And so here I am. I have to keep following the path. I have to hope that it will guide me back home somehow, when it's the same path that keeps leadinAnd so here I am. I have to keep following the path. I have to hope that it will guide me back home somehow, when it's the same path that keeps leading me farther and farther away from it."
Leaving his hotel for a quick stroll, Ben quickly finds a hiking path to walk down. For a short time, everything seems normal but, when he tries to stray from the path and go back to the hotel, very weird things start to happen and he realizes that he is trapped on this path.
The Hike is a Surreal Odysseyeque tale of a middle-aged man getting trapped on a path (with some very odd characters) and trying everything to make it back home to his wife and kids. While it originally feels incredibly absurd and random at times, the more we connect to Ben and learn about him, the more sense the path begins to make, until it starts to come together at the end. And kudos to this man for playing by the Odyssey rules and having Ben love his wife and kids so much and be willing to go through anything to get back to them. There is not much I respect more than a man on a quest to get back to the woman he loves, and after reading a book that *promised* that but didn't deliver very recently, I was very pleasantly surprised by how sweet this one was in that regard (while still being incredibly vulgar in other ways).
Some stars deducted because I didn't love the writing and in a lot of ways this book isn't really for me, but it's surreal and horrifying and really quite absurd while still being filled with heart. And once I settled into it a bit more, I did start to warm to the aspects that weren't really my style (namely, the humor) and found myself chuckling to myself quite a lot near the end.
It never fails to amaze me just how little I know about classics before I read them. Take this for example. All I knew about Metamorphosis was that a It never fails to amaze me just how little I know about classics before I read them. Take this for example. All I knew about Metamorphosis was that a man turned into bug and Kafka was adamantly against using an image of a bug on any covers for this book (rip Kafka, you would’ve hated 99% of the covers for this book), I expected it to be good, but I didn’t expect it to emotionally devastate me. I find it quite impressive that whilst reading this novella featuring a man-turned-bug I constantly felt sick, but that feeling of disgust was never directed at the unfortunate Gregor; it was directed at the gut-wrenching reaction to him once he stopped being a “useful” member of society.
tldr: This book ruined my life.
“Why was only Gregor condemned to work for a company where the smallest lapse was greeted with the gravest suspicion?”
A big part of this book centers around what becomes of a person when, for whatever reason, they are no longer fit to work. Gregor Samsa handles waking up only to realize he has transformed in the night exactly as any overworked person whose entire family is completely reliant on their income: he said screw it, ‘What if I went back to sleep for a while, and forgot about all this nonsense?’ Which is, unfortunately, so real. You’re overworked, overstressed, overtired, waking up before the sunrise and realise that you are now in a state that would be deemed unfit to work and may potentially lose your job, of course you’re going to sleep and hoping that things work themselves out before you wake up again, because what are you going to do if it doesn’t? The interaction with his boss at the beginning was absolutely insane, but so representative of how so many bosses view their employees—even the ones that do their jobs perfectly for years aren’t safe from the wrath that one slipup incurs. Seriously, Gregor had never called in sick for 5 years, yet they went ballistic and assumed absolute worst of him when he was a couple hours late to work (because he was a bug and didn’t know how to use his new, little legs, so how was he going to get on a train?) and immediately threatened to fire him? While EVERY SINGLE thought he has when he first realizes he is now a bug is about how he is going to get to work and do his job. That man was seriously considering taking the bus as a BUG (he just had to figure out how to stand up, your honor!) and they had the gall to start yelling at him? That story definitely belongs on r/antiwork. Throughout the entire book I find it quite fascinating that Gregor never views this metamorphosis as how it affects him internally, but fixates on how this affects his ability to keep his job and provide for his family. The focus on this highlights just how conditioned we are to be productive members of society at all costs and how dangerous it can for one’s well-being when they are viewed as just another cog in the machine, whose value is only tied to their usefulness and when they live in a society that requires overworking yourself to put food on the table. Metamorphosis has a strong foundation, set up by Samsa’s need to provide for his family and his ability to do just that taken away. Once he is deemed useless, his thoughts of how he has failed his family begin. Never once does he blame his family for how abhorrently they treat him, because he genuinely believes that he is disgusting and terrible, not because he is a bug, but because he can no longer provide money for them. And because of that, he genuinely believes that he deserves this treatment and accepts it with an unconditional love and desire only to help his family in any way he can, whatever that may mean for himself.
“But what if all peace, prosperity, all contentment, were to come to a sudden and terrible end?”
Gregor’s fear of losing “peace, prosperity, all contentment” is not for himself, but for his family. He works like a dog in order for them to maintain that and, once he is unable to do so, his main fear is that he will be the cause of their demise. It seems clear that his father, who took on a strict and violent method with him as soon as he transformed, has instilled in him the belief that he has to be the provider for the family and that everyone will rely on him, following in his father and many men’s footsteps in a patriarchal society. What we see of his father’s feelings towards him are extremely straightforward. His son has fallen. His son will surely never be good enough now that he is in this predicament, so he turns towards rage. There is no sympathy in the way his father views him now, and it leads me to wonder if there ever was or if he was doomed from the start. His mother is the stereotypical “if you don’t see the world/live in the world my way then there is something inherently wrong with you” type, which opens some interesting avenues for discussion on the treatment of disabled people. There is a scene where she is fighting with the sister and says, ‘Isn’t it the case as well, that by taking away his furniture, we would be showing him we were abandoning all hope of an improvement of his condition, and leaving him utterly to his own devices?’ It is almost laughable how often I have heard a variation of that sentiment in the modern day. Her adamance to keep things the same, despite the very obvious changes in her son’s physical needs, speaks to an unwillingness to give accessibility because in doing so, she would have to accept that he has changed, which is something she is not willing to do, even if it will make Gregor’s quality of life significantly better. Grete, his sister, is the most interesting and heartbreaking of the group because of how strong Gregor and Grete’s love runs. They were always by each other’s side, looking out for each other. He would have given her the world; he was trying to before he transformed. In a way, the whole family has a metamorphosis, but hers is the most clear (besides Gregor’s, of course). As time moves, the burden of this “beast” she can barely see as her brother begins to far outweigh her desire to help him and make him comfortable. My jaw was on the floor for the last few pages, and, while the entire family was heinous, she was the main reason why.
“... he thought how simple everything would be if he had some help.”
From the start of the book, there is a language (species?) barrier when it comes to communication, at least for his family. While Gregor can perfectly understand his family, they cannot understand him and therefore assume that he cannot understand them. This, along with the fact that his family thinks he is so disgusting that they can’t look at him and can barely stand to be in the same room as him, alienates Gregor, leaving him completely alone by the time the story is over. But, in the beginning, there were glimpses of what could have been. Multiple times, Gregor notes just how much easier his life would be if he just had some help, or thinks about how his father wouldn’t have to harm him if he just noticed that the reason Gregor wasn’t moving fast enough was because there was something blocking him. The importance of community and togetherness is highlighted well through the injuries that Gregor sustains and how his family feels about him. When he is first seriously injured, he is completely healed quite quickly because, even though his parents have already given up on him and his sister is quite distressed about the situation, his sister makes an effort to accommodate him and his new needs. He isn’t lucky with his second injury, as he is now completely alone and rejected by everyone. This time, he suffers the injury for months and the weapon stays embedded in him, with no one who cares enough, or wants enough to get it out. Even when he thinks about helping his family, he moves significantly faster than when he is feeling especially rejected. I cannot stop thinking about how different this story would have been if his family worked towards helping and accommodating him, and it breaks my heart all over again. Kafka made it clear just how valuable it was whenever his sister, though rare, showed him kindness, as it quite literally healed him. There is power in community, there is power in family, there is power in love. Humans are social beings and we are not meant to crawl through this world on our own.
“Meanwhile, Gregor of course didn’t have the least intention of frightening anyone, and certainly not his sister.”
The part of this that really makes me sick is just how good of a person Gregor is. Being inside his head and seeing just how everything he does is with his family in mind, even as they reject him and isolate him, is nauseating and fills me with a deep pain. The only times he gets in trouble are when he leaves his room and the only times he leaves his room are when he is trying to help his family. How does one just throw someone away, especially someone who loves and cares for them so deeply and did so much for them. How do you not even check to see if your brother, your son who you have known for years can understand you even if he cannot communicate with you? How devastating it must be to be Gregor Samsa, who has only ever put his family first, but has finally worn out his use. How devastating it must be to be thrown away in disgust. How devastating it must be to justify this mistreatment by rationalizing that he somehow deserves it, because how can he, who has loved his family so deeply and unconditionally rationalize the fact that they weren’t willing to go near him let alone try and help him through this weird and unsettling change. How different this book would have been if they were willing to look past his grotesque exterior and understand that their boy was still there. Well, now I feel sick again, and I just want to give that little vermin a hug. This book made me cry way too many times for its seventy-seven pages. It shredded my soul to pieces and left me hollowed out. I want to go on and on about how brilliant and painful and relatable it is, I want to never shut up about it. This is one of those books that makes me question how I gave so many other books five stars before it because now it doesn’t feel as special to give this one five stars. This book is seared into my soul, and I fear it’ll stay there forever.
“It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.” “It occurred to me that anyway one more Sunday was over, that Maman was buried now, that I was going to work, and that, really, nothing had changed.”
The Stranger is a story that primarily exists to show the reader that there is no meaning in this chaos called life and that we must accept that. My main issue with this book was simply that, while I can agree with the absurdist philosophy in theory, my brain cannot accept it. Nonetheless, this is an incredibly well done story and deserves its place as a modern classic.
_______ pre-review: My first foray into absurdism and… I was anxious the entire time.