Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka: My Review
What if it was really about quiet resignation?
Gregor Samsa wakes up as an insect. He’s confused, but not terrified. He doesn’t panic or mourn his body. Instead, he worries about being late to work. There’s no identity crisis. No emotional breakdown. Just a quiet shift into something new. And that says a lot.
He had already resigned to a life of sacrifice. His entire sense of self came from being useful — the one who earned, who provided, who never asked for anything. So when that role vanished, it was almost like he expected the loss of himself to follow.
He wasn’t sad to lose his humanity. He just didn’t want to lose connection. He wanted to stay involved, to be near his family, to belong in the same space. But his family couldn’t see him as Gregor anymore. Not even as someone trying. His mother tried, briefly. She still called him by name, but her fear won.
His father didn’t even give it a moment. His reaction felt less like shock and more like anger. Maybe because he had gotten used to being taken care of by Gregor’s mom and sister, and being provided for by Gregor.
Now that Gregor couldn’t work, the comfort was gone. The father would have to carry the weight, and he resented it.
His sister was different. For a while, she was the only one who showed any care. She brought food. She talked to him. But even she grew tired. She was young, and the responsibility was too much. Still, her emotional distance hit the hardest. Once she stopped seeing him as her brother, there was no one left.
Gregor adjusted. Slowly. He let go of the furniture. Stopped trying to speak. Stopped trying to exist in a way that demanded anything from others. It wasn’t acceptance. It was an emotional retreat — a quiet resignation from being seen.
What’s most heartbreaking is that he might have been okay if someone had simply met him halfway. If they had shown even a little willingness to see him, not as an insect or a burden, but as someone still trying. But he wasn’t accepted as their son or as anything else.
He was left in between. Not a person. Not a thing. Just alone.
The three tenants living in the house felt like a final layer. Cold, judgmental, indifferent. The family bent over backwards to please them, strangers, while quietly erasing their own.
That discomfort, that pressure to appear normal, led to something worse than grief. It led to forgetting.
Gregor didn’t die from being an insect. He died from being left behind.
And maybe that’s why, as a fiction reader, I kind of wanted the sister to become an insect in the end.
Not for revenge. Just to see if the family had learned anything. Just to see if anything would change.
— Nikita
