The Metamorphosis takes a familiar happening--a young man living at home with his family--and turns the young man into a giant bug....no explanation is given for the rearrangement of man to bug. Its purpose isn't to logically establish new laws of narrative; it's to surprise us into reconsidering the old. That old law, in the case of The Metamorphosis, is family love. In the past, we'd been taught by moral parables, sentimental novels, and other traditional tales that family love was selflessly generous. But when the insectoid young man of The Metamorphosis repulses his parents and retreats heartbroken into his room to die, we relearn that family love can be very conditional indeed.
January 9, 2025