The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka in case anyone was wondering.
Your jobs a joke, you’re broke, and now you are a bug!
Maybe you are a feature.
Feels like you’re stuck in an exoskeletoooon.
He is Franz Kafka. Franz Kafka!
TIL there is a cover song and director’s cut of this sweet Rock Opera.
It’s SO sad what happened to him. Imagine having a colostomy because you couldn’t stop doing drugs. Or drowning.
I’d argue it didn’t happen to him, but he did it to himself. A sad way to go, for sure, but he was well aware of him doing it.
While technically true, it feels kinda blamey and thought-terminating. I prefer to view addiction as a medical condition because it puts the focus on treatment and prevention rather than who did wrong.
I feel like I should read at least one book by Kafka. Any recommendations?
I did an entire semester on him, and maybe I’m just a philistine but for my money there was very little difference between Before the Law (a short story of ~650 words) and any of his longer works. So if you’ve read that and The Metamorphosis you know basically all you need to know about his writing.
There are other interesting stories for sure (I’d recommend In the Penal Colony and The Trial as Bones also mentioned), but the themes are very much the same throughout-- which I suppose is why the work Kafkaesque exists.
Cool! I felt like I just read a weird version of Samurai Jack. I’ll have to check out more of his work.
Apparently The Trial is his masterpiece.
That one on the image. Metamorphosis is a fun short book that you show you what Kafka is about.
On the other hand, The Trial is a long, heavy book that will make you feel like you have gone crazy. Personally, I can’t stand this one. (Though, it’s because it’s very good on what it intends to do.)
none if you like happiness
Metamorphosis is the go-to Kafka book. I personally find The Trial the most “kafkian” of his novels, and I love it, but Amerika has a special place in my heart as what defines his literature is trying to find a way out, like a little seedling.
I just finished rereading this. The ending is so depressing.
Stuck in your bunk, you’re sunk Can’t turn up the right waaaay
“He is Franz Kafka. Franz Kafka.”
Relevant Home Movies
clap-clap-clap-clap
You’re job’s a joke, you’re broke
Democracy’s DOA
The most boring story ever. A guy wakes up, notices he is a beetle for whatever reason, and is afraid his family might notice. That’s it. Why anyone would waste paper on printing this shit is incomprehendable.
The guy who’s partly responsible for feeding his family can’t do that very thing anymore and notices that he basically lost all value to them (they start treating him like shit until he dies). If you want you can say its a book about failing to fulfill gender expectations and about why a patriarchy also is bad for men. About people loving him for what he’s doing, not for who he is, and that love eroding as soon as he can’t do that anymore.
Of course you can hallucinate about everything into that story, but that still does not change the fact that it is boring like hell.
Is it just meowmorphosis but with a cockroach?
I saw a really neat video a while ago that talked about this book, and he interpreted the story to be about disability. You go from being the breadwinner supporting your entire family to suddenly you can’t work nor enjoy your hobbies, people don’t want to look at you and you feel yourself to be a burden upon everyone. Your loved ones take care of you through a sense of guilt and because to not would be neglectful but the level of care might never actually be as much as it should be. The author of the video (I wish I could remember the name of the channel because he had a wonderful voice, writing style and art style) also proceeded to point out that everyone will either die young or themselves experience disability, so it’s also a story about what you will become some day. One day you too will turn into a beatle, struggling to get out of bed, unable to work and relying on others to cook and clean and care for you
Edit: aha I found it! Metamorphosis: The Horror of Disability by Tale Foundry (they’re also on Nebula if you subscribe)
It always amazes me how much people hallucinate into a bland and witless story like that.
And it amazes me how utterly unwilling to think some people seem to be.
Classical Literature tends to be about interpretation more than anything. If you read classical literature and don’t try to interpret the message it’s trying to tell, you’re going to feel that way
It reads way better in German, and by that I mean that the boringness of it feels more like a bleak anti-joke observational humour comedy bit.
I’ve read it in German, and it was that bad.
