Convergent Literary Echoes in Kafka’s Die Verwandlung. What Intertextuality Tells Us about Gregor Samsa
Convergent Literary Echoes in Kafka’s Die Verwandlung. What Intertextuality Tells Us about Gregor Samsa

Summary/Abstract: The entomological dogma prevailing in Kafka scholarship and the whole world of literary criticism, according to which Die Verwandlung relates the metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa into a monstrous vermin (bug), has proved incapable of unraveling the complexity of Kafka’s most widely known work. In a series of articles, I have declared myself a heretic regarding that dogma, and I have argued that there is indeed a key for solving the interpretative riddle of Die Verwandlung. The solution lies in realizing that this novella contains two conflicting versions of the events – one according to which Gregor is a subhuman being, and another in which he is a human being, and also in considering the complexity of the victimary processes and the cognitive distortions that they entail, and paying attention to the manifold moral conflicts of the characters in Kafka’s most celebrated story.

• Details
• Contents