Franz Kafka believed that no life should be lived without purpose or sovereignty. He trusted this wholeheartedly, as well as other existential beliefs. The main point in existential theories is the idea that the meaning of life is found through free will, choice and personal responsibility. The individual and the individual alone, is the one who determines their final destiny. One has the power to alter their essence of nature as a whole and make choices based on their own instinct. This is the message Franz Kafka tries to portray in his parable, The Metamorphosis. The transformation from a human to an insect, symbolizes the protagonist's feeling of alienation in his own family and feeling trapped in his own life. His separation from all human contact leaves him in complete control of his own personal morals and decisions. In Kafka's The Metamorphosis, the protagonist, Gregor, lacks independence which results in his inability to choose a life for himself, thus enforcing the crucial existential idea of finding one's identity and giving life purpose.
Kafka urges his reader's to take their life by the reins and make their own choices fore that will essentially build their identity. In order to ensure the reader grasps this idea, Franz Kafka uses dark humor and various ironies. He uses irony to exhibit the danger of not giving life purpose in a metaphorical manner. A honorable professor and novelist, David Foster Wallace, emphasizes Kafka's humor in his essay Laughing with Kafka. Wallace explains how not many people understand Kafka's funniness and the employment of our journey itself being our sole purpose. "It's not that students don't "get" Kafka's humor but that we've taught them to see humor as something you get - the same way we've taught them that a self is something you just have. No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke - that the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home," (Wallace 3). The whole meaning of existence is the meaning one gives it. The struggles endured throughout life are what makes the person and builds their identity. The purpose in life is not to reach a specific goal, but it is the journey and the acknowledgment of the events that happen to oneself while they are attaining the goal that is life's purpose. This is hugely demonstrated by Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis. "'Once I've got together the money to pay off my parents' debt to him- that should take another five or six year- I'll do it for sure,'" (Kafka 3). Gregor's goal in life is to pay of his parents debt. What Gregor did wrong was making this goal his entire life's purpose. He was so focused on achieving this that the goal became his identity and lost all control of his life. Gregor's lack of independence and control in life is what metaphorically causes his death. In the story it is apparent that Gregor dies due to severe starvation, as well as the wound inflicted by an apple in his back. "However, another thrown immediately after that one drove into Gregor's back really hard. Gregor wanted to drag himself off, as if he could make the unexpected and incredible pain go away if he changed his position. But he felt as if he was nailed in place and lay stretched out completely confused in all his senses," (Kafka 18). Gregor is withering away from being starved when their is literally food in his back. The apple being a symbol of knowledge, creates this irony that he is pinned with the knowledge that he is going to die and that everything he has done for his family was pointless and wasted. His goal to work off every penny of his parent's debt never got achieved ultimately because he had no true purpose in life and by no means an identity. It is through dark humor and irony that Kafka was able to show how one's life means as much as one gives it to mean.
As well as humor and irony, Kafka implements the concepts of vampirism and communion to enforce the lesson of finding one's purpose and identity. The events that occur in a lifetime are a major factor that plays in everyone's identity. Communion is a celebration of life, whether there are struggles or not, with the community one is immersed in. "Generally, eating with another is a way of saying, 'I'm with you, I like you, we form a community together.' And that is a form of communion," (Foster 8). The ideals one bases their identity off of usually a influenced the people they choose to associate with. One gives their life a purpose because the people whom they share a bond with, can help achieve much more together than apart. Gregor does not share a connection with anyone not even his family due to his time consuming job, which leads to his isolation. He accepted his alienation. He chose to conform to society and eventually accept death. Gregor gave his life away to his father, whom is essentially a vampire. "A nasty old man, attractive but evil, violates young women, leaves a mark, steals their innocence- and coincidentally their" usefulness"... and leaves them helpless followers in his sin," (Foster 16). This relates perfectly to Gregor and his father. The mark instead of teeth marks is the apple embedded by the father in Gregor's back. The father steals, or "sucks", Gregor's life away until every bit of the usefulness he has been drained. He is now useless and helpless. "Gregor lay there limply," (Kafka 27). He has no control over his life, and never seeked to obtain a relationship with his family, or a communion, allowing the vampires to suck his life dry. These concepts are huge influences on the moral lesson of taking the initiative to be one's own self and continue looking for one's life purpose.
Truly, Kafka's modernist writing styles portray a widely universal message from an existential point of view. Finding one's identity and life purpose is hugely important in the understanding of literature. The writings by Kafka present the modern world with how to life a purposeful life with a identity true to themselves. By exhibiting a subordinate and helpless protagonist and practicing symbolism, humor and existential ideas he created a modernist text that teaches an important lesson his reader's can obtain. It is through Gregor faults, the reader gains the knowledge of the right choices to make in life and a path that will not lead to their demise.
