Thoughts
“it is not the kind of book that seems coldly masterminded by its author, intended to Show or Teach something. The *Metamorphosis* is so so
so clearly written from the gut where fear lives.”
*The Metamorphosis* is not a commentary on society in the way that a satire or a parable is. You can’t establish a 1-1 relationship between elements in the book and elements in the real world that Kafka is talking about. Kafka is talking about attitudes and emotions. And those attitudes and emotions exist in the real world, so you can and should compare the book to the real world. But you shouldn’t try to figure out what single Thing the book is a metaphor for.
I think a lot of bad literature analysis tries to do this, treating literature like a metaphor to be explained. But furthermore, I think a lot of literature analysis by people who are experienced tend to elide explaining that they’re comparing the emotions evoked by things in the book and things in real life. If you’re comparing the emotions described all the time, and you say “X is like Y,” it’s kind of implied that you mean “the emotions that evoked by the author’s depiction of X are like the emotions created by Y in the real world.” But there’s risk that someone who isn’t good at literature analysis seizes on something superficially similar between the appearances of X and Y and think that’s why you’re comparing them.