Carousel by Marina M
Marina M@marinarrative Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis Consider this book an instruction manual on how NOT TO treat the people you love when they’re sick or going through a difficult time. Reading Kafka while being sick is quite an experience, but maybe it’s true that books come to us only when we’re truly ready for them. Let’s just say I experienced this one in almost 5D. I finished this novella in a single evening, but I kept thinking about it for days afterwards. What is our value if we can no longer be useful to the people closest to us? Are we close because we’re useful, or are we useful because we’re close? Will we still be loved if we stop being useful? These, along with dozens of other questions, kept running through my mind while I was reading. One feeling stayed with me throughout the entire book: sadness. It pains me that this isn’t just fiction. That so many people who are pushed to the margins of society because of their health, social status, or beliefs feel like a giant cockroach trapped in a tiny room behind a closed door. It pains me that people are often far more willing to respond to someone who’s “different” with cruelty, resentment, or the desire to get rid of them than with empathy and understanding. Kafka wasn’t writing about a man who turned into an insect. He was writing about how easily love turns into convenience, and acceptance into mere tolerance, the kind that lasts only as long as someone remains useful.
Comments
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@it_sims_to_me maybe the story is about heavy, completely useless sense of duty that had become his prison long before. or maybe black humor got lost in translation? they say Kafka himself laughed out loud at how the characters only worried about everyday problems even when facing something impossible. for me it doesn’t really matter what the story is about. what makes me wonder most is why you read it that way
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@makeitwrite731 Kafka was a genius. In the Penal Colony is also amazing, about the danger of neutrality and accepting things in society just because "it's the way things are." The Trial also hits.
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@did.mishchenko На контрасті можна переглянути Паразитів)
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@taksh_patuna Even though it was written over a century ago . The feelings of burnout , isolation, and feeling like a burden to the people around you felt incredibly relatable and modern.
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@david_chappine This just bumped up the reading list! The Castle was great, too—and sounds like a similar theme of being an outsider.
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@udalova.mariya 😍😍
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@q83mma Now I might give it another chance
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@lucas_rllng Wonderful review of one of my favorite novella. It's still as relevant as it was and the fact that it stayed with you days later is a testament of it's impact, glad you liked it!
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@_sammor26 ❤️
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