"One morning, Gregor. Samsa wakes up from an uneasy sleep and finds herself lying in bed transformed into a giant beetle", the beginning of the Austrian writer Kafka's masterpiece Metamorphosis.
The novel tells an absurd story:
Gregor, the salesman, wakes up one morning to find himself turned into a beetle. This huge change made Gregor seem helpless. He lost his job, but he still cared about his family—his father's debts, sending his sister to conservatory, the family chores. However, in contrast, the family gradually regarded Gregor as a burden, and their attitude towards him turned into disgust, fear and even disgust. In the end, Gregor died of hunger and cold in the indifference of affection.
The first time I read Metamorphosis, or in high school extracurricular readings, I just thought the story was absurd—how could people become beetles?
Now, after stepping into society and experiencing some ups and downs, there seems to be some other feeling about the fate of the protagonist. The anxiety of survival, the disappearance of the self and the indifference of the relationship between people in the material society are not only in the novel, it is also the reality that each of us modern people has to face.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, the anxiety of survival is always urging us, never stopping</h1>
Within the framework of symbolism, the novel has all the details of realism.
Gregor is a salesman for a travel company, although the income is good, but the work is very hard, years and months of running around, the boss's harsh, poor diet, everywhere is consuming his body and mind.
"Oh my God," he thought, "how could I pick such a tired messenger alone!" Running around for years and months is much harder than sitting in an office. Coupled with the trouble of going out often, worrying about the reversal of various trains, irregular and inferior diet, and the people who meet in Pingshui are always some general friends, it is impossible to have deep friendships, and they will never become confidants. Let it all go!
But even if he wants to resign countless times, he can never put it into action, because he is still the economic pillar of the whole family, he has to save money to pay off his father's debts, he wants to send his sister to the best music school, he wants to provide a good life for his family, so even if he is in pain, he can't smash his job.
Even now he has become a giant beetle.
But for now I'm better off getting up because the train is about to start at five o'clock. He looked at the ticking alarm clock on the cupboard. Oh, my God! He thought.
So what should he do now? The next train started at seven o'clock; he had to go crazy to catch this bus, but his samples were not yet wrapped, and he felt that his spirit was not very good. And even if he caught the bus, he still couldn't escape a reprimand from his superiors, because the company's listener must have been waiting for the five o'clock train, and had already returned to report that he hadn't caught up.
But he still missed the train, because he couldn't even stand up, he could only let his many pitiful legs dance helplessly in front of his eyes.
After discovering the huge changes in his body, the protagonist Gregor's first thought is not to ask the reason, but to still worry about today's work. And when the boss ruthlessly expelled him, the whole family was immediately hit hard. A family that looks originally harmonious and beautiful becomes fragmented just because of a sudden accident.
This huge pressure to survive, as well as the fatigue and weakness in the face of emergencies, reveals the survival anxiety of the emergence of generations everywhere.
As the writer Ge Fei wrote in his novel "Spring ends in Jiangnan": "We are not actually living, not even a minute, we are busy preparing for life and worrying about it." ”
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > second, the "alienation" of man</h1>
In Kafka's novel, the "alienation" state of modern man is one of his most prominent themes.
What is "alienation of man"?
The Marxist view holds that alienation, as a social phenomenon, arises together with classes. It is a social phenomenon in which man's material and spiritual production and its products become alien forces, which in turn dominate man. When human nature deviates from its original appearance, or fails to achieve the function it can achieve, it is called alienation.
In Kafka's Metamorphosis, there are at least three kinds of alienation, namely the alienation of the relationship between man and self, the alienation of human relations, and the alienation of money to man.
1. The disappearance of the individuality of the self
Kafka lived around the time of the First World War and at the same time when the First Industrial Revolution was in full swing. The violent dictatorship of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the fierceness of political and ethnic contradictions, the corruption of society, and the great changes caused by the new industrial revolution.
Kafka had worked in the work injury insurance company for many years, he had witnessed the oppression of people by society, and he had also come into contact with many workers who were disabled by machines and could not survive, and he was deeply aware that in such a living environment, people would only slowly become numb, mechanical, and obedient to all suffering, until they gradually lost all their individual consciousness and became tool people.
In the novel, Gregor always exists as a "public me", playing various social roles, a good child of his parents, a good brother of his sister, a good employee of the company, and all his thoughts and actions revolve around his family, providing for his family and paying off debts.
He never imagined what his life would be like, nor what his true self would be, until he became a beetle, a poor worm who could no longer serve his family.
When he once again encountered the indifference and alienation of his family, he began to no longer take it for granted to think about planning for his family, he began to forget his mission to support his family, and even he began to like to crawl freely on the ceiling, he even stopped caring about the fear of his family, and involuntarily climbed out of the room to listen to his sister's performance...
Paradoxically, it was only when Gregor was freed from his human form that he became aware of his true existence. And Kafka is in such an exaggerated and deformed way to present this state of self-alienation of man -
We can be all people, good children of parents, good partners of lovers, good employees of the company, but not ourselves.
2. The alienation of the relationship between people and the alienation of money to people
In the novel, before Gregor was transformed, he was a capable salesman of the company and the economic pillar of the family, so he was respected and loved by the whole family.
However, after his transformation, the company immediately resigned from him, but the saddest thing was the attitude of his family to him.
His father mercilessly pushed him into the house like an expulsion animal, causing his waist to be squeezed and bleeding profusely.
The weak and sick mother, on the other hand, pronounced the verdict against Gregor in a passive and indifferent manner— renunciation.
Grigore's closest sister in the family also faded in freshness, and after realizing that Gregor had no chance of getting better, she was left with only boredom and anger. Even in the end, by her mouth, she said the cold words of "we must get him away".
It is also the indifference and disgust of his family that makes Gregor lose the last hope of struggling to live. The bitter winter had passed, spring had arrived, and Gregor could no longer see it.
Once, the bond that held Gregor and his family was money, but when he lost his labor force and could no longer support the family, he was immediately rejected by everyone.
Money alienates human nature, strips away the simple and beautiful emotions between people, and distorts people's souls.
In the 1980s and 1990s, with the rise of the tide of commodity economy, the socio-cultural psychology with sensory pleasure, interest pursuit, and the collapse of faith as the main dimensions gradually formed, and to some extent, we gradually entered the state of "alienation" of people as Marx said.
The anxiety of survival, the yearning for materialism, the alienation and indifference of the relationship between people, and the gradual loss of self-individuality.
Kafka, on the other hand, warns us with this novel:
A person who ignores the existence of individuality inevitably leads to the fate of destruction.