Kafka’s Jewish Identity Metamorphosis: The Transformative Effects of the Christian Rhetoric

For nearly a century, literary critics have argued that Franz Kafka’s works reflect how Kafka wrestled with his father complex and social concerns. While some critics such as Walter Sokel have discussed Kafka’s Jewish identity and others like Matthew Powell have addressed how Kafka’s animal stories, including The Metamorphosis (1915), represent a feeling of otherness, little discussion has focused on how The Metamorphosis parallels Kafka’s internal conflict with his Jewish identity and his feelings of abjection. This paper aims to prove the direct interrelationship between Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis and Kafka himself and how this novella has autobiographic qualities and serves as a detailed account of how Kafka grappled with his Jewish identity during a time when Jewish people were still trying to assimilate into European society, a homogeneous society that had ostracized and persecuted Jews for hundreds of years. My claim is supported by an in-depth analysis of Gregor’s transformation into a repugnant bug as well as his father’s disgust, and how these reflect Kafka’s own life as he tried to rebel against the anti-Semitic Christian rhetoric that was pervasive in European society at the turn of the twentieth century. Peter Beicken has started the discussion that Kafka’s works are primarily a reflection of his loneliness. However, my paper argues that just like Gregor, who cannot recognize where he ends as a human and where he begins as a bug in The Metamorphosis, Kafka did not just feel like he did not belong but felt completely dehumanized, a filthy insect void of all human qualities. My paper concludes that Gregor’s metamorphosis and alienation represent how Kafka’s Jewish identity turned from a battle of Self vs Other to seeing himself as the abject, cast off by society.

Keywords: Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, Christian rhetoric, abjection, Self vs Other, alienation