To me, the world of Samsa in Love reads like a manifestation of the dying Samsa in Metamorphosis, since the Gregor Samsa in it has both human intellect and animalistic weaknesses and several aspects of the world he wakes up in are completely opposite to what he has experienced in real life.
In the opening of Metamorphosis, Kafka establishes that it is about an ordinary human who suddenly transformed into a bug. Although the opening of Samsa in Love is quite similar to the opening of Metamorphosis, Murakami has offered many hints throughout the short story to suggest that his Gregor Samsa isn't merely a regular bug before he wakes up. Murakami's Gregor clearly possesses human emotions and human intellects that are too complicated for a bug to perceive. He experiences fear as he starts to walk, curiosity to explore the other rooms in the hallway, and affection for the locksmith. He has vague memory about a past human life and understands that eggs should be peeled, coffee tastes good with cream, and the belt of the dressing gown needs to be fastened. He has also mastered the use of language and can even understand the sexual metaphor of "wiener." At the same time, he also follows animalistic instincts and displays characteristics quite similar to the bug in Metamorphosis. In the opening of Metamorphosis, Gregor takes notice of his "back as hard as armor plate" and "pitifully thin legs." In Samsa in Love, Gregor's inability to control his legs (despite being able to make coffee with his hands) and remark that he has no shell for protection both echo back to Kafka. Based on the human-bug duality in him, it seems like Murakami's Gregor has both experienced a past life as a human and a past life as a bug.
Gregor isn't the only one who displays the human-bug duality in Samsa in Love. The locksmith who comes to his house is also said to have a rounded back, and toils up the stairs "much like a crawling insect" and walks down the stairs "as if she were crawling on all fours." She constantly twists and writhes to reposition her unfitting brassiere, but that can also be interpreted as she is uncomfortable in her current body, just like Gregor. She also uses the word "crawling" to describe the soldiers and tanks on the street, which suggests that it is quite common for beings in this world to display bug-like tendencies. The world (beyond Gregor's bedroom) in Metamorphosis is quite ordinary with people doing their businesses, renting apartments, and just overall following their daily routine, so the somewhat unnatural world in Samsa in Love seems to exist in another dimension.
Gregor in Metamorphosis seldom experiences kindness and is a social outcast who annoys almost everyone he interacts with, but his situation in Samsa in Love is quite opposite to that. He is the only one at home with the entire apartment to himself. He is free to devour a great amount of food and make a big mess with no one else to regulate him. Although furnishings of the apartment suggest that he has family members, there are no human traces of them, so he doesn't need to work at an unsatisfying job to support anyone or behave in a certain way to please anyone. There is also a woman who has risked her life just to come to fix a lock for him and lets him experience what love is. The only unnatural space in Metamorphosis, Gregor's apartment, becomes the only safe haven in a chaotic world in Samsa in Love.
Since Gregor in Metamorphosis really manifested his own death after hearing how his father and sister both want to get rid of him, the whole story of Samsa in Love reads like an imagination of Gregor's dying human consciousness. Although Samsa in Love ends on a positive note, the world outside that he wants to learn more about is really extremely chaotic and filled with bug-like soldiers and tanks, and due to the theme of Metamorphosis, I feel like the whatever faith Gregor has gained in humanity at the end of Samsa in Love would turn out to be merely a blissfully ignorant illusion.
Crystal
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