Reading Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis was for me an unsettling journey into alienation and the fragility of human bonds. The story begins abruptly: Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. What struck me most was not the transformation itself, but how quickly the narrative shifts to the reactions of those around him—his family’s fear, shame, and eventual rejection.

As I followed Gregor’s slow decline, I felt both compassion and horror. His initial concern for work deadlines, even in his grotesque state, revealed the crushing grip of duty and habit. Yet, as the days passed, his world shrank to the walls of his room, and I could almost feel the suffocating isolation closing in on me as well.

The family’s responses unsettled me deeply. Their shift from pity to burden, and finally to cold detachment, felt like a cruel mirror of how society often treats those who can no longer “contribute.” Gregor’s death, quiet and almost welcomed by his family, left me with a hollow ache.

The Metamorphosis is, for me, not just a tale of transformation but a stark meditation on what it means to be human. Kafka forces us to confront how fragile love and acceptance can be when stripped of utility—and that realization still lingers uncomfortably with me.