metamorphosis by kafka

I felt that people are so exposed to horror everyday that something as dramatic as changing into a verminous creature was just another event that they had to deal with in life.

Metamorphosis--a couple of important points...

One, was the question of how we deal with the things we don't really want to do and relegate them to "One" rather than "I". (p.114) Gregor seemed have realized how much we tolerate by ascribing it to "one"--as in "One hates the way this country's being run, but what is one to do about it?" (A lovely cop-out and definitely not on our agenda as Jews--one hopes!) As an animal now, he seems to be dealing with this and I thought he even rather enjoyed his "deluded" (p.60) animal state because it freed him up from the constraints of being human. "The animal is closer to us than man. That is the cage. Relationships are easier with animals than with men." (p. 107)
The main theme of the novela, for me, was Gregor's own state of alienation from himself. He hated his life as a salesman, could barely communicate with his own family--"he locks them out as much as they lock him in." (p. 72)
Being an animal allowed him to act instinctively rather than continuing to be weighed down with all the facts of his life which he hated; and in Kafka's own life, to the point of contemplating suicide.

~Lovene