I think I asked a different, possibly irrelevant question last time (The real metamorphosis). Could be time relevant. The question now has been re-directed towards something else this time.
In the last post, I got stuck on usefulness and and which kind I meant. Whether it was something I made for myself or just the price of being kept. I left it open ended because I could not close it. Nor I found the answer. But the book does not end nor focus on usefulness. It ends on liberation.
Gregor dies. The next morning the family does not fall apart nor grieve much. They take the day off. They write letters to their employers. They ride out to the countryside and there is warm sunshine. Somewhere on that ride the parents notices their daughter has grown into a young woman. That is the last page of the book.
Kafka does not punish them for not grieving nor rants about their behavior. He just lets it be true. Last time I read this book from Gregor’s room. This time, I am inside the Grete’s mind.
She is the one who feeds him and tried different foods. She cleans and even tried to looking at him, whatever his body had become. Yet, she is also the one who finally calls him “it“, and says they have to get rid of it. But at the end of the book, her young body stretching is the final piece of words. Young, livelier and ready for a life. The one who cared the most is the one who looks the most free. Liberation over grief!
So maybe usefulness was not the question then. Was it death? I don’t mean death as an ending. But death shows you which kind of love you were living inside. The kind that survives the person, or the kind that was only there because something was needed/meant useful.
So, does death mean liberation? Liberation for whom? To Gregor or Grete?
This liberation didn’t sound like betrayal in the book. Not from Grete’s POV. It is what is happens once the caring stops from being required or even forced upon.
Here is the part I keep getting confused or was wrong about earlier. I used to think relief comes first followed by grief once the shock settles. But, it does not come like that in all scenarios. It is more of subjective to the individuals on which comes first or the second. For Grete, grief followed by relief.
Maybe the ending was never closing Gregor’s story. It was opening theirs or even Grete’s. The tram ride is the honest scene in the whole book, because it is the first time nothing has to be performed for him.
This is what death actually does to everyone when it is allowed to. It does not just remove a person. It removes the performance that grew around keeping them. One more thing is that, Gregor’s last thoughts were about his family. He thinks of them with love. He decides that he should disappear.
So the book does have that kind of love in it. The kind that does not need usefulness to keep going. Maybe this is the answer to my previous post.
I am not sure about it either.
Cheers
PS: Every re-read gives a different perspective.
Check out the previous post: On Recovery!
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