Ihr Leben ist Mir Wurst

The Modernist era took place from the late nineteenth century to the mid twentieth century. It was an era of total war, depression, and work. There were so little limits in the workplace that people believed that they would simply work themselves to death. Life expectancy was short, around age forty. Vampires were rampant. Not necessarily the blood sucking, pale, seductive type of vampire, but a subtle vampire. These types of vampires exist in real life; they work much slower, and can appear in any form. These are the vampires of empathy. They seek out a young, hardworking individual who cares about anothers well being, and they feed. This Vampirism is exemplified in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The Story takes place in modernist Prague, where Gregor, the main character as prey, turns into a bug. As a bug he becomes useless to his family, the vampires, and he becomes a burden to them. Gregor has worked to pay off his parent’s debt for five or six years and he reckons it will be about five or six years more before it’s paid off. He has dedicated most of his adult life to working for his parent’s livelihood, and even more he wants to pay for his sister’s education at a school where she can play the violin. Gregor is the young, empathetic individual, and the parents are the Vampires.

Gregor’s father is an evil prick. If anyone in the story were the most vampiric, it would be him. He is the cause of Gregor’s work dilemma, he is lazy, and he hurts Gregor multiple times when he is in his bug state. His father, although capable of work, doesn’t do anything to help Gregor in his situation. In fact, he just sits around on his gluttonous butt and reads newspapers. “For his father breakfast was the most important meal time in the day, which he prolonged for hours by reading various newspapers”(Kafka 7). Anyone who spends hours reading newspapers and eating breakfast has a problem. Mr. Samsa, as demonstrated later in the book, can work. What a normal, empathetic person would do is work as hard as they can to fix their debt and maybe, maybe accept some financial help from their son. Mr. Samsa is just feasting on Gregor until his imminent demise. Gregor doesn’t even have time for a social life, he can’t meet a lady. He framed a magazine cutout of a lady. When he finally is forced to work for subsistence, Mr. Samsa sits in the armchair ‘exhausted’ from working all day, too lazy to even take off his uniform. “With a sort of stubbornness the father refused to take off his servants uniform even at home, and while keeping his sleeping gown unused on the coat hook, the father dozed completely dressed in his place[the armchair], as if he was always ready for his responsibility and even here was waiting for the voice of his superior.”(Kafka 19) Gregor has been doing this for years, Mr. Samsa starts working for a couple weeks and suddenly he’s so exhausted and dramatic. He is so used to being a vampire to Gregor that he has gotten too lazy for work.

On the other hand, the rest of the family also takes advantage of Gregor, just in a quieter manner. To thank Gregor for his lifetime of hard work, they shut him in a room for the last year of his life. Even worse, they keep him out of their meals. When people dine together, there is something of a special relationship between them. In rugby, the home team has big picnics after matches with their opponents to show that they respect them.  “in the real world, breaking bread together is an act of sharing and peace, since if your breaking bread you’re not breaking heads” (Foster 8) A communion is the intimate sharing of thoughts or feelings. Foster says that whenever people eat together, its communion. Communion doesn’t only happen in churches with small pieces of bread and teaspoonfuls of wine. Communion is the gathering of a people and a sharing of something in mutual respect. When Gregor’s family leaves him out of their meals, they show that they have lost their respect for Gregor’s character, and yet Gregor still loves them. He would still come back and work for them had he not been a bug. Gregor’s meals are instead spent in his room, sucking on cheese or what have you, where his thoughts and feelings are left to fester in his head. His family is so distant from him that Kafka refers to them as ‘The Father’ and ‘The Sister’. “With his left hand, his father grabbed a large newspaper from the table and, stamping his feet on the floor, he set out to drive Gregor back into his room by waving the cane and the newspaper.”(Kafka 8) Gregor’s father is so distant from his son that he can’t even herd him back into his room with his hands. He has to grab utensils to separate him and Gregor.

            Existentialism is the idea that existence overrules essence. People exist as an individual and no matter how much society shoves them into a slot; they’ll never fit into it. Gregor spends most of his life being jostled into a slot by his family, his job, and the modernist era. When he turns into a bug, he is liberated in some way, he doesn’t have to provide for his family anymore, even if he would like to. “Was he really eager to let the warm room… be turned into a cavern in which he could, of course, then be able to crawl about in all directions without disturbance”(Kafka 15)

Gregor feels like it is wrong to live outside the generic rules that he had lived by all of his life, but his existence wants to take over and do what he wants to do rather than what he thinks he needs to do. Gregor wants to be just what his parents want him to be, which is what the era teaches him to do. To be a manufactured product suited for the workplace and only for the workplace. And Gregor has been so affected by this ‘Modern’ era that his first reaction when he realizes he is a bug is to get to work. When his manager comes to see what the problem with him is, Gregor keeps lying to try to cover up his quite serious medical condition. “’I’m opening the door immediately, this very moment. A slight indisposition, a dizzy spell, has prevented me form getting up. I’m still lying in bed right now. But I’m quite refreshed once again.’” (Kafka 5) yet the manager doesn’t seem to care that Gregor is even sick, he later goes on to accuse Gregor of selfishness. That was his first missed day of work ever.

            Modernism, existentialism, communion, and vampirism are all factors in The Metamorphosis’s plot. Kafka cleverly paints a portrait of society during that era. That idea of subsistence till death affected everyone in that era. Thus people strived to exist in their own being. And although it is a very depressing thought, some people think their only liberation is death. “He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. In front of the window he witnessed the beginning of the outside growing generally lighter”(Kafka 25) Kafka describes the atmosphere around Gregor to be lighter and more peaceful. Gregor is liberated in death.