The Grotesque in Kafka: A study of the other in Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’

Abstract

In Kafka, The Other takes on an alien and otherworldly form. Gregor Samsa, Kafka’s protagonist in the ‘Metamorphosis’, leads an uneventful life until his transformation into a grotesque monster incites the worst in his family. According to Bakhtin, the grotesque in literature and art was used as a form of satire to question the hypocrisy and hegemony of the dominant class. In ‘Metamorphosis’,Gregor morphs into an interstitiality that his family finds extremely threatening. He is no more their own, he is The Other and his grotesqueness is proof of this fact. In this paper, we study the relationship between grotesqueness and The Other in Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’.