Connor Brem Mr. Tighe, pd.

3 October 18, 2010 Gregor, the Hopeless Degenerate One of the most disturbing parts of the Metamorphosis is the hope that Gregor and his family hold that he will, eventually, recover from his ailment and be able to return to his normal life and work as a salesman. This hope is first expressed by Gregors family when his mother, listening through his bedroom door to his inhuman voice, exclaims: You must go this minute for the doctor. Gregor is ill. Go for the doctor, quick. Did you hear how he was speaking?(Kafka 11) Though there could be many possible explanations as to why Gregors voice is so horribly distorted, Gregors mother decides to believe only the most optimistic: she assume that, whatever is ailing Gregor, it is temporary, curable, and most importantly, can be completely understood by a doctor. At this point, the scene isnt yet too disturbing after all, Gregors mother has only a limited knowledge of his condition (she hasnt actually seen him yet), so it makes sense that she is unrealistically hopeful. However, the same cant be said for Gregor: while he certainly doesnt understand the finer points of what has happened to him, he knows full well that he has been wholly transformed and will likely never be the same again. Yet this doesnt stop him from adopting the proposition put forth by his mother and convincing himself that a doctor could in fact help him. As Gregor struggles to open his door, Kafka writes, at any rate people now believed that something was wrong with him, and were read to help him. The positive certainty with which these first measures had been taken comforted him. He felt himself drawn once more into the human circle and hoped for great and remarkable results from both the doctor and the locksmith(11). Gregor tries to convince himself that, as soon as his condition is in others hands specifically the hands of a doctor and a locksmith it is

guaranteed to be resolved through some miraculous action on their part. Possibly, he even succeeds in duping the majority of his consciousness. This could explain why, up until this point, hes only occupied himself with getting ready for work, as if his condition could be easily remedied and he could, in very little time, be ready to return to his normal life. However, denial on Gregors part is very probable here he must know that his condition is more serious than he is letting on to himself. And even more than Gregor must know this, the reader knows it. While Gregor must have, somewhere in the back of his consciousness, an awful feeling of the permanency of his situation, for the reader, the objective observer of Gregors situation, this awful feeling is hardly hidden. One can only imagine a doctor arriving at Gregors house and, if he somehow overcame the disgust that seeing Gregor would provoke, trying to treat the manbug. Regardless of what instruments the doctor employed or what medications he prescribed, even regardless of what specialists this doctor called in, its sickeningly obvious that Gregor would never be cured, that is, never returned to his original state. To do that, every cell in his extremely alien body would have to be reconstructed into a human cell this would take an unbelievable amount of work, of precision, and of knowledge of the human body that doctors of neither Gregors, Kafkas or our time have. Effectively, Gregor is helpless, forever transformed, doomed to never return to humanity, regardless of how much work is done on him. He has begun to degenerate, and try as even the most capable doctor might, this degeneration cannot be reversed. Though Gregors horrible fate here and the dread that this fate inspires in readers can be interpreted as an allegory for many types of degeneration, Ive chosen to read it more literally than not, as a commentary on physical degeneration. In the first sentence of his essay, The Geneology of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche proclaims, We dont know ourselves, we knowledgeable people. Here, he says that we, people,

are not familiar with the abstract constructs that are our selves, that we dont know our minds. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka seems to make a similar claim, albeit on a much more literal level: through the alien nature of the being that Gregor Samsa becomes, Kafka proclaims that we dont know ourselves, we dont know our bodies. Gregor Samsa certainly doesnt know his body. This is obvious throughout the first scene as Gregor struggles to free himself from his room first he cant move his legs, then he cant roll out of bed, at one point hes perplexed by some strange, white areas on his carapace but comes to a climax when Gregor reaches his door and attempts to unlock it. As he tries, Kafka writes: It seemed, unhappily, that he hadnt really any teeth what could he grip the key with? but on the other hand his jaws were certainly very strong; with their help he did manage to set the key in motion, heedless of the fact that he was undoubtedly damaging them somewhere, since a brown fluid issued from his mouth, flowed over the key and dripped on the floor(12). Gregor has so little knowledge of the way that his new, insectoid body functions that something as obviously wrong as brown liquid dripping from his mouth provokes no alarm, and even no obvious pain, on Gregors part. In Kafka and Animals, Peter Stine suggests, Gregors body is so alien to him that his transformation has no effect upon his mental life(Stine). While I agree with Stine, I would take his assertion one step further: not only does Gregors mind not change, but his mind refuses to accept that this new, strange body could ever be paired with it. Gregor does not regard the insectoid body as his, and therefore has no qualms about damaging it as long as it doesnt cause his immediate pain. The alien nature of Gregors body is again highlighted when, near the end of the novel, an apple thrown by his father gets lodged in Gregors back. The apple certainly has allegorical significance, but even if it is taking completely literally as a projectile that becomes lodged in Gregors back it is still meaningful, for the failure of Gregors family to treat or to even notice of the seriousness of his

apple-injury confirm that Gregors body is not only alien to him, its owner rather, it is just as alien, if not more so, to those around him. Kafka does write that The serious injury done to Gregorseemed to have made even his father recollect that Gregor was a member of the family(36) so his family does notice and thereafter remember the injury but as no one ventured to remove [the apple](36), they must not realize how serious the injury really is. Surely if someone more human had ended up with an apple lodged in their back, Gregors family would have sought medical attention. But when Gregor is injured, they do nothing. Part of this lack of action is probably a result of their being too disgusted to touch Gregor or to show anyone outside their family what has happened to their son, and part of it probably owes to the fact that they value Gregor less as an insect and care less for his health. But neither of these motivations would be strong enough to convince Gregors family to let him slowly die from what becomes a mortal wound. After all, the injury does convince them of Gregors status as a member of the family, and Gregors mother even went as far as to throw her arms around his fathers neck as she begged for her sons life(36) to stop Gregors father from injuring him further. So if their failure to treat Gregors condition is not purely a result of neglect, what causes it? At least to some extent, it must be that no one knows enough about Gregors anatomy to realize that he is mortally wounded. In fact, ignorance about Gregors anatomy is cited as the reason behind Gregors starvation, which along with his injury, eventually kills him. As Grete and the rest of Gregors family finally gaze at his corpse, she says, Just see how thin he is. Its such a long time since hes eaten anything.(51) Kafka then narrates, Indeed, Gregors body was completely flat and dry, as could only now be seen when it was no longer supported by the legs and nothing prevented one from looking closely at it(51).

But Kafka doesnt mean to prove that just Gregors body is abnormal and alien this is hardly a profound conclusion, as any man-sized insect in any culture would probably be seen as alien. Rather, Gregor is an everyman, and through him, Kafka suggests two main things about the nature or medicine and degenerative disease. Firstly, Kafka suggests that all humans bodies, even healthy bodies, are alien to their owners, even if these bodies may seem more commonplace than Gregors insectoid body. Just as Gregor has no idea as to what the brown liquid that drips from his mouth is, none of us are completely knowledgeable about all the fluid and solid components of our bodies, and we are less knowledgeable still about finer points of our anatomies, such as their remarkably complex chemistries or of the countless ailments that could affect them. We take for granted all the work that our bodies do behind the scenes to keep us functioning. Gregor doesnt care how badly he damages his jaw, largely because he feels disconnected from it but are we much better? The vast majority of people with human jaws expect their jaws to fix themselves after any injury. Though our bodies dont seem to us to be as bizarre as Gregors, they are we are just as distant from their inner workings as Gregor is from what goes on inside his exoskeleton. It is true that mankind has spent thousands of years trying to resolve this disparity and to reveal what is happening inside the exoskeleton. And its equally true that this search hasnt been in vain: thousands, maybe even millions of drugs and treatments have been discovered which can influence the human bodys previously secret inner workings. However, even the best of these treatments these pale in comparison to the billions, maybe even trillions of precisely regulated processes that our bodies use ever second to influence themselves. Despite brilliant progress, our bodies remain mysteries to us, a fact that becomes painfully obvious when they begin to fail us.

This helplessness when they begin to fail us is the second point which Gregor illustrates. In this case, Gregor is no longer the healthy human, alienated from the intricacies of his anatomy here, he is a sufferer of a degenerative disease. This disease is, not surprisingly, his status as a giant insect(1). Additionally, he is in the final stages of his disease: he is not just degenerating, but he has degenerated past the point of no return, the point where all hope of his ever being whole and human again vanished. Gregor embodies the idea of the inescapable, that of degeneration to the point where a return to wholesomeness is impossible, and, most importantly, that of the fact that there exist conditions from which one simply cannot recover. This is shown (as I mentioned above) in the impossibility of Gregors return to humanity, which Kafka implies without explicitly stating. This implication is apparent in the sarcastically exaggerated false hope that Kafka writes for Gregor: Hehoped for great and marvelous results from both the doctor and the locksmith(Kafka 11)). Also, within the bounds of realism, even the most modern medicine cannot transform a giant insect, cell-by-cell, back into a human and through, as Harold Bloom puts it, The Metamorphosis initially asks its readers to accept that the protagonist has been metamorphosed into a giant dung beetle [or whatever insect the reader prefers](Bloom), after this fantastical beginning, the story progresses with brutal realism. Additionally, while the symptoms of Gregors condition can be treated when Gregor hears Gretes violin-playing, for example, He fe[els] as if the way [is] opening before him to the unknown nourishment he crave[s](Kafka 45), and he feels mentally more human no treatment can fully cure him and return his humanity. When this second Gregor, the symbol of degeneration beyond hope of recovery, is combined with the first Gregor, who knew nearly nothing about his body, a thesis emerges: Gregor illustrates that notion that our inability to recover from certain ailments, to steer our bodies back on track when they begin to degenerate, is

a direct result our ignorance about our own anatomies. Gregor is not only a poor soul doomed to forever remain an insect because of his bizarre, untreatable body he also serves as a warning that there are conditions in which humans, too, must forever remain, because we know little more about human bodies than we would if they were insectiod as well. This is quite a depressing prospect, but the possibility that Kafka was convinced of its truth and wished to embody it in Gregor becomes much more believable when one considers Kafkas own medical history. Kafka was only officially diagnosed with tuberculosis, the degenerative disease from which he eventually died, in the summer of 1917, over a year and a half after The Metamorphosis was published. So unless Kafka secretly diagnosed himself years earlier, it seems unlikely that Gregor was meant to embody tuberculosis in particular. However, Kafka was infected with undiagnosed tuberculosis while he wrote The Metamorphosis. In fact, according to an Italian medical journal, He gained his degree at the German University, in Prague, on 18th June, l906. It was at about that time that the early signs of lung tuberculosis became apparent(Felisati, Sperati). In addition to this, In 1909 and 1913, he spent some time in Riva del Garda in a Clinic which was well known for the treatment of neuro-asthenia, assimilation disorders, as well as heart and lung diseases(Felisati, Sperati). So while Kafka may not have been aware of his tuberculosis, he was certainly aware of his bad health. However, the question remains as to whether or not he considered himself to be degenerately unhealthy even more importantly, did he consider himself to have passed the turning point where illness becomes truly degenerative and return to a completely healthy state is impossible, the point that Gregor passes with his initial transformation? Without knowing Kafkas thoughts on the matter, its almost impossible to say. However, its no new idea that Gregor Samsa is, in part, a depiction by Kafka of himself. Gustav Janouch recollects telling Kafka, The hero of the story is

called Samsa.It sounds like a cryptogram for Kafka. Five letters in each word. The S in the word Samsa has the same position as the K in the word Kafka(Janouch 110). To this, Kafka replied (actually, he interrupted), It is not a cryptogram. Samsa is not merely Kafka, and nothing else(110). Though Kafkas speech here is almost as cryptic as some of his writing, he seems to be saying that Samsa is not a self-portrait, but more of an artistic reinterpretation of himself. With this in mind, why shouldnt an ailing Kafka even one whose health had not yet passed a point of no return conceive of a character who has passed this point as a means of examining his own mortality and what could become of him if his illness were to continue? More objective support for the idea that Gregor is a personification of Kafkas illness comes from biographer Clemens Heselhaus: Heselhaus points out that, after his diagnosis, Kafka called his own tuberculosis the animal(Corngold 79). Kafka may very well have personified the symptoms of undiagnosed tuberculosis that he experienced while he wrote The Metamorphosis in the same way if this is true, he simply chose an insect this time, rather than a mammal, as animal suggests, to represent them. So while Kafkas thoughts cannot be known, they can certainly be guessed at, and it does not seem accidental that such a troubled, sickly man as Kafka would place a character who undergoes a degenerative transformation in a story as a metaphor for degenerative illness. So it seems that partially out of personal experience and partially as a warning to others, Kafka lets Grergor Samsa play the role of a mind mismatched with a body to reveal that even those of us with human bodies might as well be mismatched with them, for we know so little about them but all the while keeps him also in the role of the degenerately ill soul, suffering because of his ignorance about himself from a disease from which he will never recover. This point of no recovery, this threshold beyond which degeneration is inevitable, is the centerpiece

The Metamorphosis in this interpretation. Kafka, having flirted with the threshold himself, wishes to remind readers that it is a real part of life, and that beyond a point miracle cures do not exist for Gregor Samsa as well as for human beings even when the best doctors and most advanced medical treatments are involved. Fortunately, however, this threshold is not concrete. Rather, it is always shifting as humans slowly chip away at their exoskeletons and, just as slowly, begin to understand what lies inside. Franz Baumer holds that, In The Metamorphosis, Kafka presented a horrifying document of what the future the age of automation and technical functionalism in which our existence has been insectified held in store(Baumer 90). But if The Metamorphosis truly is a tale about degeneration and humanitys often desperate struggle to understand and reverse it, exactly the opposite of Baumers statement is true. If The Metamorphosis really does suggest that there is a threshold beyond with degeneration cannot be stopped, then it also suggests that humanitys only hope for survival lies in developing new science, medicine, automation and technical functionalism in an attempt to push this threshold back. And humanity seems to be doing just this: our list of what conditions are considered impossible to recover from is constantly being revised. In all likelihood, far in the future, this list will grow so thin that it will disappear the threshold will be pushed infinitely far back and immortality will be possible. Whether people will actually want to live immortal lives is another question. But eventual immortality seems like an inevitability. After all, we have no reason to think that the complexities of the human body are unknowable experience only tells us that they are very, very difficult to know. But the future awaits, and maybe if mankind retains its drive to achieve automation and technical functionalism, degeneration can be stamped out, and there will be hope for the Gregor Samsas of the world, those who would be considered hopelessly degenerate in the past, after all.

Works Cited Baumer, Franz. Franz Kafka. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1971. Bloom, Harold. Background to The Metamorphosis. Bloom's Guide. New York: Chelsea House Publishing, 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Web. 12 October 2010. Felisati, D. and Sperati, G. Famous Figures: Franz Kafka (1883-1924). ACTA Otorhinolaryngologica Italica 25 (2005): 328-32. Web. 16 October 2010. Heselhaus, Clemens. Kafkas Erzhlformen. Deutsche Vierteljahrszeitschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, III (1952). 353-76. Cited in Corngold, Stanley. Explanatory Notes to the Text. The Metamorphosis. Ed. Stanley Corngold. New York: Bantam Books, 1986. 109-10. Janouch, Gustav. Two conversations between Kafka and Gustav Janouch, 1920-1923. The Metamorphosis. Ed. Stanley Corngold. New York: Bantam Books, 1986. 109-10. Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. The Basic Kafka. New York: Washington Square, 1979. 154. Stine, Peter. "Franz Kafka and Animals." Contemporary Literature 22.1 (1981). Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Web. 12 October 2010.