Comments on: The Metamorphosis: A book review

By: Rehan

Rehan — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 07:27:57 +0000

Awful review! I don’t understand the affinity for adverbs and using the word “symbolic” over and over – I get that it’s symbolic but please pick up a thesaurus! The alternate analysis is not bad and something to think about but one must remember at the time of his writing this work, Kafka was not aware of AIDS nor the rest of the world. So in that sense it is flawed.

The major themes discussed in this short treatise are absurdity (you got that right) and existentialism as was mentioned Shehryar. Kafka, Hiedegger, Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre etc. were all known as existentialists though they didn’t probably coin that term. A parallel can be drawn with Camus’ “The Stranger”.

By: Ibaad

Ibaad — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:43:51 +0000

This is an awful review! You’ve reduced a seminal work to a “metaphor for aids”.

By: Sohrab

Sohrab — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 13:25:22 +0000

Intezar Hussain’s “kaya kalap” was one of my most memorable reads of Urdu Literature in school….a translation of Kafka’s metamorphosis. It is intersting that every reader can translate it to events, chages that have morphed your own life or have noticed in others or that of a society.
I think it is a great philosophical read than a simplistic story of an event.

By: Sana Khiani

Sana Khiani — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 09:12:14 +0000

well written and descriptive review

By: sabeen

sabeen — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 08:35:31 +0000

MI read the blog with curiosity but unfortunately there iz nothing new in the blog….metamorphosis waz mmuch more than a mere dealing of absurd physical appearance of Samsa….it waz not only a man’s metamorphosis but also a metamorphosis of a society, it waz a metamorphosis more on philosophical and psychological level rather than on a physical level…

By: BRR

BRR — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 07:45:44 +0000

A nice alternate narrative / explanation.

By: Cyrus Howell

Cyrus Howell — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 19:43:15 +0000

One of the two novels that frightened me as a young man when reading late into the night. Don’t read Steven King for that reason. The other was Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

By: M.adnan

M.adnan — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 16:46:55 +0000

It would be better if you provide the existentialism perspective in review.As is author’s main field of concern unknowingly. Kafka tries to elaborate absurdity of life, of human, of “being” in all his novels. That is the point of novella. Others have nothing to do with your desires, sufferings, emotions. Man is solely responsible for his own condition as elaborated by Sir Jean Paul Sartre. Anyway I am happy at least there are some people at least who bother to elaborate the classics.

By: BRR

BRR — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 16:29:11 +0000

Good writeup. Gregor is a good metaphor for Pakistan – its people think they are still human while in reality the body politic has turned viscious, beast-like in its nature, devouring all virtues and sanity and rapacious in its diet of dead people. The head still thinks everything is hunky-dory, totally disconnected from reality.

By: Shehryar

Shehryar — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 12:18:28 +0000

This is a very simplistic reading of the one of the 20th C classics. The disease Gregor Samsa suffers is not any physical ailment rather it should be explained in ‘Existentialist’ terms. Existentialist philosophers are of the view that human beings define themselves through pre-defined notions and work ethics imposed by social set up is one of them. Samsa has always defined himself in relation to his work. If one looks at the reactions of his employer and his family, it becomes clear that they consider him a machine, who is useful. His father used to work but now he does not as he completely relies on his son now. His essence( in this case his utility) is more important than his ‘existence’. One day quite unconsciously Samsa refuses to live on these terms. There occurs a ‘split’ in his mind and body. Body that connotes existence refuses to be just an ‘instrument’. This is the day when his family starts to look at him in a different manner. Now he is just a reprehensible insect for them. He is of no use to them at all. That is the reason that their attitude towards him changes. I am not saying that it is its only reading but the novella is not as simplistic as is described in this review.