The Metamorphosis (1915)

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

So reads one translation of the opening line of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, first published in 1915, which I read in the summer. ‘Insect’ is usually translated cockroach, but in the German, it is ungeheueres Ungeziefer, or monstrous/unclean vermin.

Naturally, there are as many interpretations of the book as there are scholars who have read it. Despite its sad ending, it might defy all academic analysis by just being a good yarn. Yet this story of a travelling salesman who becomes a giant cockroach reminded me of the Fall of Man. Our parents’ rebellion demoted them from a state of brilliance and privilege to one of uncleanness and corruption. The most Gregor Samsa could hope for was his family’s tolerance and his own eventual death; in Christ, the fallen sons and daughters of Adam regain admission to paradise, readmitted by grace to that which their parents lost by law.

Where he displays his healing power

Death and the curse are known no more;

In him the tribes of Adam boast

More blessings than their father lost.

-Isaac Watts, 1719

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