The Dung Beetle

I was expecting too much from the Metamorphosis. I'm not saying it's bad, but the jacket quoted some so and so who said it was perfect. A perfect work.

It is certainly an interesting novella/short story, but I agree with Kafka that is suffers from a weakening of focus and power at the end. And don't tell me that mirrors Samsa. Good as it is, I don't find it to be the axe for the frozen sea within me.

Reading the criticism at the end (Norton critical ed.), I was reminded of my undergrad approach to criticism. Talking about a metaphor that inverts a metaphor that inverts a metaphor. Not helping anyone else understand, maybe not understanding yourself. Just confusing things; and why? Perhaps so as to maintain a belief in literature as a complex, important philosophical/psychological phenomena, something which stands apart from regular people, regular events, regular texts, exalted or vilified or deconstructed or set on Freud's couch or whatever.

That's a little harsh, though. Some of the criticism is helpful, in its limited way.