I was definitely putting reading this book off for a few reasons, first of all, I hate cockroaches. I don’t have a fear of bugs but I’m deathly afraid of cockroaches. But having a little bit of knowledge of Franz Kafka, I decided to go all in, and it didn’t disappoint.

**Warning some spoilers**
Yes, the plot was a little futile (I also don’t know what you’d expect from a book that’s barely 60-70 pages). Gregor wakes up one day a cock roach, his family neglected him, he died of starvation and then they moved out. That’s it.

On the contrary, It’s so much more than the plot. It’s more than just a man being turned into a gross ugly bug. It’s everything in between, the emotions, the feelings the things the words *aren’t* saying that really makes it worth the read.

There’s probably about six hundred different ways I can interpret this book, and make it personal to me. However one of the things that really made it feel like firsthand to me, was how his family ended up wanting to “rid” of him towards the end. They stopped seeing him as a son and brother, and more as this creature that was making their lives hard. As someone with autism, I relate to this deeply. I can’t count the times where I felt like I was burden to my family, simply because I was something they couldn’t fix. I understood where their frustrations came from, but it was still so hard especially as a kid. I knew nothing could change but I couldn’t help but feel like my siblings and parents resented me because I wasn’t typical.

This book wasn’t just about cockroaches and negligence, it was a story about how he loved and admired his family so much. He contributed pretty much his life to them, only for them to be burdened by him. This book made me feel seen in so many different ways I can’t describe it.

And also it a more humours light, I definitely gained a lot more empathy for bugs. I cried over how hard it must be to be a bug. And yes, I still hate cockroaches.

The Metamorphosis - Likewise Book Reviews

46 Reviews