In response to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, I made two online playlists on the music platform 8tracks. Specifically, my playlists were centered on the characterization and perspectives of Grete and Gregor Samsa. I wanted to group some songs together that I felt either conveyed their emotional experiences throughout the story or had something to do with larger themes of suffering, entrapment, and misunderstanding in Kafka’s work.
My first playlist, Kafkaesque, was made with Gregor Samsa in mind. I chose to open my playlist with Sleeping at Last’s Earth because it combines isolation and suffering with images of natural disaster. After the chorus, the singer explains that his “family’s taking shelter” against him. I felt this subject- of family abandoning an individual in pain and crisis- represented Gregor very well. City and Colour’s Grand Optimist tells the story of a damaging family dynamic where a son cannot assimilate to his father (“He is the grand optimist, I am the world’s poor pessimist/you give him burdens sometimes and he will remain unscarred/I guess I take after my mother”). Elastic Heart, The Draw, Breathe Me, and The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot all reinforce these themes of loneliness, grief, and self-deprecation. The song Creep applied well for this reason, but also played into Gregor’s position as a vermin in the lines “I’m a freak, I’m a weirdo/What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here/ and she’s running out the door”. I chose Soul of A Man by Steven Stern and Human by Daughter because they both play with issues of humanity and identity, which I feel portrays Gregor’s gradual loss of his human identity. I close with songs such as Daughter’s Landfill and Kodaline’s All I Want to close the playlist with songs of death and regret. The later song’s chorus (“if you loved me, why’d you leave me? / Take my body, take my body’) represents Gregor’s demise. By the end of the story, Gregor is not only abandoned by his family, his body is literally regarded as garbage. I felt this song represents Gregor’s last plea before death.
The second playlist was primarily focused, then, on Grete Samsa. Her playlist has a more gradual change in tone, as it goes from suffering and devotion to separation. City and Colour’s O Sister and Greg Laswell’s This Woman’s Work are the only songs I chose with Gregor’s perspective in mind- the first song’s questions (“O sister, what have the demons done/with the luminous light that once shined from your eyes?”) sounded like something Gregor would’ve asked Grete in the story, had he only had the chance. After that, I chose the songs that followed because I felt they conveyed Grete’s sadness, the difficult of her situation, and her struggle between wanting to be free, growing to hate Gregor, and still tending to the memory of someone she once loved. Birdy’s chorus line “It’s a terrible love and I’m walking with spiders” was extremely fitting to the obvious bug imagery in The Metamorphosis. I ended her playlist on Marina and The Diamond’s Happy and Ellie Goulding’s cover of All I Want. Happy represents Grete’s eventual freedom after Gregor has died after a long period in which she, like Marina, “found what I was looking for in myself/found a life worth living for someone else/never thought that I could be happy.” Goulding’s cover of All I Want unites this playlist with Gregor’s and, hopefully, spins the meaning of the song. Now, that question of “if you loved me, why’d you leave me?” may humanize Grete as, in my perspective, she might’ve felt that her brother had disappeared from her life the moment he transformed.
Latent Aggression in The Metamorphosis: A Freudian Analysis
For the Freudian literary critic, Franz Kafka is a dream come true. What other text so neatly intertwines nightmares, aggression, and the forbidden murmurs of incestuous desire than The Metamorphosis? In “Kafka’s Metamorphosis: Rebellion and Punishment,” Walter H. Sokel uses Freudian theory to develop a critical argument regarding the role of unconscious drives in the text. While Sokel is primarily concerned with the character of Gregor Samsa, his argument is notably uninterested in the empirical semantics of Gregor's transformation. Instead, Sokel proposes that Gregor's physical transformation functions as an extension of pre-existing psychological conditions. True to Sigmund Freud’s major theories, Sokel presents aggression and desire as the fundamental motivators of the story. In doing so, Sokel provides his audience with a dimensional rendition of Gregor's psychological identity, somewhat at the cost of Kafka's other characters.
Sokel explains “to see nothing but an extended metaphor in Kafka’s work is to not see enough” (204). As is usually the case in magical realism, The Metamorphosis can only be fully understood when the magical element of the story- Gregor’s fantastical transformation into a vermin- is taken literally. What textually follows, according to Sokel, can be best understood through a Freudian lens. Franz Kafka was certainly aware of Sigmund Freud’s work, having had repeatedly alluded to them in his own diaries. It is too big a step, however, to suggest that Kafka framed the bulk of The Metamorphosis around Freudian theory. Sokel instead suggests a “parallelism” between Freudian theory and Kafka’s writings, regardless of Kafka’s own awareness as author.
Through this claim, Sokel frames a full understanding of The Metamorphosis within a mutual understanding of Freudian theory. Sokel suggests that Gregor’s transformation is incited and informed by unconscious aggression. True to Freud’s drive theory, Gregor is unknowingly motivated by a desire to retaliate against oppressive forces in his life. The first example of this arises when Gregor has woken from his dream, unconcerned of his transformation into a beetle. He instead vocalizes work-related anxieties, complaining of the “torture of traveling, worrying about changing trains, eating miserable food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate." (1.4) However outlandish Gregor’s priorities may seem, Sokel argues that his concerns are not merely a measure of absurdity. Gregor not only detests his job and the socioeconomic vulnerability that comes with it, he darkly resents the chief clerk for his authority and influence over the Samsa household. Gregor explicitly wishes to see the chief clerk humiliated and dethroned, even imagining that the clerk may one day be transformed into a vermin as well. As Sokel points out, Gregor’s aggression is most explicitly pointed at his boss and never explicitly aimed towards his family. Sekol proposes that this apparent peace between Gregor and his family is little more than a farce; familial hatred, a social taboo, is infinitely more difficult to cope with and express than the seemingly justified anger one would feel for an employer.
Sokel argues further that Gregor’s transformation has a joint purpose, doubly fulfilling Gregor’s desires for escape and his unconscious hatred for the people closest to him. Metamorphosis only makes “Gregor’s suppressed desires visible…it turns his inside out” (209), finally allowing him the means to rebel against his undesirable condition. Gregor’s transformation into a vermin, then, is less plague than it is wish fulfillment. Though it will eventually cost Gregor his place in the Samsa household and later lead to his his death, Sokel argues that these, too, were Gregor’s dormant desires. Returning to Freud, Sokel presents the theory that accidents are acts that are unconsciously spurred by underlying motives. Accidental injury of the self, then, stems desired self-destruction and the unwitting harm of other people stems from the subject’s unconscious antagonism against them. Applying these theories to the text, Sokel frames Gregor’s transformation as the unwittingly intentional destruction of his household and his self.
Ultimately, Gregor’s desire for rebellion, escape, and hostile expression opens the door for severe punishment. While his frightening transformation into a vermin is enough to terrify Gregor’s boss and earn Grete Samsa’s unbridled attention, Gregor is far more helpless than ever before. He loses his ability to speak, becomes dependent on Grete to survive, and is completely vulnerable to all of his father’s attacks. Sokel argues that this, too, is a manifestation of Gregor’s unconscious desire for self-destruction. Though Gregor wants so badly to rebel against his lifestyle and the authority of the chief clerk and his father, he cannot cope with the social implications of such desires. Sokel presents this as a literary representation for the theoretical conflict between superego, ego, and id. This tug-of-war between what Gregor desires most and what society expects of him, instead, fuels his ambiguous relationship with Grete, his benevolent relationship with his abusive father, and his self-ignorance in the workplace. This struggle culminates in Gregor’s overwhelming desire to be punished for his secret rebellious yearnings. Ashamed of his now outwardly turned desires, Gregor intentionally courts isolation, dehumanization, and death.
While Sokel’s critical approach to The Metamorphosis is not unique in its application of Freudian theory to Kafka’s texts, I believe it is distinct in its thorough analysis of how aggression manifests in the text. Sokel consistently returns to text to support his analytical claims, allowing for the work to speak in place of psychoanalyzing the author. My only qualm with this critical essay is its implications for the rest of Kafka’s characters. By elevating Gregor’s transformation as the sole means through which unconscious desire achieves fruition, Grete Samsa’s characterization is ultimately lost. Her transition from the role of compliant caretaker to aggressively resentful antagonist is almost flattened by Sokel’s interpretation. What are her unconscious desires? Why can she so readily exhibit her disgust for her brother, when Gregor’s distaste for his father is so unspeakable? When I consider Sokel’s critical approach, no answer readily comes to mind.
Unfortunately, I feel that the critical heritage of Freudian theory often does not hold well in the face of feminine characters. Perhaps Freud’s own exclusion of women and the feminine experience is to blame and, thus, very little can be done in this regard. Nonetheless, I feel that several metamorphoses are undertaken throughout this text. While Gregor is the most obvious example of a transformed figure in this text, I argue that Grete and the Samsa household, as a unit, also undergo major transformations of their own. I think in-depth analyses of these metamorphoses would make for an interesting and challenging critical essay.
Works Cited
Kafka, Franz, and A. L. Lloyd. Metamorphosis. New York: Vanguard, 1946. Print.
Sokel, Walter H. "Kafka's "Metamorphosis": Rebellion and Punishment." Monatshefte 48.4 (1956): 203-14. University of Wisconsin Press. Web.
