This excellent essay from filmmaker David Cronenberg serves as the introduction to Susan Bernofsky’s recent translation of The Metamorphosis. It links the Kafka novella to Cronenberg’s 1986 film The Fly and meditates on how both stories deal with the trauma brought on by realizations about our physical bodies and their inevitable decay.
You can read it in full on The Paris Review.
I woke up one morning recently to discover that I was a seventy-year-old man. Is this different from what happens to Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis? He wakes up to find that he’s become a near-human-sized beetle (probably of the scarab family, if his household’s charwoman is to be believed), and not a particularly robust specimen at that. Our reactions, mine and Gregor’s, are very similar. We are confused and bemused, and think that it’s a momentary delusion that will soon dissipate, leaving our lives to continue as they were. What could the source of these twin transformations possibly be? Certainly, you can see a birthday coming from many miles away, and it should not be a shock or a surprise when it happens. And as any well-meaning friend will tell you, seventy is just a number. What impact can that number really have on an actual, unique physical human life?
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