insect?

Americans don`t seem to get the fun that somebody transforms into something bizarre over night and nobody wonders about it.

It is real in the context of the story but it is to be taken metaphorically

/thread

What if we all are?

>/threading your own post
>/threading your own post while saying something that has already been said multiple times

Hurrrrr

Kafka about his own work:
>The bug must never be shown.

user about a book that he vaguely remembers from years ago:
>lol, omg, WEW LAD, heh, teehee he's obviously, like, totally a bug, what else is the story about??? Anybody who thinks Kafka wrote, like, ambiguously is just a special snowflake overanalyzer and is RUINING LITERATURE. I REMEMBER THE BUG PERFECTLY!!!