Multiple Intelligence Task... thingy for Lit... yeah. :|
I’m not usually one for blogging, but there are times when you just have to write a blog. This is one of those times…
It had occurred to me that apart from the similarities in Kafka’s and Samsa’s last names, the two actually have more in common than meets the eye. For example, Franz Kafka had worked as a traveling salesman, like Samsa did. I decided to look for more similarities between the author and the character he had created.
But when I started reading about Kafka’s father, who was a selfish and tyrannical man a bit like to Mr. Samsa, my thoughts lingered on my own father. He wasn’t a selfish man, but my maternal grandmother would tell me that he was immature and irresponsible for leaving my mother with five children to take care of.
I could hardly remember how my father was like when I was younger. I used to look at old photographs of him and my mother with their gross 90s hairstyles, wondering why I never saw them together like that. Then when I became more mature, I came to accept the fact that my parents were divorced and that my father had his own family.
He retired at the age of fifty. In his free time, he would play golf or Mafia Wars, or he would nag my sister to get married already. Of course, she wouldn’t. I imagined him vegetating in bed all day, like Gregor Samsa’s father did while his son worked as a salesman. Well, maybe my dad wasn’t a selfish man like Mr. Samsa. After all, he has done a lot for my family, and even his new wife is nice to us. (Thank God for that.)
Then I read about Kafka’s siblings. He was the eldest of six children, with two brothers, Georg and Heinrich who both died, and three sisters, Gabriele, Valerie, and Ottilie. He was particularly close to his sister, Ottla, like how Samsa was close to his younger sister Grete.
Like Kafka, I come from a big family. I have two older sisters and two older brothers, as well as a younger half-brother from my father’s second marriage. As a child, I wasn’t very close to my siblings because of our age gap, and I usually played with our cousins instead. When I was in high school, I was closer to my brother, who had been the youngest before I was born. He is ten years older than me, and he was the only one who didn’t go back and forth to Singapore. However, during my later years of high school, I became closer to my eldest sister. Perhaps puberty had hit me and I finally thought that I should be closer to girls instead of boys (which would explain why my best friend now is a girl).
Kafka’s writing of Metamorphosis was a reflection of how he felt about his own life. He created Gregor Samsa as a man who transformed into an insect and would later be considered as a burden to his family. Franz Kafka suffered from tuberculosis and was taken care of by his sister Ottla, similar to Gregor who was taken care of by Grete.
I have always felt useless compared to my older siblings. Maybe that was normal for a bunso of the family. They are all smarter and more mature than I could ever be. Some of them have jobs and help in paying the bills. Sometimes I feel like I’m a burden to my family, the black sheep that could never live up to their expectations. I was the youngest, so of course I had to live up to their expectation and surpass it if I could. But I couldn’t.
To some extent, I can relate to the situation that both Gregor Samsa and Franz Kafka went through in their lives. Through the unique story of The Metamorphosis, I learned that I am not a perfect being, perhaps grotesque in other’s eyes. Having lived my childhood as a loner, I know how it feels to be alienated from others. I was also isolated from my siblings because they were all so much older than me. However, unlike Gregor, I have my friends and family who have always been by my side. It makes me feel lucky to know that I’m not really alone. The story inspired me, for some reason. I guess it was because I could relate to the main character as well as the author.
Don't ask. :|