Death is the only manner of true escape in Metamorphosis

Death is the only manner of true escape in Metamorphosis by Kafka and in We by Zamyatin

In this paper we are going to discuss and compare two great masterpieces of the twentieth century: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and We by Zamyatin.

Franz Kafka was one of the most famous and extraordinary writers. His story “The Metamorphosis” Kafka wrote in 1912, he needed three weeks to finish it. He expressed his dissatisfaction with the work and assumed the ending was not proper. Still, the work was rather high appreciated and popular, it was even called “one of the most analyzed works of the twentieth century literature” (Pawel, 2).

We can be considered an inspiration for the sub genre of science fiction – dystopian novel. For the first time it was published in English and only thanks to the Chekhov Publishing House in New York was it later published also in Russian. The writer had to come through the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the profound and sophisticated emotions, which arose in him, served the basis for writing this novel.

The Metamorphosis and We are both stories of isolation, despair, bewilderment, reflecting the authors’ personal emotional experiences and difficulties, where the only possible escape is death; at the same time there are some differences between the two writings due to various backgrounds and some key themes, the authors aimed to discuss.

The first difference between We and The Metamorphosis lies in the genres they were written in. We, as it we already mentioned, is a futuristic dystopian satire. Its main goal is to reveal and to criticize the totalitarian and conformative aspects of the society, by giving to the state the complete power over the minds and soul of its inhabitants, depriving them of any manifestation of free will. There are two systems for the people to follow - mathematical precision and industrial efficiency. In order to show how deeply the government controls the people, Zamyatin describes houses and everything, which are made of glass or other transparent materials; this means, that actions of everybody are constantly under supervision and control. This exaggeration is a direct reflection of author’s critical attitude towards communist regime in Russia and was one of the reasons, why this book was prohibited for publishing for many times.

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The surrealism of The Metamorphosis is not entertaining or close to fantasy, it is deeply emotional and touching. Themes, setting, symbols, characters of the story present a mixture penetrating deep into reader’s soul and even the oddness of the plot doesn’t draw so much attention as feelings of the characters. We can not say “The Metamorphosis» is incomplete, it is formally structured into three Roman-numbered parts, there is a climax in every part. A number of themes run through the story, but at the center are the familial relationships fundamentally affected by the great change in the story's protagonist, Gregor Samsa (Pawel, 51). From the first part the reader learns about metamorphosis happened to the main hero – Gregor Samsa and about the reaction of his family, in the second part the author describes the development and changes in the relations between Gregor and his family members, especially his sister, and in the last section we read about Gregor’s death and changes that occurred to the rest of his family.

As contrast to The Metamorphosis, in We the central theme is related not to the problems of family, but to the society as whole. The impact of the totalitarian political structure, developed in Russia by Stalin is evident. The plot and the language of the novel contribute to creation of the absurd and full of nightmares world, where the oppressive and gloomy atmosphere is present. In order to underline the fact, that separate members of the society are needless and insignificant, that author doesn’t use any names, only codes for all the humans, differentiating men and women only by vowels and consonants. The whole society received the name of the One State, a glass city, where the Benefactor is a head of it. In order to split humans from nature there is a huge Green Wall, which symbolizes the strict limits, set by the totalitarian government in Stalin’s Russia. The narration tells about the period after the Two Hundred Years War, during which 0.2 of the whole population of the earth died. However there is no direct information about this war, there are only biblical metaphors, which point out the main aim of the war as “a rare substance called "bread" as the "Christians gladiated over it"—as in countries fighting conventional wars” (Zamyatin, 82). The war ended only after the application of the super weapons, when the grass started to grow over the old buildings and streets.

The setting of The Metamorphosis doesn’t vary a lot, these are mostly two places: Gregor’s room and dining room in their house. Setting, namely the furniture, is very important at the moment when Gregor’s sister and mother decided to take away the furniture from his room, they justified their actions by the wish to help him, in reality this was a kind of last confirmation that Gregor would never be able to return to his normal life again and the last link to his past was thereby broken. The main hero of The Metamorphosis is not the narrator, somehow the narrator is aware of the intrinsic thoughts and ideas of Gregor.

The story is built upon a lot of parallels and symbols, there is certainly the reflection of general depression and despondency of the second part of the twentieth century, but mostly there are clear symbolic connections to the author’s private problems. Unusual plot and profound emotions are on the surface of the novella, in order to study the depth of the story it is necessary to be aware of the author’s biographical facts and then the relation of the story to the personality of the author is evident.

In the narration by Zamyatin we can also trace the exploration of the individual and its relationships with the society. The author, being able to penetrate deeply into the human soul, managed to transcend the “dehumanizing consequences of imagination’s destruction” (Gimpelevich, 20). His work is rather sophisticated and heavy, and at the same time there are some points, where he inserts laughter as a powerful injection of something good and supporting.

The theme of isolation is important in The Metamorphosis and the author turned to it as he himself experienced it and it was not connected only to his isolation from his family - he was extremely lonely in the society that seemed strange to him, or he was a stranger, as a Polish-born Jew in Europe of those times. The theme of isolation is thus one of the most vivid and important in the story, the main hero experiences physical isolation as he was turned into a bug, and it only worsens the state of his emotional solitude. The echo of isolation is in We also, as there people are living in the world without friendship and without love. Somebody, who would risk to “taste” love will be deprived on his feeling through killing his memories.

Finally both heroes of the narrations escape from their sufferings, from the worlds they were living in. Gregor Samsa dies and D-503 has to go through the procedure, which is very close to lobotomy, after which he will forget his rebellious ideas and his love and will return to the grey mass of others. The Metamorphosis and We explore several close themes, like for example place of an individual in the society, isolation, emotional strength and weakness of people, escape from reality and from cruelty of the surrounding world; at the same time the two narrations have different key points underlined by the authors, as Kafka was more concentrated on his family problems, whereas Zamyatin devoted his work to criticizing the political system in Russia.