Metamorphosis Paperback – March 1, 2014

George Orwell has said, "What vitiates nearly all that is written about antisemitism is the assumption in the writer's mind that he himself is immune to it. 'Since I know that antisemitism is irrational,' he argues, 'it follows that I do not share it.' He thus fails to start investigation in the one place where he could get hold of some reliable evidence--that is, in his own mind."So I think that if one wants to grasp the nature of this problem, it's better to start by thinking about how the problem has been regarded from the viewpoint of the Jewish people themselves. I am not so familiar with Jewish writers, but as far as I know, the Jewish writers who tell us about their true sentiments and feelings most of all are Bernard Malamud and Franz Kafka. It seems to me that Malamud tells us about how miserable it is to live as a Jew in this society and Kafka tells us about how fearful it is to live as a Jew in this society.As everyone knows, Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" begins with the following sentence. "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a troubled dream, he found himself changed in his bed to some monstrous kind of vermin."This is perhaps, or undoubtedly the strangest story that was ever written, and for my part, stranger than the fact he was changed to a kind of vermin is that he and the people around him accept the unreal fact. They are amazed and upset, but they accept it. His family ends up by thinking that for sake of the family they should get rid of him, and he must go somewhere else.I associated "Go somewhere else" with "Go to the ghetto." I don't think that it is so rash to suppose that Kafka predicted the tremendous disaster that was going to attack the Jewish people in Europe. If everyone in this world needs to have someone else whom he can look down on, inevitably scapegoats are bound to be created. The agony and despair of the people who are destined to be such scapegoats are clearly manifest in his works.

This is the most famous one among Kafka's works. The story starts with one morning when a young commercial traveler finds himself transformed into a big insect on a bed. It is interesting to see the attitudes of his family and his superior officer toward his metamorphosed body because they reveal what they really think about him, and more importantly, who they really are. His family is depicted as a good example of human beings who have a tendency toward indulgence unless they are cornered. The author may indicate that a difficult situation is essential for mental growth.

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