The analysis of literature frequently reduces the study of the text to analysis of the technical  characteristics and forbids us from providing a coherent response to a simple question: how does this piece of literature make us feel? For me, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is haunting as it simultaneously highlights and illustrates a process of ‘becoming’ and the essential futility of that process. Throughout this essay, it will be argued that The Metamorphosis can be interpreted as an illustration of the process of ‘becoming-animal’. In order to illustrate this argument, the author will highlight the processes through which Gregor Samsa becomes-animal, namely the physical manifestation of the creature, the sounds emitted by the creature and the dramatically altered appetite of the Gregor/creature post-transformation. In addition, it will be argued, against Deleuze and Guattari’s thesis in Kafka: toward a minor literature,that The Metamorphosis cannot be characterised as a story of becoming and subsequent re-oedipalization. Rather, Gregor Samsa retains a number of tethers to his essential humanity that are severed by the process of becoming-animal as the plot develops. Irrespective of this, the conclusion of the novella reveals the futility of the aforementioned. Furthermore, the author will draw parallels with a number of Kafka’s ‘animal stories’ and the wider novels. However, the author will demonstrate the theoretical context for this essay by introducing the concepts of becoming and a minor literature.  

For Deleuze and Guattari, to become “is to participate in a movement, to stake out a path of escape in all positivity, to cross a threshold, to reach of continuum of intensities that are valuable only in themselves, to find a world of pure intensities where all forms come undone” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p13). To become, the individual or character, must move from the homogenised and constant (the major) to the variable (the minor) in which they no longer occupy a realm of stability and identity but become imperticibly folded into a movement whose defining characteristics are nomadism and the rhizome. For example, in the novel Crash, J.G. Ballard invokes a nightmarish series of non-places and impositions of the automobile upon individuals to involve them in a process of becoming-machine: “The young woman was helped from her car. Her awkward legs and the angular movements of her head appeared to mimic the destroyed streamlining of two cars” (Ballard: 2014: p11). The ‘awkward legs’ of the young woman are distorted by the streamlined consequences of the automobile accident which subsequently alters our perception of the extents of the automobile and the human. Therefore, the human body is delineated and dissected by the automobile and subsequently becomes-machine. For more on this, please see Reading High-Rise and Crash with Deleuze and Guattari. Additionally, in Kafka: toward a minor literature, Deleuze and Guattari contest that Kafka’s process of writing embodied a process of becoming as his writing illustrates the ‘line of escape’ through which we might escape the machine and the integral characteristics of the machine itself: “To enter or leave the machine, to be machine, to walk around, to approach – these are still components of the machine itself” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p7-8). However, Kafka’s stories present us with a process of becoming which is subsequently followed by re-integration into a previously identified established and regulated function. Kafka, an employee of the Workers Accident Insurance Institute, becomes a Kafka-machine through the creation of his stories: in which, particularly in the ‘animal stories’ his characters are presented as challenging their limits as subjects, however, not dissimilar to himself, his characters are firmly rooted in the capital-machine, bureaucracy-machine or the burrow-machine from which they arise. For example, in Amerika, the previously nomadic Karl seeks integration into the hotel-machine: “‘Yes I’m free’, said Karl, and nothing seemed more worthless than his freedom. ‘Listen, wouldn’t you like to take a job here in the hotel?’ asked the Manageress. ‘Very much’, said Karl, ‘but I have terribly little experience. For instance, I can’t even use a typewriter” (Kafka: 1938: p304). The delineated and nomadic Karl, who had previously roamed the eastern United States of America alongside his counterparts Delamarche and Robinson, seeks out the stabilised and regulated functions and identity of the hotel-machine.

A minor literature  arises not from a minority language, but is constructed rhizomatically from minor linguistic constructs in a major language. On the other hand, major literatures are constructed as an arborescent representation of the linguistic constructs of major languages.  For Deleuze and Guattari, a minor literature has three defining characteristics. Initially, “the first characteristic of minor literature is that language is affected with a high coefficient of deterritorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p16). As in Crash, Vaughan and his ensemble of television producers, doctors, stuntmen and airline escape the territoriality of the hospital, television studio and the comfortable family apartment for the non-place of the motorway, service station and airport. Consequently, Crash can be considered a work of minor literature as its language has a high coefficient towards deterritorialization. “The second characteristic of minor literatures is that everything in them is political” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p17).  In major literature, the political, social and economic environment forms the context of the novel whilst personal relationships take the forefront. For example, the context of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is the political and economic upheavals of the Great Depression whilst the novel largely focuses on the interpersonal relationships that are shaped and defined by the novel’s context. Whereas in a piece of minor literature, “its cramped space forces each individual intrigue to connect immediately to politics” (ibid). In The Castle, Klamm’s relationship to both K and his string of former lovers mimics the relationship between the individual and a increasingly nameless and faceless bureaucracy: “Do you think it’s necessary, or even simply desirable, that Klamm should read this protocol and become acquainted word for word with the trivialities of your life? Shouldn’t you rather pray humbly that the protocol should be concealed from Klamm – a prayer, however, that would just be as unreasonable as the other for who can hide anything from Klamm? (Kafka: 1930: p551). Klamm is simultaneously conscious of the trivialities of K life and negligent towards them, just as a contemporary bureaucracy is simultaneously aware of the trivialities of our medical, economic and judiciary lives whilst, appearing, to be negligent to developments in the aforementioned. The state may administer our illness or permits us entry into the case, but the outcome of this process appears to be purely administrative and not endowed with subjective value. As a result of this, individual intrigue is indistinguishable from the political in The Castle. Finally, “the third characteristic is that in it everything takes on a collective value” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p17). In a minor literature, the possibility of an individual ‘enuincatation’ of a talent, investigation or concept is delineated and is replaced by the tendency towards collective ‘enunciation’. For example, in Investigations of a Dog the research of the titular hound is collectively ‘enunciated’ alongside the canine species as a whole: 

“In my thoughts, I begged forgiveness of science; there must be room in it for my researches too; consonigly in my ears rang the assurance that no matter how great the effect of my inquires might be, and indeed the greater the better, I would not be lost to ordinary dog life; science regarded my attempts with benevolence, it itself would undertake would undertake the interpretation of my discoveries, and that promise already meant fulfilment; while until now I had felt outlawed in my innermost heart and run my head against the traditional walls of my species like a savage, I would now be accepted with great honour, the long-yearned for warmth of assembled canine bodies would lap me round, I would be uplifted high on the shoulders of my fellows” (Kafka: 1931: p117)

A becoming collective-dog-scientist. Rather than the dog enunciating his research as an individual, the dog-scientist places his research within the collective value of the canine species as a whole: the process of him enlightening himself on the processes through which food is distributed has an innate revolutionary value as revolutionises the canine species understanding of the methods through which they ascertain their food. To briefly summarise, the three characteristics of a minor literature are: the deterritorialization of language, the connection of the individual to a political immediacy and the tendency towards a revolutionary collective enunciation. As Deleuze and Guattari contest: “We might say that minor no longer designates specific literatures but the revolutionary conditions for every literature” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p18). 

In The Metamorphosis the physical manifestation of the creature is depicted as a process of becoming-animal. As Kafka infamously notes at the outset of the novella: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armour-plated back, and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments” (Kafka: 1916: p9). Through his metamorphosis into a ‘gigantic insect’, the corpus of Gregor Samsa – who is never accurately physically described throughout the novella – is dissected and rendered into an unknowable form.  Kafka’s depiction of the Gregor-insect is notoriously vague and resists immediate identification with a specific species or identifiable zoology. To attempt to depict the creature is to identify it with a specific history or identifiable genealogy which concurrently blocks the process of becoming-animal: the Gregor-insect refers to both a new mythology and archetype. We are aware that the physical appearance of the creature with both the ‘armour-plated black’ and ‘dome-like brown belly’ relates to our generalised conception of the appearance of an insect, but we are unable to match Kafka’s physical description of the insect to a specific species. As such, the process of becoming-animal, enacted, through the physical metamorphosis is juxtaposed to the metaphor. The metaphor relates a concept to another concept, whereas the becoming-animal of Gregor Samsa cannot be related to a figurative concept. As Deleuze and Guattari contest: “It is no longer a question of a resemblance between the component of an animal and that of man… There is no longer man or animal, since each deterritorializes the other” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p22).  In the Lectures on Literature, Vladimir Nabokov, the author of the infamous Lolita, attempts to depict the Gregor-insect: “This brown, convex dog-sized beetle is very broad” (Nabokov: 2017: p259) and subsequently ground the process of becoming-animal in a pre- established discourse of the insect. In addition, the movement of the insect resists classification. At the outset of the novella, Kafka’s depicts the movement of the Gregor-insect as: “And he set himself to rocking his whole body at once in a regular rhythm, with the idea of swinging himself out of bed” (Kafka: 1916: p14) and as such this method of movement is characterised as “more a game than an effort, for he needed only to hitch himself across by rocking to an fro” (ibid). In this circumstance, the Gregor-insect’s movement portrays a childlike naivety. As the child discovers its capacity for movement through a series of games involving rising and falling, the Gregor-insect famialrises itself with it’s capacity for movement through a series of fun and childlike games involving ‘rocking his body to and fro’. The child becomes-human as it learns to walk, whilst Gregor Samsa becomes-animal by childishly learning its range of movement – who said becoming couldn’t be enjoyable? As the novella develops, the Gregor-insect movements become entirely unfamiliar: “He especially enjoyed hanging suspended from the ceiling; it was much better than lying on the floor; one could breathe more freely; one’s body swung and rocked lightly; and in the almost blissful absorption induced this suspension it could happen to his own surprise that he let go and fell plump to the floor” (Kafka: 1916: p36). Here, the Gregor-insect displays a human – insect duality. Firstly, as an insect the Gregor-insect finds insect physical comfort in the inhuman process of being suspended from the ceiling by swaying and rocking lightly whilst concurrently being supported by the “sticky stuff on his soles” (Kafka: 1916: p37). Secondly, the Gregor-insect experiences pleasures that are commonly perceived as human – ‘one could breathe more freely’ – whilst in the physical form of an insect. Therefore, hanging from the ceiling presents the opportunity for the physical satisfaction of the insect and Gregor, and consequently illustrates that, and as we will further see, the process of becoming-animal in The Metamorphosis is concisely bound by remaining human elements. To briefly summarise, the physical manifestation of the Gregor-insect dissects and delineates the human corpus of Gregor Samsa. In addition, the resistance of the Gregor-insect to biological classification – which is evidenced by the evolution of the movement of the Gregor-insect – further renders the creature unknowable. 

Throughout The Metamorphosis, the sounds emitted by the Gregor-insect can be directly correlated to Gregor Samsa’s process of becoming-animal. As Deleuze and Gauttari note: “sound intervenes ar first as a faint whining that captures Gregor’s voice and blurs the resonance of words” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p6). At the outset of the novella, the sounds emitted by the creature are depicted as a blurred human-insect metamorphosis in which the human quality of language is present yet distorted: “Go for the doctor, quick. Did you hear how he was speaking? That was no human voice” (Kafka: 1916: p19). The Gregor-insect, in a human manner, attempts to defend itself from the enquiries of both his family and the Chief Clerk, but his responses are delineated and disintegrated by the increasingly deepening voice of the Gregor-insect. Consequently, the human protests of Gregor Samsa are subjugated by the Gregor-insect’s process of becoming-animal. As the novella develops, the remaining human capacities in the voice are subjugated to the process of becoming-animal: “Gregor hissed loudly with rage” (Kafka: 1916: p49). Having lost the capacity to express his anger in speech, the Gregor-insect resorts to an entirely animalistic form of communication – hissing. As the snake hisses to ward off prey, the Gregor-insect hisses to express discontent at the situation. The impercitibility of sound and langage is a common theme in the animal-stories. For example, in Investigations of a Dog upon meeting a collective of seven musical the titular dog fails to charecterise or recognise the ‘music’ produced by the dogs:

“They did not speak, they did not sing, they remained, all of them, almost determinedly silent; but from the empty air they conjured music. Everything was music, the lifting and setting down of their feet, certain turns of the head, their running and their standing still, the positions they took up in relation to one another, the symmetrical patterns which they produced by one dog setting setting his front paws on the back of another…” (Kafka: 1931: p88 (a))

In the Investigations of a Dog, the bodies and music of the choir of dogs morph into a form that both delineates their physical form as dogs and their musical functions. Paw, note, pitch and tail combine into a series of symmetrical movements and sounds which renders the protagonist unconscious. On the other hand, the noises emitted by the Gregor-insect, whilst they delineates his function as a human subject, relate to a definite attempt at the communication of a specific message – the attempt to excuse oneself from work or to express work, whereas the noise emitted by the choir of dogs is incommunicable as a definite message and unrecognisable as a form of music. Becoming-music. 

The generalised behaviour of the Gregor-insect further illustrates the process of becoming-animal in The Metamorphosis. Initially, this is demonstrated by the dramatically altered appetite of the creature. At the outset of the novel, the Gregor-insect displays an initial attraction to foods that are typically considered as human: “He has reached the door before he discovered what had really drawn him to it: the smell of food. For there stood a basin filled with fresh mlk in which floated sops of white bread” (Kafka: 1916: p26). The Gregor-insect, like Gregor Samsa, is drawn to both the fresh milk and the sops of white bread within it too feed. However, this desire is soon mitigated: “But soon in disappointment he withdrew it again; not only did he find it difficult to feed because of his tender life – and he could only feed with the palpitating collaboration of his whole body – he did not like the milk either, although milk has been his favourite drink and that was certainly why his sister had set it there for him, indeed it was with almost repulsion that he turned away from the basin” (Kafka: 1916: p36-27). Upon his discovering his newfound revulsion, Gregor’s sister reacts by enacting the process of becoming-animal by presenting human foods in an inhuman form: “There were old, half-decayed vegetables, bones from last night’s supper covered with a white sauce that had thickened, raisins and almonds and a piece of cheese that Gregor would have called uneatable two days ago” (Kafka: 1916: p29). For example, Gregor Samsa would have labelled the cheese inedible, whereas the naturally human repulsion towards rotten food is delineated by the Gregor-insects desire to consume it. As the novella draws towards its conclusion, the human desire to consume repulsion towards food as a concept: “His sister no longer took thought to bring him especially what might please him, but in the morning and at noon, before she went to business, hurriedly pushed into his room with her foot any food that was available, and in the evening cleared it out again with one sweep of the broom, heedless of whether it has been merely tasted, or as more frequently happened – left untouched”. (Kafka: 1916: p48). As humans, we are bound by both the physical and emotional need to consume food. Physically, food nourishes and sustains us, whereas the consumption of well prepared or sweet foods can provide us with a high degree of emotional satisfaction. Whilst the Gregor-insect can survive without the emotional nourishment of food it enjoys, it has dissected the human and animal need for physical nourishment – the creature is able to survive with little or no food subsequently demonstrating that it is able to survive from a capacity hitherto unknown. On the other hand, a traditional example of ‘human food’, the apple, is depicted as severing the Gregor-insect’s process of becoming  by embedding itself into the Gregor-insect. As time passes, the apple decays which infects the creature: The rotting apple in his back and the inflamed path around, all covered with soft dust already, hardly troubled him” (Kafka: 1916: p58). Therefore, the function of food and appetite is twofold in The Metamorphosis: it illustrates a process of becoming and concurrently severs that process. Additionally, the Gregor-insect expresses a desire towards self-isolation and the extreme maintenance of his personal space: “Did he really want his warm room, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be turned into a naked den in which he would certainly be able to crawl unhampered in all directions but at the price of shedding simultaneously all recollection of his human background?” (Kafka: 1916: p38). The Gregor-insect, whose metamorphosis from human to animal has been completed, surrounds itself in a physical reminder of his humanity in, as the family hope, will help manifest and presuppose his return to humanity once Gregor has recovered from his physical ailment. The creature residing within the room can never return to his pre-becoming-animal condition, but the room remains fundamentally human. Inversely, Kafka suggests that becoming-animal can only occur within a human environment. This suggestion is reversed in The Burrow in which the creature incessantly maintains its physical environment against an ulterior force: “My sensitiveness to disturbances in the burrow has perhaps become greater with the years, yet my hearing has by no means grown keener” (Kafka: 1931: p153 (b)). For the creature within the burrow, the intrusion of the smaller creatures upon the peaceful tranquillity of the burrow represents a disturbance to the arborescent nature of the burrow. The burrow, with the smaller offshooting tunnels (branches and the ‘castle keep’  represents (the trunk), resembles a highly organised tree, however, as Deleuze and Guattari note in Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus: “We should stop believing in trees, roots and radicles. They’ve made us suffer too much” (Deleuze and Guattari: 1988: p15). The smaller creatures, whose existence is never confirmed throughout the novella, represent an incursion upon the abrosencent burrow: rhizomatic creatures who impose their processes of becoming upon the creature. In The Metamorphosis, the locality of the Gregor-insect indicates the an ill-fated potential return to humanity, whereas the burrow of The Burrow homes rhizomatic incursions upon the arborescent. To briefly summarise this section, both the eating habits and the ‘sounds’ of the Gregor-insect devolve from pseudo-human to animal whilst the Gregor-insect regresses into a reminder of its former humanity which can be contrasted to the underground ‘lair of becoming’ in The Burrow. 

However, throughout The Metamorphosis numerous events and social relationships serve to sever the process of becoming by grounding the Gregor-insect in humanity. This is primairly demonstrated in the Gregor-insect’s pseudo-incestrious relationship with his sister – Grete. As the rest of the family gradually rescind their initial kindness towards the Gregor-insect, the creature retains a desire to propel her into a career in music: “With his sister alone he had remained intimate, and it was a secret plan of his that she, who loved music, unlike himself, and could play movingly on the violin, should be sent next year to study at the Conservatorium, despite the great expense that it would entail, which must be made up in some other way” (Kafka: 1916: p32). Gregor’s desire to see his sister succeed, irrespective of her own desires to this specific regard, transcends both his own concern for music and his ability to further stretch the family’s already constrained budget. Consequently, both Gregor and the Gregor-insect’s manifest passion for his sisters happiness is revealed, which is juxtaposed to Gregor’s dedication of his life to his employment: “The boy thinks about nothing but his work. It makes me almost cross, the way he never goes out in the evenings, he’s been here the last eight days and has stayed home every single evening” (Kafka: 1916: p16).  The Gregor-insect is driven to retain an essence of his humanity in order to devote his human working life to the fulfilment of his desires for his sister: much as a parent does for their child in Western economies. For Grete, the relationship with her brother is portrayed as one of material and emotional support. Firstly, Grete provides material support to the Gregor-insect through the provision of food: “Yet what she actually did next, in the goodness of her heart, he could have never have guessed at. To find out what he liked she brought him a whole selection of food all set out on an old newspaper” (Kafka: 1916: p29). Faced with an undefinable and fearsome creature, Grete recognises, unlike the rest of the family and the Chief Clerk, that within the Gregor-insect a distorted version of her brother remains who must be sustained in order for him to make a full recovery and return to her. Emotionally, Grete’s music music reminds the Gregor-insect of its distorted humanity: 

“Was he an animal when music had such an effect upon him? He felt as if the way were opening before him to the unknown nourishment he craved. He was determined to push forward till he reached his sister, to pull at her skirt and so to let her know that she was to come into his room with her violin, for no one else here appreciated her playing as much as she did” (Kafka: 1916: p53). 

 As the novella develops and and the lodgers impose themselves upon the family, the Gregor-insect’s desire for Grete devolves from the previously described to a pseudo-incestrious desire to posses and control Grete: “He would never let her out of his room, at least, not as long as he lived” (ibid). By possessing Grete, the Gregor-insect retains a connection to the only individual who has displayed both a human level of deficiency and borderline affection and thus maintains a connection to the human emotional experience. At the conclusion of the novella, Grete breaks all forms of pseudo-incestrious relationship with the Gregor-insect by denying that the latter bears any resemblance to her brother: “I won’t utter my brother’s name in the presence of this creature” (Kafka: 1916: p56). In this sense, the Gregor-insect remaining tether to humanity is severed and the subsequent progression towards death, which is symbolised by the imposition of the apple upon the Gregor-insect’s back, begins. 

At the point in which Grete severs the pseudo-incestrious relationship with the Gregor-insect and the apple is embedded into the creature’s back, the death of the Gregor-insect is inevitable. As Deleuze and Guattari note in A Thousand Plateaus: “We say, to the contrary, that there is no death instinct because there is both the model and the experience of death in the unconscious. Death then is part of the desiring-machine, a part that must itself be judged, evaluated in the functioning of the machine and the system of its energetic conversions, and not as abstract principles” (Deleuze and Guattari: 1988: p322). The function and existence of the desiring-machine, the Gregor-insect, and the possibility of experiencing death as ordinary everyday life is a condition of the machine, but its running must always be renewed. At the conclusion of The Metamorphosis, death can no longer be experienced as a function of everyday life as, as we have observed, the entirety of the Gregor-insect’s tethers to humanity have been severed. Therefore, the experience of death is actualised in its totality and final function – death itself. The Gregor-insect possessed a death instinct, but this is delineated by the severing of the everyday experience of death.

To conclude, we can conclude that Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis can be interpreted as a concurrent novella of becoming-animal and Gregor retaining essential ties to his humanity. Initially, the process of becoming-animal was illustrated through the physical manifestation of the Gregor-insect which simultaneously resists zoological categorisation. Secondly, we observed that the sounds emitted by the Gregor-insect, the generalised behaviour and the dramatically altered appetite  of the creature further reinforced the process of becoming-animal throughout the novella.  The sounds, behaviour and appetite of the Gregor-insect devolve from bearing a pseudo-human resemblance to purely animalistic. On the other hand, it was demonstrated that the Gregor-insect’s pseudo-incestrious relationship with his sister Grete severs this process of becoming. Once this relationship has been brought to its conclusion, the death of the Gregor-insect is presumed. Death is the juxtaposition of creativity. In addition, we have drawn a number of parallels from both contemporary wider literature and the Kafka novels and animal stories. As Deleuze and Guattari note in Kafka: toward a minor literature: 

“This work is a rhizome, a burrow. The castle has multiple entrances whose rules of usage and whose locations aren’t very well known” (Deleuze and Guattari: 2003: p3)

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