In all of the stories that we’ve read for this week, the characters’ transformations into various insects or animals moved the story by making them confront something within themselves or, ironically, revealing certain truths in their loved ones. In “The Metamorphosis,” Gregor Samsa’s transformation into a cockroach not only changes his and his family’s entire living situation, but it also brings out the characters of his family members as they react to the change. Gregor’s sister is caring and seems to want to do what will make Gregor happiest in the beginning, while his mother and father stay more distant. The family has to learn how to provide for themselves without Gregor’s help, and Gregor is forced to confront his now uselessness and how that has changed his relationship to his family. Kafka is gentle in the way he exposes Gregor’s suffering, which makes the impacts of his feelings and torments louder. In the end, the story reveals how life struggles to continue in the face of crippling burdens, even in ways that seem utterly absurd.
“Beast” and “Fatso” follow the same vein of using transformation to illuminate the conflicts in relationships. I personally really liked “Fatso” because the transformation felt like a very thin metaphor for explaining how your relationship changes with someone as you become more comfortable with them. The story used the technique in order to enhance the insecurities people face when opening up to each other, like being really hairy or wanting to eat a whole steak. In “Beast,” the narrator is more so grappling with an inner conflict of being a cheater and how they’re worried it will affect her relationship with her husband. The transformation is now something that’s hidden– the narrator is scared for how the husband will react, and even worries about it being violent. In the end, she reveals her secret of “turning into a deer at night,” and that night the husband changes along with her. I read the ending of the story as both characters confessing to each other about cheating and that by joining the stream of other deer, they were recognizing that they weren’t alone in struggling with it.
“Mantis” was a bit different in that the narrator never confronts their transformation in a fleshed out context until the end of the story, which allows for the surprise and takes away a certain amount of tension from the narrator. She isn’t conflicted about her identity– her condition seems like more of fact of life that she has to deal with and be more careful of in contrast to a society that doesn’t. By putting the transformation at the end, it also makes the reader reflect on what they’ve read and see it in a new light. The girls of the school almost have a predatory light to them after considering the ending, and the praying mantis at the end sort of puts a lid on the sexual tension that had been growing throughout the story. The narrator transforms and seems to triumph over her own body.
Excellent (and timely!) post. This assertion was particularly interesting to me: “Kafka is gentle in the way he exposes Gregor’s suffering, which makes the impacts of his feelings and torments louder.” There is indeed something haunting — disquieting — about the matter-of-fact tone of the narration. It’s a quality that often appears in the fantastic, perhaps as a means of suggesting that the incredible things going on are, well, commonplace.