Kafka could have written it as a man with a stroke or a chronic disease. No speech, or movement. Most probably with a feeding tube. Instead, he wrote a man who turns into an gigantic ugly insect. That feels like an odd choice, if he wanted to slap us with the truth.
The book metaphor helps us get close to hard things or even perceive the hard things in life. An insect is strange, scary and could be unreelable at times. The reader can feel disgust without facing what that disgust means about real people. Or maybe metaphor does the opposite. Who knows? But, it does gives us the distance. It lets us write about cruelty without admitting it. It does happens to real bodies, in real homes. I am not sure whether fiction tells the truth. Maybe it just helps us avoid it or sugar coats in a better way.
Either way, something exits in layers. Gregor stops earning money. His family’s love starts to change. Not all at once. First there is worry, then duty and then tiredness. Then his sister calls him it. No one chooses to stop loving him. It wasn’t their choice. But it just turns out their love needed his usefulness to keep going. Once that stopped, they also did.
I used to think that being useful was the most beautiful reason or even a purpose to live. My old blogs scream the same. Something solid to hold onto when nothing else made sense. But these days, with a personal event having happened, there is this particular kind of question that lingers.
Which kind of usefulness did I mean? Is there usefulness I create for myself (a sense of moving forward without any external validation), or is usefulness the price of being kept?
The kind Gregor’s family ran on. I thought I meant the first kind. Now I am not so sure. Maybe confused?
If usefulness is the real foundation and everything stands on it, what happens when it is gone or broken? Not as an idea. But as something a body can no longer do.
That is the real problem with calling usefulness a purpose or a duty. It works until it does not. There is nothing in the idea that tells you what is supposed to hold you up once it is taken away. Is there anything like that? I doubt.
Perhaps that is the most useful thing the insect ever did. Just making us question once you stop reading it as fiction.
Cheers
Check out the previous post: A Room of One’s Own
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