Alienation In Kafka's Metamorphosis

Register to read the introduction… Gregor’s metamorphosis is symbolic of this commodification of man. The labor’s wage is a mere overhead cost from the point of view of the entrepreneur. Though the laborer is paid, his product is taken away from him. After the acknowledgement of the entrepreneur’s contribution of providing the conditions for production, it is important to realize that it is not possible to produce without the workforce. The thoughts and skills of the laborer go into his production. There are two factors at play to bring bout alienation. First is objectification which is the turning of product into an object rather than extension of the self of the worker. Second is estrangement or alienation on all levels from product to …show more content…
Kafka is political because he engages with the dynamics of power in his story. He is collective since the alienation Gregor goes through is a parable for what the masses endure daily. He is spatial because he manages to deterritorialize the language by subverting its use as a means to maintain power. His writing is revolutionary since by being these things he manages to subvert the power discourses and insert an alternate voice, one which challenges the propagations of the popularly powerful. Beneath the melancholy in The Metamorphosis there is a subtle revolt. In the context of Kafka and minor literature “to speak, and especially to write, is to fast” (Deleuze, Guattari & Brinkley 21). Moreover, it “is not the literature of a minor language but the literature a minority makes in a major language” (Deleuze, Guattari & Brinkley 17). Kafka writes in the language of the powerful to express his hopelessness, thus undercutting the importance of the language in power. His writing “exists in a narrow space, every individual matter is immediately plugged into the political” (Deleuze, Guattari & Brinkley …show more content…
The soul of Gregor Samsa becomes a revolutionary character, showing that, through literature, minorities can express their world-view. The mind of a human inside the body of a creature is symbolic of the extent of estrangement within capitalist labor exploitation. Kafka’s stories manage to “skip through the holes and the stories they [the powerful] told” (Fol Chen) and transcend ordinary and dominant discourses by showing their flaws and effects on human psyche. Reading his work manages to hint at the actual reality behind the one the masses are fed. The silver lining of minor literature’s grey cloud is that it is comfortable with its place in hegemonic discourse; its mere presence becoming a destabilizing force, a way to metamorphose the human mind from its influenced state to the