Thread by @Staedtler

There was an interesting conversation yesterday all about Franz Kafka's metamorphosis, and whether it had any merit.
So I read it again yesterday, and I've been thinking about it overnight. What does it all mean?

I don't think it means anything in the bureaucratic sense. It's not an allegory because it doesn't refer to anything in real life.
You could read ot that way, of course. You can read anything that way. But it doesn't look like it was written that way.

Oftentimes Kafka is in tune with what we know about the 20th century. We know about the secret police, the Mafia, the inaccessible powers.
But I've always wondered about that

There is another series of tales that feels very like Kafka, and that's the Twilight Zone. Stories that don't always make sense, where you don't always find out what's going on or who's behind it or why.

We know about the political and social atmosphere in America during the Cold War. And The Twilight Zone seems to blend into that cultural atmosphere. They're disturbing stories exactly because they offer no explanation.

On the other hand you find definite political allegories of the Cold War, like Animal Farm or The Crucible.
These refer directly to human events.

But neither Kafka nor the Twilight Zone refer to political events. You can project that onto them sometimes. You can say the Trial is about totalitarian society. I don't read it that way, mainly because I wouldn't enjoy it very much if I did.

I don't know what Kafka intended his stories to be. I'm not sure I care very much. What I know about me is that I like Kafka the same way I like the Twilight Zone. I like them a lot.

I don't have to extract a Sunday School lesson out of everything I like. I don't come at everything that way. I don't mind if what I read or watch gives me no moral improvement at all.

I like stories about people caught up in inexplicable events, where there is no meaning and no sense, and where the ending has no value in justice or education.

I suppose I like stories about dislocation and absurdity because life often feels like that to me.

I don't need stories to exactly imitate real life events. I don't even need them to be a metaphor of those events.
I like stories about people trying to find their way through inexplicable events, surrounded by unknown enemies. Who never find out why anything.

It could be you don't like those sort of stories. You prefer the cultural attachments of realistic events. In which case you best steer clear of fantasy.

But with Kafka, and the Twilight Zone, what really interests me is not the scenery or the scenario or what Hitchcock called the MacGuffin. These things don't bother me much.

I'm much the same as anyone. With any story it's the people I'm interested in. The absurdity of events doesn't really come into it. I can take time travel, magic wizards, space ships, anything

Kafka never bothers with why anything. The best episodes of the Twilight Zone don't explain why either. They just leave you in madness. This is what it is just because.

Do you like stories where you can't see who's to blame? Stories without a villain, stories where people never find out why anything.
If you don't there are other stories you can read instead. Detective stories perhaps. They explain everything for you.

Back to metamorphosis to finish up. If you want to find a metaphor in it, there's nothing to stop you. I won't be interested because I don't think there is one. I don't think it has either moral or metaphor.