Introduction
In his documentary and diary writing, Franz Kafka professed his knowledge and fascination, rather than belief, in Sigmund Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis. According to Freud, people’s mental health through making their unconscious thoughts conscious, thus gaining an insight into what is going ‘under the surface.’ Such insight can help fulfill the aim of therapy based on psychoanalysis, which is to show the repressed emotions and experiences a person has to facilitate psychological health. Reading the work of Kafka, even with a little understanding of Freud’s work, it is difficult not to bring psychoanalysis to mind. However, this does not mean that the writer supports the ideas put forth by Freud even though the analysis of The Metamorphosis could be conducted “in the light of Freudian psychological theory” (Barfi et al. 107). It can be argued that the novella is a projection of the author’s own life, including the transformation of Gregor Samsa into a bug. The Metamorphosis represents the inner personality of its author, and the understanding of the story is only possible when one has a clear view of his life. Therefore, the story has the potential of being analyzed in the context of psychological criticism, the principles and premises of which were put forth by Freud. Similar to a dream, which is an unconscious manifestation of one’s thoughts and fears, the literary text dramatizes the inner world of the author, his repressed desires, and angst that was formed in his childhood and adulthood.
Samsa is Kafka
The protagonist of The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa, represents Kafka himself in a multitude of ways. One of the most transparent giveaways of the connection is that the names Samsa and Kafka are structured identically: while the letters ‘s’ and ‘a’ are repeated two times in Samsa, ‘k’ and ‘a’ are also repeated twice in Kafka, as Barfi et al. skillfully pointed out (107). As a classic antihero explored in Kafka’s writing, Gregor finds himself in a nightmare-like situation, which is full of terror and horror. For those who are familiar with the personal past of Franz Kafka, the situation will remind them of the conditions that the writer himself experienced throughout his entire life. Kafka’s father ruled the family with extreme authority and even tyranny, as mentioned by the writer himself: “faced with intolerance and the tyranny of my parents, I live with my family more as a stranger than a foreigner” (qt. in Felisati and Sperati 328). Just like Kafka, after turning into a bug, Gregor lives in the house of his parents as a foreigner, a horrific but helpless creature that is being predominantly ignored and denied of existing, with only its basic physiological needs being fulfilled. Through the transformation from a human into a bug, the author transfers the protagonist’s unconscious realm as represented in the novel.
The Unconscious
As suggested by Freud, the mind of a person is made up of two parts, the conscious and the unconscious, and the suppressed feelings, desires, inner conflicts, and fears are held in the unconscious part of the psyche (Bargh and Morsella 74). The setting of The Metamorphosis is the first image that takes readers into Gregory’s unconsciousness, the story of whom begins in the following way: “one morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in the bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug” (Kafka 1). The discussion of waking up, a dream, and a bed make it possible to suggest that Gregor awakes as the transformation occurs through transferring from the conscious into the unconscious realm, which is signified by dreaming. The coldness that the character feels: “…wanted to feel the place with a leg. But he retracted it immediately, for the contact felt like a cold shower all over him” is a characteristic of the unconscious area, illustrating the movement of Gregor away from his consciousness and critical thinking (Kafka 2). The second image appearing in the unconscious world of the character is represented by the times during which the story is being told. In the story, the majority of the events occur predominantly at night or evening, and if it is the morning, then it is mostly raining. In the morning, when Gregor wakes to find his body transformed, Kafka writes, “Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather – the raindrops were falling audibly down on the metal window ledge – made him quite melancholy” (Kafka 1).
In another excerpt, the weather in the morning was described as frosty and dark, so it seemed to Gregor that it was already evening. Such a description traces back to the unconscious mind of the protagonist – every attribute of the environment seems to encourage the protagonist to look inward and concentrate on his inner fears and troubles. Finally, the darkness captures him whole as he prepares to meet his death, signified by the dawn: “he remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower struck 3 a.m. From the window, he witnessed the beginning of the general dawning outside. Then without willing it, his head sank, and from his nostrils flowed out weakly out his last breath” (Kafka 57). The occurrence shows that Gregor removes himself from the unconscious realm and into the conscious, which shows that Kafka portrayed the unconscious world as something that is not accessible to anyone except in a dream. The death of Gregor at the end of the novella is the death of the unconscious, which can be traced back to the metaphorical representation of the death of the expectations of Kafka’s father for his son.
The Guilt
Another way in which The Metamorphosis could be linked to Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis is the phenomenon of the sense of guilt, which was largely discussed in Freudian psychology. In Freud’s human model, the psyche is broken into such components as the ego, the ID, and the superego. The latter is the moral censoring agency, which shows how a person approaches such issues as pride and conscience, thus representing all moral restrictions. Symbolically, within the relationship between Kafka and his father, the father is the superego that repressed the derives of his son. According to Freud, the superego can often be revealed with the help of punishment, and when it is highly active, it can enable the development of guilt in a person (Bressler 145). Kafka acknowledged struggling with a sense of guilt since childhood as a result of lacking self-confidence, and his father was the main reason for that (Bressler 146). As mentioned by the writer himself in Letter to My Father, the attitude with which Franz’s father treated his son could be a reason for the increased sense of guilt. Kafka writes, “something else, too, grew out of these many occasions where, in your clearly expressed opinion, I deserved a thrashing but was spared by your mercy – again, intense feelings of guilt. From every side, I was in your debt” (21). In The Metamorphosis, the symbolical transformation of a man into a bug signifies the repressed desires and the unconscious sense of guilt that was worried him. The giant insect is the building up of the hidden expectations and desires that were disregarded by his father. By becoming a bug, Gregor enters the unconscious world as a means to escape the tyranny and the mistreatment brought by the superego. In the father’s eyes, Gregor is guilty, and the insect metamorphosis is a punishment for being a disappointment. At the end of the story, the protagonist’s father throws him an apple, which acts as a punishment and causes his death and is a symbol of Gregor’s acceptance of guilt.
Conclusion
To conclude, through the use of metaphors, Franks Kafka traces his writing in The Metamorphosis to the core principles of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis. The novella is a symbolic exploration of the authors’ deepest concerns, the majority of which are centered around his relationship with his father. The major idea that can be traced throughout the story is that there is only one illness in a person, and that is their existence. As Kafka openly acknowledges the issues that he had with his father, the transformation of Gregor into a bug is a suppression of the deeply-rooted concerns about being a failure in the eyes of a father.
Works Cited
Barfi, Zahra, et al. “A Study of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis in the Light of Freudian Psychological Theory.” Research Journal of Recent Sciences, vol. 2, no. 10, 2013, pp. 107-109.
Bargh, John, and Ezequiel Morsella. “The Unconscious Mind.” Perspectives on Psychological Science: A Journal of the Association for Psychological Science, vol. 3, no. 1, 2008, pp. 73-79.
Bressler, Charles. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Prentice Hall, 2006.
Felisati, B., and G. Sperati. “Franz Kafka (1883-1924).” ACTA Otorhinolaryngologoca Italica, vol. 25, no. 5, 2005, pp. 328-332.
Kafka, Franz. Letter to My Father. Lulu, 2007.
The Metamorphosis. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.