Gregor's Catholic Block

When Gregor is turned into a giant insect, the first thing that bothers him isn't the loss of his humanity, or the physical impossibility of what happens to him, it's the realization that he won't be able to earn money for his family. We can imagine that he wakes up at 5 and grumbles to himself about quitting his terrible job every morning, not just the morning in the book. The only way he's able to keep himself going is by guilting himself into it, imagining what would happen to his family if he weren't around to make them money. The thing that's great about Kafka is that he has Gregor's family actually live up to all of Gregor's worst fears.

Even so, it takes them a while to get there. His sister and mother, at least, start out feeling very guilty about how they treat Gregor. They understand at some level that he's still Gregor, they just physically can't stand to be around him. However, as time goes on and Gregor isn't providing anything for them the way he was before he was a bug, that guilt naturally transforms into resentment. As the memories of the old Gregor fade and he isn't doing anything positive to keep him in their good graces, he becomes just something that makes them feel bad. It makes sense that they start to hate something that's just sitting in their house making them feel bad, and that they respond by losing their sympathy for him. Of course Gregor never wants to consider this; when the way the cleaning lady enjoys looking at him implies that he's not such a horrible looking creature that his family can't help but avoid him, and that instead they just don't care about him anymore, he hates her for threatening his self-loathing, family-first worldview. The truth is, thinking that all his problems are his own fault is easier than upsetting his idealized image of his family.

Something I can't help but wonder about the way Gregor seems so eager to blame himself for everything, even before the reality of his situation sets in, is how it might be related to religion. There are quotes throughout the book implying that the Samsas are Catholic, including in the very beginning ("'God Almighty!', he thought," page 2) and the very end (Mr. Samsa "crossed himself," page 40). Considering how efficient Kafka is with his writing, it seems unlikely that the Samsas' Catholicism is just a background detail. The Catholic religion (and I'm not a Catholic, so I could be mistaken) is classically considered to be one that puts a lot of emphasis on guilt and penitence. Most Catholics see this as a good thing, with important theological reasons for it, but it's also something that many non-Catholics criticize. It makes sense that the idea of "Catholic guilt" would be interesting to a writer living in a Catholic city like Prague in the 1910's.

Writing this blog reminded me of the Sonic Youth song "I Got A Catholic Block," about how the singer can't help but feel guilty when he's having fun as a former Catholic. The lyrics "I got a Catholic block/Inside my head/I let it go to work/And bring it all back home" definitely conjure up images of Gregor lying in bed, especially if you just hear the words "work" and "bring it all back home." Both the song and the book deal with people who feel trapped by worry about the potential consequences of their actions. Although Gregor's worry isn't explicitly religious in the way Thurston Moore's is in the song, you could still argue that his mindset is influenced by his Catholicism. Looking over how many times Catholicism is hinted at in the book, it definitely seems like Kafka is saying that - but like a lot of other things in the book, the line is pretty blurry between whether this is all just over analyzation, or Kafka really did just put that much effort into the little things.