Today I read Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. It is a story of a boy who wakes up one morning to discover that he’s changed from a traveling business man, providing for his entire family, to a large dung beetle. The change doesn’t shock him too much at first–he’s more concerned about being late for work, but later the full impact of it settles in as he discovers his family no longer views him as they previously did.
I enjoyed it. Kafka does a great job of making the absurd seem completely normal– reading the story, you feel as if turning into a beetle were something that could possibly happen to you tomorrow morning. The descriptions are vivid–he makes it easy to feel what it would be like to be a dung beetle–everything from the physical aspects of learning to walk as a beetle to the alienation one might feel upon suddenly metamorphosing into a large insect. It’s also very interesting how he describes the process of losing touch with humanity and gradually starting to think like an insect.