One of the
reasons Kafkas is such a classic is that it defies any singular reading.
It is practically a . The tale of Gregor Samsa can be applied to myriad situations and feelings.
Kafka creates such a universalby centering it around awho is, in many ways, a blank slate. What
the reader does know about Samsa is that he is a traveling salesman who is both diligenthe says,
Other traveling salesmen live like harem women. For instance, whenever I return to the hotel
during the morning to write up my orders, those men are still having breakfastand despises his
job:
Well, I havent abandoned all hope; once Ive saved
enough to pay off my parents debt ... Ill make a big, clean break!
Samsa, like most Kafka protagonists, is a man stuck in a system. He lives his life in
debt, a cog of the professional wheel and a slave to train schedules and the tick of the clock.
Even on the morning of his metamorphosis, he does not display the extreme fear or confusion one
might expect, but instead is worried about arriving to work late:
Already seven oclock, he said to himself when the alarm clock struck again ... I
absolutely must be out of bed completely before the clock strikes seven-fifteen.
He is a man so far gone down the corporate track, so weighed upon
by the expectations of the modern world, that he does not even pause to consider that being
transformed should have any impact on his life. One could argue, therefore, that Samsa begins
the novel as a man who has already had the humanity wiped out of him.
If the
reader believes that Samsa is already less than human, then his shame might be a step forward:
after all, it is a deeply human quality. The man who feels shame is a far cry from the resigned
salesman, destitute of spirit, whose response to being turned into a humongous bug is the
comment, what a strenuous profession Ive picked! The ability to feel shame means that Samsa
sees himself as his own being, rather than as part of a systemor even part of a family. He takes
ownership of his place in the world. Theof Gregor Samsa might be that he was never able to take
ownership of his unhappiness while he still could have done something about
it.
