The Metamorphosis

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin" With this simple, bizarre and shocking sentence Kafka starts his most famous work, The Metamorphosis. Through this strange and unlogic transfiguration of a human being, Kafka opens the door wide for an unlimited flow of thoughts and questions. Many people said they would start up their life again as an insect if they were in Samsa's place, others preferred to commit suicide. But isn't it worth thinking? The story is very short, about 55 pages but quite profound in a shocking way, as all Kafka's works, the themes of melancholy, negativity, loss and heistation are very obvious in this book that people either hate or love, I even heard yesterday from a friend that the whole story is a bout "a cockroach who died", isn't it amazing how people perceive the same thing in totally different ways? On Wednesday October 31st, twelve young people were gathering in a very nice restaurant in Mohandesseen discussing the book, learning more about Kafka's life and sharing many of his quotes. If you had the chance to see them, you would have seen a small man in his twenties talking passionately and discussing the book and Kafka's life. Had it been possible for people to see inside each other, you would have seen inside him a mixture of contradictory feelings. You could agree or disagree whether the book is good or bad, but you could never miss the passion in his voice and eyes, although he was trying hard to hide his tears when he was talking about Kafka's end dying alone in Vienna after a long struggle with tuberculosis. I finally did it, after about 20 years of reading The Metamorphosis for the first time, I was there discussing it and sharing my passion for Kafka with most of the closest persons to me including my little sister Salma. Don't we agree with Kafka when he said: "By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired"