futurista

It just so happened that as I was listening to this book about a man who overnight turns into a beetle, that I was also cleaning and found a bucket full of stranded roaches. And do you know what I did with them? I drowned them in the bucket and threw them into the yard with only 2 seconds of thought of any sort of mercy. As much as I felt sorry for the metamorphosed Gregor in the story, my sympathy could not extend to dirty disease-carrying real bugs (may they rest in peace and such).

There are 2 main observations that I have to make about the book. First of all, I found the family itself despicable for their complete reliance on Gregor previous to his metamorphosis. An able-bodied father and mother along with a young sister has depended completely on his job as a salesman to support them for the last 5 years after the father's business failure. And even though they live at home not working, they feel the need to have various servants to clean their small apartment and cook for them. Secondly, I suppose that Gregor's family loathing him after he turned into an insect is supposed to be a metaphor for a family's inability to accept a family member who has changed their religious, political, or social beliefs and behaviors from that of their family. Sadly, this happens and families sometimes are never able to accept the change in their formerly-loved one. I honestly have no sympathy for the family and their miseries. But it certainly is a warning to those who are not like their families to not expect acceptance but rather to expect more of an increased than decreased loathing. It's sad that this is often the case.

Anyhow, despite being a classic that emphasizes an ugly truth, I didn't find the book that interesting. It could have been all said in a much shorter story of 10 pages or so rather than its actual length.