A novel, movie, bugs, and bad morals

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was a novel that seemed to have little meaning in its tale of a human changed into a large insect. Since it has no substance as a story, all of its meaning must be hidden in metaphors, symbols, and other literary devices. Otherwise, I cannot see any use for the novel. Its exact literary purpose was hard to discover at first, one needs to use a little more creativity and thought than expected. The movie Kafka did help me understand the meaning of the novel a little more. I began to understand the situation Kafka was coming from when he wrote the novel. The themes of The Metamorphosis were given light and more meaning behind them. It helped in relating Kafka with his work. He was living in just as much solitude as Gregor. Obviously Kafka wanted to portray this loneliness and futility that he himself felt in his novel, and I realize he did just that, but with purpose.

The simplicity of the story makes it so that there are countless morals that could come out of it. For the movie, I believe the most important could be that people are always ignorant of what the real truths, whether they like to admit it or not. A person should never trust everything that is dictated to them. This usually applies to the government. However, the novel focuses more on the solitude of humanity. Humans cannot manage to get close enough to each other no matter how hard one try. It is tied into human’s nature, and makes it so that every human is truly always alone, or has the eminent probability of becoming alone at one point. No matter how much love people have for each other there is constantly the possibility of betrayal and so 100 % trust does not exist anywhere. Kafka realized this constant loneliness and used the novel to try to explain it.

Kafka thought families were not immune to this possibility of betrayal. If anything he stressed that it was worse in families. Although Gregor supported his entire family they were extremely quick to disown him after his metamorphosis. Even worse they tried to comfort themselves by the excuse Gregor no longer was alive inside the hideous beetle, even though they made no effort to figure out if it was true or not. Institutions are the same, only they have no obligations toward an individual. The three men rooming in the apartment instantly rejected Gregor, but not being family members they had no real obligation to do otherwise anyway.

I do not have the talent of the ingenious AP committee, but I will try and create a suitable AP question. One that would make them proud…

Symbols are often used in literature to mean something greater than a physical object the author describes. Select a novel or play of literary merit in which an object, person, or place symbolizes a greater meaning. Then write a well-organized essay in which you describe the symbol and explain its relevance to the work as a whole.

I doubt this will not be used on an AP test anytime soon. Still, I am not heartbroken.