To Live
in a Vermin’s World:
A
Marxist View of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
One of the honors for ‘greatest
theories’ in contemporary civilization has to be awarded to Marxism. Invented
in late 19th century by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Marxism has
had great influences on the development of modern society. Despite its eventual
failure, Marxism once led to numerous revolutions that working classes raised
against the ruling parties in different countries. Consequently, it paved the
way for the erection of the Berlin Wall, the formation of the Warsaw
Treaties—communist camp confronting NATO, and the establishment of a world
super power, the Soviet Union at the dawn of this century. Even decades later,
after all those Marxist milestones have collapsed, China, with one fifth of
world’s population, still faithfully believes in this theory. It is certain,
then, Marxism’s effect on people’s thoughts is deep and profound. It is natural
for people living in the birthplace and at the birth time of Marxism, Franz Kafka
for instance, to have been affected by this theory to a greater extent.
As an author, Kafka’s
affiliation with Marxism was revealed in his novella, The Metamorphosis. It
tells about a German travelling salesman Gregor Samsa, who awoke one morning
only to find himself transformed into a bug. Thereafter, Gregor was soon
deprived of his job and was no longer able to financially support his family as
he had been. Confronted with this sudden change, the family members started to
discard Gregor one after the other. Not only the father, who was eager to get
rid of his bug-shaped ‘son’ right after Gregor’s disaster, his mother and
sister finally retracted all their love and care as well. Ending with Gregor’s
miserable death, The Metamorphosis reveals the experience a
single laborer is likely to have in the fight for a fair life. From the Marxist
view, the process of the metamorphosis symbolizes the class struggle of the
proletariat to break out of a life of being exploited. Such representation is
displayed in the similarity between the causes, natures, and endings of
Gregor’s transformation and those of proletarian struggles.
Realistically, it is impossible
for men to turn into bugs; thus, Gregor’s metamorphosis has some concrete
meaning beyond simply a biological transformation. Applying Marxist theories,
the process of the metamorphosis represents the struggle proletarians raise
against the controlling bourgeoisie class. Firstly, Gregor is in the right
social position for such a struggle to take place. Gregor and his family are
proletarians whereas his boss is a typical bourgeois. In the main guide of
communism, “The Manifesto of the Communist Party,” Marx defines the proletariat
as including all people who possess no assets and live only on salaries (Marx
128). Gregor, accordingly, belongs to this class for he has no business of his
own but is leading a life of working for others (Kafka 4). Similarly, such
classification into the proletariat is true for all other family members who do
not even work. By contrast, the boss of the company that Gregor works for owns
the capital and is, hence, seated in the social upper class—the bourgeoisie.
According to Marxist theory, Gregor’s family and the boss are in the two
opposite classes.
Now that Gregor is a
proletarian, his situation conforms to the condition of the occurrence of class
struggles. Marxism states the perpetual existence of such conflicts so long as
there exists antagonist classes generated by unjust social position and uneven
capital distribution (Marx 120). In such a sense, the cause for Gregor’s
metamorphosis matches that of a proletarian struggle. As shown in the story,
Gregor is the oppressed before his transformation. That is to say, he is forced
to lead a life that he does not desire. The “day-in-day-out” and ceaseless
travelling life tortures him, psychologically and physically (Kafka 4). He is
likely to be well educated, a fact that can be seen from the layout of his room
(23-4), yet he and his family are living in the bottom of the societal
hierarchy. The family turned into lower-class proletariat from petty
bourgeoisie due to a business fiasco Gregor’s father encountered (Corngold
211). Once possessing a certain amount of capital, the family is now living on
selling labor to others, which Marx considers as the only way for proletarians
to survive (Marx 128). For Gregor, the social role he plays is by no means
satisfactory. It is such injustice in social position that triggers his
metamorphosis.
Like the idea of unjust social
positions, uneven wealth distribution also contributes to Gregor’s impulse for
a breakthrough. As Marxist theory states, proletarians’ labor selling results
only in the accumulation of capitals owned by social upper classes, their
employers in particular (Marx 128). In other words, people who produce get less
proportion of the wealth. This is exactly the situation Gregor is in. The only
person working to support the whole family, he shares just a part of what he
produces. After years of earnest work, he is still sunk in the whirl of paying
off debts his family owes the boss (Kafka 4). Moreover, within the limited
money he gets back after being exploited by his employer, he has to spend
almost all of it on his family members. Gregor’s money buys his mother and
sister the jewelry they boast of in public (31), and increases his father’s
sluggishness so that his daily life consists only of reading the newspaper
(21). What is more, the father has been hoarding secretively some extra money
Gregor provides his family with, which could have been used to help clear the
debts much earlier (21). Kept in the demeaning job, by his father’s stealthy
accumulation, Gregor is basically “exploited” twice. He is experiencing deep
unfairness in his economic position, which presages Gregor’s potential of resisting.
At this point, it is fairly clear that Gregor’s transformation stems from the
same root as for a proletarian struggle—unjust social and economic position.
These being Gregor’s motives,
his transformation has further common natures as a proletarian struggle does.
One of these is reflected in the consistency between the target of his
metamorphosis and that of labor struggles. The arrow of proletarians’
resistance, by Marx, is not aimed directly at the exploiter, but instead, at
its own life (Marx 129-30). That is, proletarians are not meant to change the
way the bourgeoisie rule society but rather the quality of their own lives.
Gregor, as a case in point, decides to change his fate by passively divorcing
himself from the world of exploitation. As Kafka narrates, what Gregor has
longed for is simply to leave his job immediately after the debt becomes clear
(Kafka 4). However, he never questions why he has to work so hard but is paid
so little. Nor does Gregor ever intend to challenge the hierarchical relationship
between his boss and himself. This can be best seen when Gregor tries to show
every respect to the manager who apparently announces when he leaves the house
that Gregor has been fired (Kafka 10). It is true that Gregor’s metamorphosis
brings him freedom from exploitation earlier than expected, his metamorphosis,
however, does not hurt his oppressor at all. Self-alienating as it is, Gregor’s
transformation has no effect on the upper classes but only on his family and
himself, both psychologically and financially.
Besides the aim of Gregor’s
metamorphosis, his new shape after the transformation also has its
correspondence in proletarian struggles. Marxist theories suggest the buggy
form be the description of how laborers are regarded in the society. The
bourgeoisie leaves “no other nexus between people but naked self-interest”
(Marx 123). Though Gregor shows the greatest respect to the manager and boss,
even under the circumstance of transformation, he gets back nothing equal
(Kafka 10)—no care, no excuse, let alone sympathy. Typical bourgeois, Gregor’s
boss and manager, deal with him only because they want him to work, to create
capitals, and to fulfill their own interest. In this perspective, what they
know is not Gregor as a human, but Gregor as “a tool without brains or
backbone” (5). Marx says, the extensive use of machinery in bourgeoisie society
deprives laborers of their individual characters (Marx 128). In other words,
the bourgeoisie views laborers like animals, since animals can be tamed and
have no thoughts once tamed. Vermin thus is a general description of what the
bourgeoisie thinks proletarians are.
Some want to figure out the
exact identity of the vermin; the suggest Gregor becomes a centipede (Zatonsky
19-20) or another common interpretation as cockroach (Fast 13). Such studies
are relatively worthless, for the main point is what Doctor Fast expresses in
his criticism The Metamorphosis (same
name as the primary text): Gregor is equated to some insect (cockroach in
Fast’s interpretation) due to the similarities in their inability to control or
command their own destinies (Fast 13). Gregor is like a vermin because he has
no right in determining his own life before his metamorphosis. Just as a vermin
that can hardly avoid being driven around or locked in some place (Kafka 15),
Gregor has been made to travel back and forth and restrained for good in such
monotony. Likewise, Gregor before his transformation is equal to a vermin since
none of them is able to protect self-belongings. A vermin is deprived of all
furniture in the room (Kafka 24-26) whereas Gregor is plundered of his
production from laboring. In sum, proletarians like Gregor share the traits of
a vermin in the world of the bourgeoisie. It is, hence, of no importance what
the actual identity of the vermin is, but that the buggy shape serves to
represent how laborers look in the eyes of the upper class. To conclude, the
natures of Gregor’s transformation, both its target and its form, well coincide
their counterparts for a proletarian struggle.
Gregor’s grievous outcome is
also linked to the proletarian struggle in terms of. Specifically, his being
abandoned and his eventual death correspond to the actual disunion within
proletarian groups. Directly leading to Gregor’s miserable ending, his family
members offer no understanding toward him after the metamorphosis but treat him
as an animal the same way that the bourgeoisie does. It is mirrored in the bad
quality of the food Gregor is fed as well as the room being left without
cleaning (Kafka 33). The father, as an extreme example, seeks to get rid of
Gregor for any possible reason, and he ends up seriously injuring Gregor’s back
(29). Following the father’s hatred are the attitude changes from Gregor’s
mother and sister, who in parallel decide to abandon Gregor (Kafka 38). In real
life, similar things happen to proletarian groups. The collapse of the former
Soviet Union, for example, is due to the disharmony and mutual exclusion among
communist members. In Gregor’s story, the relation by blood, probably the
closest kin of mankind, has been disgraced into a connection solely relying on
money exchange (Marx 123). Gregor’s past acceptance by the family is weakly
built on the financial relation. No sooner has he lost such function to enrich
the family, than the family starts to abandon him. In place of love and care,
money becomes the key to link together family members. When this link is
broken, as Jiri Hajek tells in his criticism “Kafka and the Socialist World”,
Gregor loses all his value as he is incapable of earning money, earning power
(Hajek 116). Money is generalized as interest in the case of the Soviet Union,
which is partitioned when interests of different subgroups of proletariat
collide. Such discrepancy of interest lies in the fact that Gregor’s family
members have to sacrifice leisure and go on work after his transformation while
Gregor himself switches from a provider to a consumer. Thus, it is easy to
observe a match between Gregor’s outcome and that of proletarians.
Gregor is not a bug physically,
but mentally he is. A story about his denial of a life in oppression, Gregor’s
metamorphosis is as well a story about his pursuit of a life with fairness.
Marked by Marxist characteristics, the transformation conforms to a proletarian
struggle in that they have 1) like motives--unjust social and economic
position; 2) like natures—both the target and the form; and 3) like outcomes--a
wretched collapse. Though noticed and commented on by few critics, Marxist
thoughts are clearly presented by Kafka in terms of Gregor’s decisive turning:
to live in a vermin’s world.