Morphed

Many thanks to the twenty participants in Monday's meeting on Kafka's "Metamorphosis." It certainly confirmed the results of Professor Stanley Corngold's study in which he put forward one hundred and thirty different interpretations of the story.

Members of the group also enlightened us on sundry related topics such as the similarity of Gregor Samsa's name to the Sanskrit word "samsara," which means rebirth and renewal, and the diet of the dung beetle.

I realized at the end of the evening that I had forgotten to pose my "big question": If one reads "Metamorphosis" as a fable (i.e., of a man who turns into an insect, and of the reactions of his parents and sister to this circumstance), then what is the moral to be drawn from it?

I could attribute my lapse to being "under the influence" of Kafka, in whose world trivial questions can become quite important (and vice versa). At any rate, responses are welcomed.