The Brothers Grimm were, for a long time, the trusted fairy tale source. From tales like "Rumpelstiltskin" to "The Wolf and the Fox," their stories have graced the imaginations of children for generations. But, there was one tale they did not get to write: Metamorphosis.
In this tale, we follow the harrowing story of a man, transformed by who-knows-what into some sort of insect. His own family banishes him to his room, while all he wants is to get back to work and continue to support them. His only human contact comes twice a day in the form of his sister, who cares for him despite her revulsion. Our man takes to hiding away beneath a couch to spare her even the sight of his body. What a compelling story!
But, let's look at this objectively. Before we frame this as some sort of reverse monster movie, where humans terrorize this innocent man-sect, think about it from Gregor's family's perspective. When they first look into his room, all they see is this thing. Where's Gregor? They heard him earlier. He had been in there just last night. What did this thing do to him? Did it eat him? Or otherwise kill him, and hide the body? Why in the world would they assume this giant bug is Gregor? Even once they decide it must be him, with little to go by (and they don't really even question it, they pretty much just throw up their hands and say, "Now what are we going to do?"), is it that odd that they don't want to be faced with his fairly freaky body? He is a monstrous vermin, after all.
No, this story isn't about our poor, pitiable man-sect struggling for recognition and fighting his oppressive family. Rather, stories about transformation or anthropomorphism take this fresh opportunity away from humans to investigate them closely. Trickster tales like Reynard the Fox allowed people to look at how those in power performed, with the excuse that they were only reading of funny animals. "Little Red Riding Hood" and other such stories allowed people to contemplate horrific acts of murder and the like, without being confronted with grisly details. Transformations show what people look like as they lose humanity; and what humanity looks like around them.
The problem is, Gregor isn't becoming more and more buglike. Instead, he's just getting more and more adolescent. He stays in his room away from people. He spends his spare time scuttling around on the walls and ceilings for his amusement. He loses his furniture, but it allows him more space to do as he pleases. He isn't losing his humanity, but his sense of adulthood. In some sense, Kafka depicts the cruel life before of working and whittling away on his private projects against this sense of lighthearted fun he has as a bug. Would it be wrong to interpret that as saying the weird adult world is in some way a travesty?
What an interesting idea: The Metamorphosis as a kind of reverse coming-of-age story, with Gregor regressing back to a pre-adult version of himself as the story goes on. This makes sense, in that his "adult" status seemed to depend entirely on his ability to work (and even in his job, he's treated like a truant little kid, from what we can see). Now think about the opposite effect we see in Grete--as Gregor disintegrates and regresses, she seems to grow up--learning French, working outside the home, and, at the very end, suddenly emerging as a marriageable young woman.
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