the body, the soul, and their limitations

Reading the Metamorphosis really gave me the creeps cos for some reason, perhaps due to the "ideology" i was raised with, the innate mental framework (kudos to CDA), i kept having the picture of a cockroach as the monstrous vermin. And i really don't like cockcroaches. Especially huge ones the size of a human being! Which leaves splotches of stuff wherever he crawls..plus he flies. And can hang on the ceiling -- something human beings can't do, which really gives the vermin power over even the human beings. No wonder they were scared of him..

In Gregor's case, the 'other' is feared for a while, then trampled on. Which is a rather realistic depiction of all the other 'other's in society i think..what is unknown is feared for a while, but once it is ascertained that it cannot bring harm, it is simply rejected, excommunicated. For Gregor though, he is 'other' in body, and even though he is not othered in the mind (ie he still possesses thought and reasoning abilities as humans know it), he is treated as an 'other', and is misunderstood even by his own family, hence indirectly killed by their neglect of him.

That, we can understand. but for the reader who does realise that he is not 'other' in the mind, that there is are still traces of Gregor we can relate to, it seems we still respond with aversion to his grotesque transformation into a bug. But the really disturbing thing is how, within that unimaginable, gargantuan gross body, is a human soul that still loves, and still craves to be loved. The incongruity makes one cringe, and we realise that not only is the physical transformed body of gregor unimaginable, the combination of a monstrous body with a human soul is even more unimaginable..in some ways we may even reject trying to imagine it. So the othered body is not other just because it is different, it is othered by the minds that are unable to imagine nor fathom the possibility of that existence.

Another thing i was reminded of...in our first class we were talking about whether the body includes the soul, or whether the physical body should be distinctly differentiated from the soul. From the Metamorphosis, the dislocation between the body and the soul (or consciousness) seems to suggest that the two indeed can be distinct. Personally i'd agree with that. The human consciousness or soul, that inner being that just knows can stand aside far enough to look upon and criticise the physical body. So the human being is really divided in himself!

A random thought...why an insect rather than some other animal? Maybe cos kafka, being the long and scrawny person he was, could relate more to an insect? heh..ok a tad puerile here..but really, to have Gregor enjoy the lightness of being something other than human makes it quite necessary for him to have become an insect? i mean, if he'd turned into a cow or something, he won't be able to mount the ceiling. Also, the thing about kafka is how he can write about something so..impossible? in such a matter-of-fact way that one knows it wasn't mean to be funny, and in fact is disturbed, or at least impacted, by it.

*Aside: it's really hard to talk about kafka, because he's so big and yet so elusive at the same time? like there's so much to say but it's so hard to pinpoint it without putting kafka into unnecessary, undignified small boxes...