Jordana Jampel
Though Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis opens with Gregor splaying his tendrils, trying to make sense of the oblivion in which he wakes, Gregor is still hyperaware of the movement of time—he continues to look back at his alarm clock and ponder when his director will come pounding on his bedroom door. As I think more about Kafka’s use of temporality paired with Gregor’s descent, the more I find myself turning to Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time as a way to at least begin making sense of the temporality of being, who Heidegger coins as Dasein, or the entity of Beingness as understood through temporality of ontological care, which is the acceptance of death as a defining factor of the finite infiniteness of the primordial (Dastur 34). I therefore posit that the phenomenon of anxiety does not serve as a re-realization of Dasein’s “authentic self,” as suggested by Heidegger—but instead leads to the loss of meaningful communication that results in a loss of Being-of-meaning and deductively, ontological-temporal anticipation of death (230). The Heideggerian phenomenon of anxiety—embodied through Gregor’s verminhood and made tangible by Auschwitz—does not lead to a Dasein-understanding of meaning of Being, rather leaves Beings in a state of decentralized communication in which no finite truth exists, as according to Jean-François Lyotard’s critique of the postmodern era. With the deconstruction of language, and decentralization of Heideggerian truth and meaning, there is no way to identify and reflect on our temporal ontological meaning because of the decentralization of language, thus infinite truth possibility. Dasein cannot exist in the postmodern era as we witness through Gregor’s inability to assert his desire and truth.
Who Is Time?
Though Kafka wrote Metamorphosis twelve years prior to Heidegger’s Being and Time—Kafka published his short story in 1915, Heidegger published his work in 1927— Kafka uses Gregor as a proto-Dasein as a means of exploring the same ontological and phenomenological questions Heidegger grapples with almost a decade later. The first chapter of Metamorphosis presents a hyperawareness of time that lessens as Gregor decays into verminhood and loses all sense of self as defined by humanity. We are introduced to Gregor, Kafka’s protagonist, who does not wake up and initially process what has happened to him overnight, though he acknowledges his change in feeling in the opening lines of the story, rather is more concerned with his “…work [that] is so much more strenuous than it would be in head office, and then there’s the additional ordeal of travelling, worries about train connections…” (Kafka 88). Time, as according to Heidegger, not only serves a primordial, day-to-day measurement of action and thus meaning, but rather time should be understood as the temporality that allows for the meaning of Being to exist as that hyperawareness of the movement and possibility of death (Dastur 12).
In the following paragraphs, Gregor continues to look back at his alarm clock: “It was half past six, and the clock hands were moving smoothly forward—in fact in was after half past, it was more like a quarter to seven. Had the alarm not gone off?” (Kafka 89). Here, we are given a glimpse into how reliant Gregor’s everyday life is on the measurement of time, but also how hyperaware he is of the “smoothly forward” movement of time that represents in relation to how, “Being is understood on the basis of time;” not only does Gregor understand the meaning of his actions in terms of means of production, but understands how the actual movement of time creates meaning.
As time continues to tick away, the chief clerk of Gregor’s company shows up at his house inquiring about Gregor, who is still locked in his bedroom, attempting to come to terms with his tangible new body and anxious internal feelings. Gregor attempts to call out in explanation through his bedroom door, to which the chief clerk responds, “’Did you understand a single word of that?’” and a few lines later, “’That was the voice of an animal,” (98). At this moment in the story, when Gregor finally attempts to communicate with the outside world, his hyperawareness of temporality ceases to exist. Kafka writes, “It appeared his words were no longer comprehensible, though to his own hearing they seemed clear enough, clearer than before…;” once Gregor’s verminhood, or at least animal-like sounds, are confirmed by the outside world, the rest of humanity, his existence as Dasein is compromised (98). Once in that place of phenomenal anxiety, in a genuine space of anticipated death, Gregor is redefined by other humans as a Being without temporal ontological meaning, thus ceasing to exist as a proto-embodiment of Dasein.
Anxiety of Verminhood
Heidegger’s exploration of anxiety deals with how anxiety ontologically connects to fear and examines how Dasein, when faced with fear, shrinks back from the threat of fear only to find itself and a deeper understanding of ontological temporality and the anticipation of death (230). Spaces and moments of anxiety, as according to Heidegger, allows for the reexamination and rediscovery that results in an even deeper understanding of our meaning, thus allowing us to confirm ourselves as Dasein (Heidegger 230). Anxiety is a space for which the process of Dasein finding itself through inevitable temporal modifications that leave Dasein with fear, which Heidegger believes is a catalyst for which, through that space of anxiety, one re-discovers Being-in-the world is Being-with-meaning (232). Thus, “Anxiety makes manifest in Dasein its Being Toward its ownmost potentially-for-being—that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself” (232). But what happens, though, when an “ownmost potentiality-for-being” is not realized through anxiety, rather anxiety serves as a space of dissociation and instead of authenticity, isolation?
Gregor’s disconnection from humanity and communication—both the cause and result of his anxiety as represented by his verminhood— does not allow him to find a primordial, meaningful self, but instead further propels him into a murky anticipation of death that does not reveal his existence as Dasein, instead dehumanizing Gregor to the point of death. Kafka’s choice of diction used to describe Gregor’s verminhood echoes anxious-disorientation and death which instead of implying an ontological awareness of the anticipation of death, provide proof of anxiety not as “authenticating,” but, instead, as isolating. The first line of part two reads, “Not until dusk did Gregor awake from his heavy, almost comatose sleep,” implying that Gregor’s sleep was not profound in the sense of Heideggerian ontological phenomenology, but instead further dissociated Gregor to the point of near comatose; Gregor does not enter death, that would allow for him to truly understand meaning through Heideggerian awareness of the finiteness of infiniteness through death, but stands on the brink—within anticipation (Kafka 109).
Empty Assertions
Kafka’s switch over from play of temporality by Gregor’s hyperawareness of the movement of time to an emphasis on the diction of verminhood opens up an understanding of Gregor’s experience as the exemplification of the phenomenon of anxiety that does not authenticate but isolates. By the end of Metamorphosis, Grete cries, “’We must get rid of it’…’that’s the only thing for it, Father. You just have to put from your mind any thought that it’s Gregor,’” (Kafka 139). Within his verminhood, Gregor realizes he has been reduced beyond humanity and that, “he would long ago have seen that it’s impossible for human beings to live together with an animal like that, and he would have left of his own free will,” (Kafka 139). Gregor does not experience his verminhood as an, “Anxiety [that] brings Dasein face to face with its Being-free for (propensio in…) the authenticity of its Being, and for this authenticity as a possibility as it always is,” (Heidegger 232), rather it leaves him in a space of isolation to the point where he is unable to communicate with his human family as he has been reduced to an animal who does not experience the non-arbitrary, inherently meaningful system of language that not only allows for Dasein to communicate its realized temporal ontological care, through language communication.
In the middle of Metamorphosis, Gregor witnesses his mother’s withdrawal and inability to communicate with him: “—indeed she was barely talking about a whisper throughout, as though to prevent Gregor, whose whereabouts she didn’t know from even hearing the sound of her voice, seeing as she felt certain that he wasn’t capable of understanding her words anyway…” (Kafka 119). Gregor responds to his mother’s concerns about the layout of his bedroom with a profound realization about the fate of his anxiety.
As he listened to these words of his mother, Gregor understood that the want of any direct human address, in combination with his monotonous life at the heart of the family over the past couple of months, must have confused his understanding, because otherwise he would have been able to account for the fact that he seriously wanted to have his room emptied out. Was it really his wish to have his cosy room, comfortably furnished with old heirlooms, transformed into a sort of cave… (Kafka 119).
Daniel O. Dahlstrom elaborates on Dasein’s necessity of assertion, writing, “Assertions are, after all, existential in the sense that Dasein makes assertions (asserting is something that Dasein does) disclosing its world by doing so,” (21, italics mine). Gregor, due to his loss of ability to communicate within his state of anxiety of verminhood, cannot disclose his world by assertion—his desire to have a bare room—thus by definition cannot exist as Dasein, who can and does disclose its world of understanding and attunement through language communication.
The space of anxiety does not, as Heidegger believes, allow Dasein to face its fears only to have a re-realization of the self, rather the space of anxiety strips away any sense of human-Beingness, leaving the now-decapitalized-being in a space that does not allow for articulation and communication of any sense of meaning and understanding thus any ontological-temporal anticipation of death—Heideggerian care. When we take what happens to Gregor in his anxiety of verminhood, his loss of sense of temporality, communication, assertion, and eventually death, and apply that rhetorical experience against the backdrop of the dehumanization within the space of anxiety that permeates the entire Holocaust—epitomized by Auschwitz— again Heidegger’s notion of the value of anxiety and Dasein realizing itself in the face of fear is refuted. I will now examine how Auschwitz served as a space of anxiety—a phenomenon of verminhood—that resulted in not only the death of millions but also served as a prism for the deconstruction of inherent Heideggerian ontological meaning that is discovered and exercised through temporal language communication.
Auschwitz as the Postmodern Prism
The connection between Heideggerian philosophy—ranging from his ontological to phenomenological and rhetorical work—and the inception of Auschwitz not only as an institution of death, but as a philosophical deconstruction of all meaning as a tangible phenomenon of anxiety, is evident. Dasein, pushed to its ontological limit in the space of anxiety, should reflect and rediscover its own Being-with-meaning-ness according to Heidegger. But what we see in reality is that when Dasein—which I will use to refer to the collective Being of humanity against the backdrop of the Holocaust and the following postmodern era—is put into a space of anxiety, realization does not occur, instead there is a loss of communication and death, which we see through the embodiment of Kafka’s Gregor as he moves toward death within his anxiety of verminhood.
Gregor’s loss of ontological assertion of his desire for a bare room to crawl around due to his loss of language communication reflects directly what happened to the collective Dasein in Auschwitz. Assertion through communication was no longer an option for those placed in Auschwitz— the embodiment of the anxiety of verminhood—and dehumanized by Nazis that not only redefined meaning for those individuals, but also redefined meaning for the collective humanity. As David Hirsch posits, “nevertheless, an understanding of the ‘postmodern’ era cannot begin without the acknowledgment of Auschwitz” (87). The postmodern era, defined by the introduction of deconstructionist theories by Jacque Derrida and Paul de Man which resulted in the decentralization of any finite meaning of language because of the temporality from which communication cannot escape, emerged out of the Dasein’s experience of the phenomenon of anxiety, of verminhood, of Auschwitz.
Death of Dasein
As Gregor was unable to communicate his truth through assertion in his state of verminhood so, too, finite truth through communication is lost in the post-Auschwitz postmodern era; Auschwitz, the tangible result of Heideggerian philosophy, is the prism of deconstruction that spewed humanity into the postmodern era in which the finite truth of language-as-meaning is decentralized, deconstructed, and dies (Hirsch 87). Without the ability to articulate, assert, reconcile, and communicate—all of which Gregor loses within his anxiety of verminhood—there cannot exist a Dasein on an individual level nor on a larger collective humanity level. Auschwitz as the phenomenon of anxiety, of verminhood, has not served as a space for the individual and the collect to re-realize Being-with-meaning-ness, instead has isolated each individual into a space of discommunication—of differend—which cannot be resolved through meaningful temporal language communication. With decentralized truth, there are so many possibilities, assertions of “truth,” and irreconcilable differends that truth collapses in on itself and is inherently meaningless without the distinction of centralized meaning.
Without a finite sense of truth—Heideggerian inherent meaning—measured through the temporality of language communication, Dasein cannot exist and, as Gregor does in Metamorphosis, dies alongside of truth in the post-Auschwitz postmodern era. In the postmodern era, as according to Lyotard, we need “to understand social relations…not only as [a] theory of communication, but a theory of games which accepts agonistics as a founding principle” (16). With the decentralization of truth as a result of the phenomenon of anxiety of Auschwitz comes the death of Dasein as defined by the temporal ontological care—without inherently meaningful language communication to express assertions and truths, humanity must now face not the question of individual meaning, but how to reconcile the infinite truths of the post-Auschwitz postmodern era.
The last scene we get of Gregor not only includes his death and, until the charwoman realizes he is dead, the assumption that Gregor is the embodiment of Dasein, capable of communicating and perceiving truth and meaning through communication remains. Upon the Samsas’ charwoman discovering Gregor’s body in rigor mortis,
She thought he was lying there immobile on purpose, and was playing at being offended; in her opinion, he was capable of all sorts of understanding. Because she happened to be holding the long broom, she tried to tickle Gregor away from the doorway. When that bore no fruit, she grew irritable, and jabbed Gregor with the broom, and only when she had moved him from the spot without any resistance on his part did she take notice (Kafka 141-142).
As Gregor’s “final breath passed feebly from his nostrils,” closing the chapter of his anxiety of verminhood, so too does the feeble last breath of Dasein pass through the nostrils of inherently truth through language communication and temporal ontological care within the post-Auschwitz postmodern era (Kafka 141). What humanity is left with is the deconstructed death of Dasein and the disregard for Heidegger temporal ontological care Instead, humanity is left in a space of post-Auschwitz postmodernity, trying to make sense of our own decentralized truths and communicate those truths through assertion with a new condition of irreconcilable and decentralized truth—the death of Dasein.
Works Cited
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Dastur, Françoise. “Heidegger and the Question of the “Essence” of Language.” Heidegger and Language. Edited by Jeffrey Powell. Indiana University Press, 2013, pp. 224-239.
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Hirsch, David H. “Derailing American Literary History,” “Martin Heidegger and Pagan Gods.” The Deconstruction of Literature: Criticism after Auschwitz. Brown UP, 1991, pp. 1-20, 80-96.
Kafka, Franz. “Metamorphosis.” Metamorphosis and Other Stories. Translated by Michael Hoffman. Penguin Books, 2008, pp. 87-145.
Lyotard, Jean- François. Heidegger and “The Jews.” translated by Andreas Michel and Mark Roberts. University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
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Powell, Jeffrey. “Introduction.” Heidegger and Language. Edited by Jeffrey Powell. Indiana University Press, 2013, pp. 1-12.
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