The Metamorphosis

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I realize there are really old threads about this, but I'd rather not necro bump them and just start a fresh conversation with the present members.

The book by Franz Kafka

Who has read it, what do you think of it. I read it senior year of highschool, I'm still confused by the meaning of it all. Is the protagonists metamorphosis into a giant cockroach supposed to be an metaphor for having some kind of mental disorder. And his families abandonment and feeling shame because of it only too well correlates to families institutionalizing or hiding memeber's who are mentally different or physically deformed. I feel a very deep attachment to the protagonist and I'm not quite sure why. The idea of becoming a burden because my conditions maybe. I feel as though I've been growing weaker while the rest of my family has grown stronger as well. It's a confusing book, is the protagonist actually the antagonist and his family are the real heros? I've never interpreted it that way myself, the family seem like terrible people who abandon their own son while he's weak. The book seems like a commentary about society having unjust stigmas against groups of people.

I'm a Kafka fan and have what I consider an heirloom Kafka hardcover from Schocken books given to me by my parents in highschool (the traditional time for kids to encounter it, as you did). He manages to convey stress better than any other author I have read. I get twitchy just reading him.

Anyway, those who retroactively diagnose the deceased have retroactively diagnosed him as schizophrenic. It is quite possible that Metamorphosis is meant to be a metaphor for changing into something that other people find awful and they try to distance themselves. Schizophrenia infamously has early adult onset so if he really was schizophrenic, it might have been a metaphor for his change and how his family reacted when symptoms first started to show.

I had a sudden urge to necrobump this thread

I'm pondering being a burden again and the ugliness of a good portion of society. Basically I'm depressed again. An interesting idea, that he could have been schizophrenic. My father told me more about my mothers schizophrenic father today some more while we were at breakfast. He lost it when my mum was maybe 1 years old. He ran through the streets of small town Iowa naked yelling that he was Jesus or something. He had been serving in the military, my dad thinks the army did tests on him, like exposing him to LSD and whatnot and that sent him over the edge. He got shipped to the east coast after that back to his parents and they institutionalized him. He was 20. He has the mind of a child now, I've only met him once.

I think Kafka was pointing out how marginalized people with mental differences/illnesses are.

I actually found a song based on the concept