Competing Theories of Identity in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis"

Author(s): KEVIN W. SWEENEY

Source: Mosaic: An Interdisciplinary Critical Journal , Fall 1990, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Fall
1990), pp. 23-35
Published by: University of Manitoba

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24780543

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 Competing Theories of Identity
in Kafka's The Metamorphosis

KEVIN W. SWEENEY

Although The Metamorphosis begins with Gregor Samsa finding "himself

changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin," the transformation is at thi
stage psychologically incomplete, enabling Kafka to conduct a philosophica
exploration of the nature of self, personhood and identity. Given the nature o
the inquiry, it is significant that instead of providing a monologic commentary
with a consistent theoretical framework, Kafka offers a dialogical, polyphonic
work, an example of what Mikhail Bakhtin has called a "heteroglossia" o
opposed voices (262-64). Since Kafka does not privilege any one theoretical
perspective, the reader is encouraged to undertake what Giles Deleuze and
Félix Guattari have called an "experimentation" (48-50), a process which
involves a recognition of the inadequacy of the respective opposed theories
and an acknowledgment of the unresolved nature of the debate.
Aiding the reader in this process of experimentation is the novella's tripar
tite structure: in each section Gregor attempts to leave his bedroom only to be
driven back into it. Repetitive in this way, however, each section of the work
also advances a different and opposing philosophical theory about the nature
of the self and the maintenance of personal identity. The first section presents
a dualist conception of the person: Gregor is a consciousness disembodied
from his original body and locked into an alien organism. In the second
section, behaviorist and materialist views challenge the earlier theory. Finally,
in the third section, both theories are countered by a social-constructionis
theory of the self and personal identity.

Mosaic 23/4
0027-1276-90/010023-13$01,50©Mosaic

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24 Kevin W. Sweeney

In the history of Western, philosophical explorations of personal identity,

John Locke's example of a prince's consciousness inhabiting the body of a
cobbler is perhaps the most famous. At the outset of The Metamorphosis, Gregor
Samsa seems to be a cross-species variation of Locke's prince-in-the-cobbler,
with Kafka exploring a Lockean-Cartesian theory of self and personal identity.
Like Descartes, Locke holds that a person (a self) is essentially a rational,
unified consciousness. A person, says Locke, "is a thinking intelligent being,
that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself, the same thinking thing,
in different times and places....For since consciousness always accompanies
thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self...as far
as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought,
so far reaches the identity of that person..." (448-49). Thus to Locke, an
individual is personally identical with someone at an earlier time, if the later
individual can remember as his or her own the experiences of the earlier.
Although he does not share the Cartesian ontological view that consciousness
is a separate substance distinct from the body, Locke, as Anthony Quinton
persuasively argues (396-97), agrees with Descartes's dualist view that the
self could possibly exist independently of its original body.
According to Locke's memory test, the insect is certainly Gregor Samsa.
Believing himself to be Gregor, he recognizes the bedroom, recalls Gregor's
past experiences and worries about catching the morning train. A wide variety
of mental phenomena (sensations, thoughts, intentions) are referred to, all
seemingly connected to Gregor's psychological past. They support the conscious
link to the past essential to the dualist theory of personal identity.
In keeping with the Lockean-Cartesian perspective, the first section of the
novella highlights not only Gregor's consciousness but also his capacity for
rational deliberation. For example, Gregor hesitates rocking his new body off
the bed, thinking, "he had better not for the life of him lose consciousness
... [yet] the most rational thing was to make any sacrifice for even the smallest
hope of freeing himself from the bed" (7). Sharing access to much of Gregor's
interior conscious life, the reader sympathizes with Gregor's plight and tries
to understand the rationale behind his behavior. In this narratively privileged
position, the reader initially accepts the Lockean-Cartesian explanation for
this bizarre catastrophe.
From this perspective, the reader sees Gregor as more than just spatially
separated from his family. Outside his room, imploring Gregor to open the
locked door, the family are excluded from sharing his trauma and only
indirectly sense that something must be wrong. The locked room—"a regular
human room" (3)—becomes a philosophical metonymy for Gregor's private
mentality. His predicament symbolizes the philosophical problem of other
minds: inferring the existence of a mind from physical events and external
behavior.
In his Discourse on Method, Descartes discusses two criteria for distin

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 Kafka and Identity 25

guishing "men from brutes" (116-17), both of which play a role in the Samsa
family's attempt to discover the truth about what is going on in Gregor's
bedroom. First, only human beings qua persons have the linguistic ability to
express thoughts. Secondly, while lower animals can do many things, some
better than humans, they cannot act with rational deliberation but only react
according to bodily predispositions. For Descartes, deliberate action and the
rational use of language are the marks and test of a rational consciousness.
Locke recognizes a similar test, although—citing the example of a talking
parrot (446-47)—he is not as confident that only human beings can speak.
The Samsa family apply both of Descartes's criteria to interpret what is
going on in the bedroom. On replying to his mother's questioning about not
catching the early morning train, Gregor is "shocked to hear his own voice
answering....[It was] unmistakably his own voice, true, but...an insistent
distressed chirping intruded, which left the clarity of his words intact only for
a moment really, before so badly garbling them..." (5). These garbled sounds
finally betray him when the office manager arrives, wanting an explanation
for Gregor's missing the train. Startled by the manager's accusations, Gregor
abandons caution and chirps out a long explanation. Family and manager are
stunned at what they hear. "Did you understand a word?...That was the voice
of an animal," says the manager (13). Realizing that his speech is now
unintelligible to those outside his door, although it "had seemed clear enough
to him," Gregor starts to lose confidence in his personal integrity. A metaphysical
barrier now separates him from other people.
The family and office manager also doubt the rationality of Gregor's
actions. Unable to understand why he continues to remain locked in his room,
the manager calls to him through the door, "I thought I knew you to be a quiet,
reasonable person, and now you suddenly seem to want to start strutting
about, flaunting strange whims" (11). Clearly both family and manager find
his behavior irrational and out of character. When he hears them call for a
doctor and a locksmith, Gregor anticipates being "integrated into human
society once again and hoped for marvelous, amazing feats from both the
doctor and the locksmith, without really distinguishing sharply between them"
(13). Gregor hopes that the locksmith will remove not only a spatial barrier
but will reintroduce him into the human and personal realm. Spatial access
and medical attention are seen as reaffirming what has come into question:
Gregor's status as a person.
When Gregor does unlock the door and reveal himself, however, the family
and manager are even more convinced of his irrational behavior They draw
back in horror at his insect epiphany and consider his entrance into the living
room to be outrageous behavior. Wielding the manager's cane, stamping his
foot and hissing, the father drives the loathsome insect back into the bedroom.
Rational persuasion is deemed inappropriate. "No plea of Gregor's helped,"
the narrator observes, "no plea was even understood; however humbly he
might turn his head, his father merely stamped his feet more forcefully" (18).
Faced with a being they believe to be incapable of linguistic comprehen

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26 Kevin W. Sweeney

sion and whom they see as acting irrationally, the family are in a moral and
conceptual quandary. As the only being inside Gregor's locked bedroom who
responds to their calls, the creature cannot be condemned simply as alien. Yet
neither can it be accepted in its own right as a person. Their response is a
compromise: they accept the creature as Gregor but take him to be suffering
from a severe incapacitating illness. Adopting this attitude excuses his strange
speech and behavior; they believe that he will be his old self again when he
recovers. In the second section, both mother and father regularly ask their
daughter whether Gregor has "perhaps shown a little improvement" (31). By
believing Gregor to be ill, the family reconciles the opposing beliefs that
Gregor still survives and that the monster in the bedroom is something less
than a person.
The reader also comes to adopt a strategy of reconciliation, trying to bring
together a dualist and a materialist theoretical context for the narrative.
Although, as Harold Skulsky argues, it is implausible to interpret The Meta
morphosis as a narrative of a "psychotic breakdown" (171-73), Gregor's
mental states are so at odds with his transformed body that the reader gives
some credence to Gregor's thought that he might be dreaming or imagining
the whole situation. Lying in bed, Gregor muses that "in the past he had often
felt some kind of slight pain, possibly caused by lying in an uncomfortable
position, which, when he got up, turned out to be purely imaginary, and he
was eager to see how today's fantasy would gradually fade away" (6). The
vividness of his experience coupled with the doubt about its veracity suggests
Franz Brentano's theory about the relation of mind to the world. From his
attendance at lectures in philosophy at the university in Prague and his
subsequent participation in a philosophical discussion group, Kafka, accord
ing to Ronald Hayman (35-36), was thoroughly familiar with Brentano's
views as presented by Brentano's pupil, Anton Marty. For Brentano, mental
phenomena exhibit intentionality: that is, all mental acts are aimed at objects
which exist in the mind but for which no correlative object in the world might
exist (i.e., one can think about or believe in the Fountain of Youth regardless
of whether it actually exists).
The possibility that Gregor's predicament might be imaginary, even though
the experience be vivid, challenges the reliability of his narrative point of
view. By raising questions about the veracity of Gregor's self-conscious
narration, the text makes room for an alternative conceptual explanation of
Gregor's identity. Although the reader initially accepts the dualist perspec
tive, Kafka gradually introduces an alternative to this original position, thereby
raising doubts about whether the insect continues to be Gregor Samsa. As a
result, the reader's attitude toward the underlying framework of the story
begins to shift: while accepting the insect as Gregor, the reader comes to
acknowledge evidence that undercuts this identity.

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 Kafka and Identity 27

As Kafka initially presents it, the relation of Gregor's consciousness to his

insect body is not a happy one. The carapace prevents him from acting as he
chooses, not allowing him to get out of bed easily, unlock the door, or answer
intelligibly his family's questions. He lacks that mental control over his new
body that Descartes describes as being closer to one's body than a pilot to a
ship. Gregor finds he has "numerous little legs, which were in every different
kind of perpetual motion and which, besides, he could not control" (7). The
new body also begins exhibiting a motivating character of its own, disrupting
the integrity of Gregor's original character. A sign of this change occurs in the
first section when Gregor enters the living room and involuntarily starts
snapping his jaws at some coffee spilling from an overturned pot (18). The
anxious reaction to his father's hissing is another example of insect behavior,
one stressed later in the novella when Gregor himself hisses with rage (44).
In the second section, more indications of an insectile nature emerge. He
feels a greater sense of well-being when his new body is allowed to behave in
its own natural way rather than being forced to stand upright in a human
posture. He also discovers the usefulness of his antennae, an ability to crawl
up the bedroom walls and a penchant for hanging from the ceiling (19, 31-32).
Insect patterns of sleep and waking develop: sleepy trances alternate with
wakeful periods punctuated with hunger pangs (23). His taste in food changes.
Milk, which had formerly been his favorite drink, is now repugnant to him, as
are fresh foods. He prefers leftovers and rotten vegetables, delighting in a
"piece of cheese, which two days before Gregor had declared inedible" (24).
The range of his vision decreases—"from day to day he saw things even a
short distance away less and less distinctly"—as does his sense of connection
with the outside world (29). He also begins not to notice the passage of time
(47).
His emotional reactions change, often in ways that he does not understand.
He is anxious or frightened at things which formerly would not have affected
him. He notices that "the empty high-ceilinged room in which he was forced
to lie flat on the floor made him nervous without his being able to tell why..."
(23). This same uneasiness and fear are provoked by his sister's cleaning his
room (30). Of course, a change of tastes and habits per se need not show the
replacement of one person by another (or a person by an insect). Yet, increasingly
in the novella, these changes take place outside the scope and limits of
Gregor's awareness: he either does not understand why the shifts in attitude
and preference have occurred, or he is only dimly aware of the new motivation.
In the beginning of the second section, he crawls to the bedroom door: "Only
after he got to the door did he notice what had really attracted him—the smell
of something to eat" (21). Increasingly, Gregor acts from animal instinct
rather than from self-conscious awareness. This invasion of his private self by
a new motivating agency suggests the gradual replacement of his former
personality.
In one of his rare moments of reflection, when gobbling down the "ined
ible" cheese, he ponders: "Have I become less sensitive?" (24). However,

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28 Kevin W. Sweeney

unlike the reader who starts to question this creature's identity, he resists an
answer. He continues to act in ignorance, on occasion even concocting spuri
ous reasons for his behavior. For example, he worries about not being able to
support his parents and sister. "In order not to get involved in such thoughts,"
the narrator adds, "Gregor decided to keep moving and he crawled up and
down the room" (22). An air of false consciousness pervades this "decision."
Complicitously selective, the narrator withholds the full account of Gregor's
motivations, providing only the rationale as Gregor perceives it. Instead of a
conscious choice, a more likely motivation is that crawling up and down is an
insect's instinctive response to a frightening situation. Gregor reacts in this
same insect-like manner to other anxiety-producing incidents.
With the gradual encroachment of one character on another, the rational
conscious self (on the Lockean-Cartesian model) loses its status as sole
"pilot," and a new motivating agency exercises control. Gregor's individual
ity begins to unravel. When Grete (Gregor's sister) proposes to move some
furniture out of Gregor's room in order to give him more crawling space, the
mother protests: to her "the sight of the bare wall was heartbreaking; and why
shouldn't Gregor have the same feeling." On hearing his mother's objection,
Gregor realizes that in wanting the furniture removed he had been "on the
verge of forgetting" his human past (33). If only for a moment, he perceives
that his new attitudes and preferences are in conflict with his human past.
Gregor's awareness and understanding (mental activity identified with his
humanity) clash with his new insectile character. In philosophical terms, the
Lockean-Cartesian dualist account of Gregor-as-consciousness opposes a
materialist-behaviorist account of his emerging instinctive character. From
the latter perspective, the disposition to behave in insect-like ways is produced
by the insect's physiology interacting with its environment. According to
dualism, in contrast, Gregor's pre-transformational psyche or consciousness
continues despite the physical changes that have taken place.
The clash between Gregor-as-insect and Gregor-as-consciousness can be
seen in the following oppositions. First, the insect-states and behavior do not
originate from Gregor's earlier human character: they are newly introduced
and independent of Gregor's human past. Gregor's consciousness, however,
is clearly related to his human past. Secondly, insect-character and human
character are unfused: no unified personality integrates both insect and human
traits. Aside from a few acknowledgments of their existence, Gregor's new
insectile attitudes and dispositions remain outside his consciousness. No
sense of self-consciousness accompanies them. Although at times Gregor
ponders their presence, he does not consciously claim them as his own. Thus,
instead of a unified self, the transformed Gregor is fissured into two characters,
clashing yet jointly existing in the same body.
Because of this unresolved theoretical clash, the novella does not provide
an answer to the question of whether the insect is physiologically intact or
composite. In their discussion of The Metamorphosis, both John Updike (HI
SS) and Vladimir Nabokov (250-83) see Gregor's physical indeterminateness

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 Kafka and Identity 29

as a necessary feature of the work. This biological indeterminacy is revealed

in numerous anthropomorphic descriptions of the transformed Gregor (e.g.,
his "eyes streaming with tears of contentment" [24]). Leaving in doubt the
exact nature of Gregor's physiological transformation more forcefully pits
dualism against materialism. To assume that the insect has at least part of a
human brain, allows the materialist/behaviorist a consistent explanation for
both Gregor's human and insectile behavior.

Not only do dualist and materialist interpretations collide, but a third

account of personal identity intrudes. Dominating the novella's final section,
this third conception involves seeing a person as an individual constituted by
certain social relationships. Personal identity is maintained by preserving the
constituting social relationships. Failure to preserve them, even though an
individual maintains psychological or material continuity, erodes personal
identity.
Prefigured in Plato's Republic, social-constructionist theories of the self
have a long and eminent history. Their most influential nineteenth-century
advocates are Hegel ("Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself, in that,
and by the fact that it exists for another self-consciousness; that is to say, it is
only by being acknowledged or 'recognized'" [229]) and Marx (400-02). In
this century, George Herbert Mead's theory of the self as "social object" (136
44) and Louis Althusser's neo-Marxist account (127-86) are in that tradition.
Recently, Erving Goffman has promoted a theory of the self as constituted by
a nexus of social roles. Selves, he claims, are produced by particular forms of
social interaction and do not exist independently of social contexts. For
Goffman, the self "as a performed character, is not an organic thing that has a
specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, and to die;
it is a dramatic effect...[and] the means for producing and maintaining selves
...are often bolted down in social establishments" (252-53).
Although most fully presented in the novella's final section, the social
constructionist theory of personal identity does appear in earlier sections. In
the first section, the locked door, Gregor's chirping and his peculiar behavior
are not the only obstacles to social reintegration and self-validation. The
family's reaction to Gregor's new body also plays a role. "If they were
shocked," the narrator comments, "then Gregor had no further responsibility
and could be calm. But if they took everything calmly, then he too, had no
reason to get excited..." (12). If the family accepts him, then his self (defined
as provider, son, brother, household member, etc.) is maintained. If they reject
him, these same self-constituting ties are severed and Gregor's identity begins
to unravel.
In the second section, after the calamitous rejection by his family, Gregor
seeks to reestablish his relationship with them. Wondering how best to lead
his new life, he concludes "that for the time being he would have to lie low

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30 Kevin W. Sweeney

and, by being patient and showing his family every possible consideration,
help them bear the inconvenience which he simply had to cause them in his
present condition" (23). His passive resignation in favor of patience and
consideration, however, does not actively fulfill his role as family member. It
is undertaken more for his own convenience than to mend a ruptured social
tie. Being locked in his bedroom by his family is actually reassuring: he feels
gratified that there will be no frightening intrusions.
Instead of reintegrating him, Gregor's self-deceived commitment to patient
resignation widens the separation between him and his family. The widening
gap between them is also a verbal one. After his chirping explanation to the
office manager and his subsequent supplication to his mother, he never attempts
to communicate verbally with anyone. In turn, his family abandons the notion
that he is able to understand their speech: "since the others could not understand
what he said, it did not occur to any of them, not even to his sister, that he
could understand what they said..." (25). He receives news of them only
indirectly.
Nevertheless, his sister Grete does try to establish a new relationship with
Gregor. Unfortunately, their relationship lacks reciprocity and she ends up
creating only a new family role and identity for herself. Up until Gregor's
transformation, Grete has been a child with few family responsibilities. By
assuming the duty of feeding Gregor and cleaning his room, she takes on the
role of an adult and with it an adult self. Gregor hears the family say "how
much they appreciated his sister's work, whereas until now they had frequently
been annoyed with her because she struck them as being a little useless" (31).
Her childish indolence has given way to a more mature acceptance of respon
sibility. In her parents' eyes she has become an adult.
Although Grete maintains regular contact with Gregor, Grete and the
family fail to reestablish a familial personal relationship with him. "If Gregor,"
the narrator says, "had only been able to speak to his sister and thank her for
everything she had to do for him, he could have accepted her services more
easily; as it was, they caused him pain" (29). Thus, for want of communication
and a reciprocity of relations, Gregor's position in the family disintegrates
and his sense of self erodes.
His insect-anxiety toward his sister increases until the watershed scene in
which his sister and mother remove the furniture from his room. As the
narrator notes, on hearing his mother's objections to moving the furniture,
"Gregor realized that the monotony of family life, combined with the fact that
not a soul had addressed a word directly to him, must have addled his brain in
the course of the past two months, for he could not explain to himself in any
other way how in all seriousness he could have been anxious to have his room
cleared out." His decreasing contacts with his family have eroded his sense of
being a person. Resolving to resist this gradual depersonalizing influence, he
now wants "the beneficial influence of the furniture on his state of mind" (33).
The furniture comes to represent Gregor's past self-preserving relationship
with his family, awakening him to the intrusion of his animal instincts. When

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 Kafka and Identity 31

he frightens his mother in an effort to halt their removing the furniture, Grete
starts to shout at Gregor. "These were the first words," the narrator interjects,
that "she had addressed directly to him since his metamorphosis." They
awaken the hope that a family relationship might be reestablished. In the
confusion of Grete's ministering to their mother, Gregor runs out of the
bedroom, leaving the depersonalizing isolation of his bedroom for the public
interactive space of the living room. Hearing that "Gregor's broken out," the
father once again drives him back into the confinement of the bedroom, this
time wounding him with a thrown apple (36). Patriarchal intervention has
dashed Gregor's hopes of reintegrating himself into the family circle.
The third section, the section in which the implications of the social
constructionist theory are most fully explored, begins with the family's seemingly
begrudging acceptance of Gregor as a family member. His wound "seemed to
have reminded even his father that Gregor was a member of the family, in
spite of his present pathetic and repulsive shape ...[and] it was the command
ment of family duty to swallow their disgust and endure him, endure him and
nothing else" (40). Yet this commitment to tolerance still allows Gregor no
positive role in family matters. He eventually disregards both the open door,
which the family leave ajar out of their awakened sense of duty, and his earlier
resolution to be considerate of his family, especially in keeping himself clean
(46). "It hardly surprised him," the reader learns, "that lately he was showing
so little consideration for others; once such consideration had been his great
est pride" (48). Gregor is "hardly surprised" because much of his disregard for
his family is motivated by his new instinctual character.
In keeping with this new character, Gregor now shows an interest in music.
Unlike his sister who enjoys playing the violin, Gregor had earlier shown little
interest in music. Nevertheless, in his role as provider and loving brother, he
had planned to realize the "beautiful dream" of sending Grete to the conservatory
to study her instrument (27). Hearing Grete playing her violin in the living
room for three boarders whom the family have taken in to help meet expenses,
Gregor once again leaves his bedroom, creeping through the inadvertently
open doorway into the living room (48). Given his earlier complacency
toward music, Gregor's attraction is likely produced by his insectile character.
Although the Orphic myth of music charming the beast is the underlying
theme here, the ambiguity of Gregor's action (the narrator does not specify
whether Gregor's attraction is due to animal magnetism or deliberate choice)
is sustained by his asking, and failing to answer, another of his self-reflecting
questions: "Was he an animal, that music could move him so?" (49). In the
reverie of the moment, Gregor starts to fantasize about bringing Grete back to
his room and revealing his plan to send her to the conservatory. In his fantasy
he attempts to reconstitute his relationship with his sister and reclaim his
sense of self. Yet so remote is the likelihood of the fantasy becoming fact (i.e.,
Gregor's talking to Grete, and her being kissed by something she considers
repulsive) that it highlights the absurdity of their reestablishing any personal
relationship. A boarder's shriek at Gregor's dust-covered carapace abruptly

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32 Kevin W. Sweeney

ends his reverie. This latest outrage by Gregor prompts the family to discuss
getting rid of "the monster" (51).
The social-constructionist theory of self underlies much of the family's
discussion of what to do with the monster. "If he could understand us," the
father bewails, "then maybe we could come to an agreement with him." To
which Grete replies: "You just have to get rid of the idea that it's Gregor.
Believing it for so long, that is our real misfortune. But how can it be Gregor?
If it were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that it isn't possible for
human beings to live with such a creature, and he would have gone away of
his own free will. Then we wouldn't have a brother, but we'd be able to go on
living and honor his memory" (52). Cut off from communicating with the
creature, the family can neither reforge the familial bond with Gregor nor
establish a new one. The sister's argument against the monster's being her
brother does not appeal to the physical impossibility of his continued existence.
To a great extent the family have accepted Gregor's physical transformation.
Instead the appeal is social: given the widening disparity between their two
life forms, there is no basis for a personal relationship. Not only has Gregor
changed, but the family has changed as well, becoming now more resourceful
and self-sufficient. All three of them have jobs.
Since the creature cannot maintain the former relationship of being a son
and brother, it must not be Gregor. The sister, however, does allow the
creature one limit-position in which to be a brother: the monster could disap
pear and by so doing show its consideration for the family. Such an act would
be a brotherly act, fulfilling a role while at the same time dissolving it.
In the hope of resolving the metaphysical impasse, the reader might be
inclined to interpret Gregor's death early the next morning as such an act of
brotherly consideration. The undercutting of one theory of self by another,
however, extends also to his death. The nature of Gregor's death and its
causes are equally open to question by the respective theories. No one theory
convincingly explains his end.
According to the dualist perspective, Gregor could be seen as consciously
committing suicide because he realizes the hopelessness of his situation. After
all, the family take his gestures of concern to be either threatening or irratio
nal. No longer wishing to live separated from those he loves, he starves
himself to death. Corroborating this view is the narrator's observation: "[Gregor]
thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he
would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's" (54).
According to this account, his earlier refusal to eat leads up to this "conviction."
The limited and shifting focus of the narration, however, also allows for a
materialist reading: the change in eating habits and the death indicate not
conscious choices but the course of the insect's life cycle, exacerbated by the
infected wound from the apple thrown by the father. Since not all of Gregor's
personal reflections are to be trusted (e.g., his conscious rationalizations for
his instinctively motivated behavior), events leading up to his death should
not be seen as excluding a materialist interpretation. In the description of

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 Kafka and Identity 33

Gregor's death, there occurs a curious phrase about his lack of volition:
"Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his
nostrils streamed his last breath" (54; emphasis mine). The denial of "consent"
calls into question Gregor's agency: death might be the result of an enfeebled
condition rather than an intended starvation.
The social-constructionist theory can also provide an account of Gregor's
death. Just before being drawn into the living room by his sister's violin
playing, Gregor listens to the boarders eating: '"I'm hungry enough,' Gregor
said to himself, full of grief, 'but not for these things. Look how these roomers
are gorging themselves, and I'm dying!"' (47). Hungry, "but not for these
things," Gregor yearns for nourishment other than food, for an emotional
sustenance derived from an active involvement with his family. With the
dissolution of the family bond, he emotionally and socially starves to death.
Gregor's fantasy of announcing to Grete his intention to send her to the
conservatory also supports a social-constructionist interpretation of his later
demise. Even if his death is something he consciously contemplated, his
passive and fantasized past behavior renders suspicious Gregor's "conviction
that he would have to disappear..." (54). The narrator is unreliable about
Gregor's passive "contributions" to his family: Gregor's patient hiding in his
room is instinctively motivated rather than consciously intended. Thus, the
reader should be suspicious of crediting Gregor with actively bringing about
his own end. On the social-constructionist view, only within the bounds of the
family relationship can Gregor act positively and have a sense of personal
agency. Despite the sister's claim that Gregor would disappear if he were her
brother, the family do not recognize his death as an act of consideration. In
fact, they react to it as good fortune.
Thus, by maintaining an ambivalence among the dualist, materialist and
social-constructionist explanations for Gregor's death, Kafka preserves the
tension and opposition among all three of Gregor's "identities:" a self-con
sciousness, an instinctual organism and a social persona—a "shadow being"
trying fantastically to maintain itself in a disintegrating family relationship.

The sustained opposition and tension among the three positions cloud not
only the nature of Gregor's death but the extent of the family's moral respon
sibility toward him. Each of the three theories undercuts the other two positions;
this mutual undermining leaves unresolved questions about the limits of
responsibility toward those whose personhood is in doubt, just as it leaves
unresolved questions about the basis for moral relationships in the face of
instinctual behavior and the extent to which social ties create moral responsi
bilities.
In contrast to the moral debate of the third section, the novella's epilogue
introduces a false sense of closure. It drowns out the debate by depicting the
family as reunified, smug in their togetherness, having weathered the catastro

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34 Kevin W. Sweeney

phe of Gregor's final appearance and death. The epilogue thus obscures an
ethical issue that the reader must still confront: whether, prior to his death,
Gregor stops being a person who deserves the moral support of his family.
The epilogue, especially what Stanley Corngold has called "the falseness and
banality of the tone of the ending" (174), cuts off this moral questioning. It
closes the work by resolving its moral ambiguity, covering up its thematic
antagonisms and destroying what Joseph Margolis (27-42) sees as the philo
sophical tensions of the work.
In his Diaries, Kafka himself expressed displeasure at the novella's "un
readable ending" (12). For a writer who registered repeated disapproval of his
writing, this castigation may be no more than the carping of a perpetually
unsatisfied artist unwilling to acknowledge that the writing has ended. Yet, it
may also register his adoption of the stance of the reader and a call for the type
of "experimental" reading process I have described. Indeed, as Camus has
noticed, "The whole art of Kafka consists in forcing the reader to reread. His
endings, or his absence of endings, suggest explanations which, however, are
not revealed in clear language but, before they seem justified, require that the
story be reread from another point of view" (92). Rather than arriving at a
"justified" closure, one is more apt on rereading the novella to sense the clash
and mutual undercutting of philosophical theories. Perhaps Kafka's displeasure
at the epilogue thus reveals not artistic dissatisfaction but rather a desire not to
obscure the competing ethical and philosophical issues that the work raises.
In the twentieth century more than any other century, human beings have
faced perplexing questions about the nature of their identities as persons.
From our educational heritage, we have developed as rational consciousnesses,
while at the same time we have increasingly come to understand the biological
(i.e., material) determinants of our characters. The rapid social changes of the
recent past have made us realize both the role that social organization plays in
the constitution of who we are and our dependence on a stable social context
for maintaining our identities. These ways of thinking about ourselves (as
conscious, biological or social beings) are far from compatible conceptual
schémas. Kafka's novella makes this incompatibility all too clear.

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