To Live in a Vermin’s World A Marxist View of Kafka’s...

To Live in a Vermin’s World: A Marxist View of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis One of the honors for ‘greatest theories’ in contemporary civilization has to be awarded to Marxism. Invented in late 19th century by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Marxism has had great influences on the development of modern society. Despite its eventual failure, Marxism once led to numerous revolutions that working classes raised against the ruling parties in different countries. Consequently, it paved the way for the erection of the Berlin Wall, the formation of the Warsaw Treaties—communist camp confronting NATO, and the establishment of a world super power, the Soviet Union at the dawn of this century. Even decades later, after all those Marxist milestones†¦show more content†¦From the Marxist view, the process of the metamorphosis symbolizes the class struggle of the proletariat to break out of a life of being exploited. Such representation is displayed in the similarity between the causes, natures, and endings of Gregor’s transformation an d those of proletarian struggles. Realistically, it is impossible for men to turn into bugs; thus, Gregor’s metamorphosis has some concrete meaning beyond simply a biological transformation. Applying Marxist theories, the process of the metamorphosis represents the struggle proletarians raise against the controlling bourgeoisie class. Firstly, Gregor is in the right social position for such a struggle to take place. Gregor and his family are proletarians whereas his boss is a typical bourgeois. In the main guide of communism, â€Å"The Manifesto of the Communist Party,† Marx defines the proletariat as including all people who possess no assets and live only on salaries (Marx 128). Gregor, accordingly, belongs to this class for he has no business of his own but is leading a life of working for others (Kafka 4). Similarly, such classification into the proletariat is true for all other family members who do not even work. By contrast, the boss of the company that Gregor works for owns the capital and is, h ence, seated in the social upper class—the bourgeoisie. According to Marxist theory, Gregor’s family and the boss are in the two opposite classes. Now that Gregor is a proletarian, his situation conforms