In allowing space for the articulation of organic degeneration, Metamorphosis not only attests to the sentiments of 19th-century degenerationists and their predictions of the continuation of this neurotic cycle of retrogression in the following century but also complicates the gothic representation of physical decline by bringing the grotesque into a high degree of prominence. is an entropic body reversing the biological bases of evolution and progression as theorized by many Darwinian evolutionists and Victorian social scientists. Moreover, we claim that Kafka's main character, Gregor.
We argue that in The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka uses the grotesque and physical degeneration to express a corresponding anxiety about the continuing physical retrogression of Man in the twentieth-century. The question of the grotesque and theories of degeneration emerged in late 19th century Europe and the early decades of the 20th century. This presentation will demonstrate a simultaneous reading and comparison of both texts by keeping postmodern rewriting elements in mind while pointing out the social criticisms both writers bring up through the symbol of the cockroach. Thus, by transferring Kafka’s symbol of vermin into his fiction, McEwan creates a political analogy between an insect and a politician. McEwan’s political satire metaphorically poses the question of whether all members of the parliament are cockroaches as well. In this sense, the subjects of reverse, transformation, or metamorphosis are at the center of both of these novellas. Furthermore, the rule of Jim Sams aims at reversing the economic system by turning it into a “Reversalist” sort of system where the workers are the ones who pay salaries to be allowed to have jobs.
From this witty point of criticism, McEwan’s Jim Sams, whose name resembles that of Kafka’s character Samsa, finds himself in the middle of a change in the economic system that actually, symbolically, implies the UK’s Brexit dilemma.
In McEwan’s version, there is a reversed representation of the mode of existences of the main characters: one morning, a cockroach wakes up as metamorphosed into a human being who happens to be the prime minister of United Kingdom. The shapeshifting of Gregor Samsa into a “monstrous vermin” became the source of inspiration for Ian McEwan’s The Cockroach, published in September 2019. The novella situates both figurative and literal meaning of transformation at the center of the narration. Published in 1915, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis still stands as a unique masterpiece in which the feeling of alienation is perfectly drawn.
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