Delving into the soul of the vermin

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines - Joan A. Raguindin, 25, lives in Pampanga and got her arts and literature degree from University of the Cordilleras. She’s a freelance writer of poems, songs and plays and is currently working on a novel. She also paints and collects dolls, clocks and “owl accessories.”

I’ve been into different places at different times; dined with vampires in New Orleans in the 1800s up to the 1900s; roamed Rome, France, Egypt, so on and so forth, and finally, sang with Hobbits in the Shire as I shared with them the glorious battle for Middle Earth. I even tried to share the magic when I entered the school of Hogwarts, and the splendid world of Narnia. I debated and nodded along with Dante’s journey, and laughed along with Queen Elizabeth while applauding Shakespeare’s comedy.

I am fiction, and these have been my reality: books in fancy covers and hundreds-thick pages of well-written stories that led me to a whole new world and exciting characters (sometimes I wish they were real or one could’ve been me). But no, this writing is for neither one of them — not for Lestat, Frodo, nor Harry.

 I’ve been into places at different times, but I’ve never thought once that I’d be enticed into a small dark room of filth, grief and pain. Wonderfully tragic, and the vermin is there.

This is how it began.

The book lies there in a shelf, a thin (compared to typical pocket novels), peach-colored cover with a somewhat grotesque Impressionist painting, worth around P250, unnoticed. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. My first thought was “Who is he?” and “Why do I keep on glancing at the sketchy cover and title while searching for my old companions, Tolkien or Rice?” This had been ongoing for a month or so until I decided to buy the book out of impulse and curiosity. This had better be good, I thought. So then I went home and, since the electricity had gone out, I got my candle and started reading. After half an hour, the story was finished and yet there are a good deal half of the book’s pages unread. I was utterly dismayed. That’s it? Not a novel that could get me through the hours of boredom? Not even one single explanation as to how Gregory Samsa became a horrible monster? That was my initial reaction. I almost felt like I was even tricked into buying a book with 194 pages and with only 53 pages for the whole story.

 I was really mad so I kept on frantically searching for anything else in the remaining half (or third) of the book that I still hadn’t flipped. No good-looking character, no wonderful places where I could venture and I was mad… but nonetheless I held on to the book and I was speechless when I realized the truth. I was mad because I couldn’t accept the tragic ending of Samsa. I was mad because I couldn’t accept that this is how Kafka uncovered the truth of how he had lived within or outside his society. And I couldn’t believe that I could get emotionally involved within 30 minutes of reading one of those “indirect diaries” of a man who died without knowing he’d become a great author and could make such an astonishing impression on readers and literary critics.

Now let me talk about the vermin. Okay, so no superhuman powers, no save-the-world strategies, no beyond-the-world adventures and certainly not bounded with happy-ending nor tragic love story.

Gregor Samsa is a traveling salesman who wakes up one day to find himself turned into a vermin (most people visualize a cockroach). He is then locked up in his room and is deprived of comfort and food by his family, loathed, and finally left dead in his empty husk. At one glance at how the story begins, one might think this could pass as a child’s bedtime story but as we delve deeper, this simple story means a lot. The writer is there… hidden in the very core of the vermin. Like Samsa, Kafka was deprived. When Samsa was left and forgotten by his family, same thing happened to Kafka who was left and forgotten (or felt alienated) by his society and, most likely, from his own self. Kafka is the vermin and he will haunt literature for centuries.

The Metamorphosis talks about reality and it doesn’t matter if it is relates directly to the struggles of Kafka or someone else. The message itself is there and it is up to the readers as to how they would like to be influenced by it. As for me? I’ve finally learned a good deal. With his story, I learned how to recognize the sheer ugliness of reality and the coldness of one’s solitude and, along with it, I learned how not to embrace it and, instead, find the beauty from the lesson it conveys. Aside from the feelings this story has evoked in readers, it must have been an eye-opener to people (like me) who are in denial of what’s going on around them in society (past, present, or even in the future). In Stanley Corngold’s introduction, he says Kafka “became the body of works that has created modern awareness.” “Awareness”: the very word, and I definitely agree. One more thing that caught my attention is the fact that Kafka hid his writing away from the public and even called this story (“The Metamorphosis”) bad, as found written in his diary. Well, if he only knew.

It’s been years now since the first time I laid my hands on that thin book and it was currently piled with my usual collections (currently eyeing The Children of Hurin by Tolkien), but one thing is sure: the power that emanates from Kafka’s pages is so strong that I wouldn’t even waste a single minute of my time writing about it if I wasn’t a victim of his haunting epiphany. If someone should ask me to recommend a book for serious reading, Kafka’s name will automatically spill from my lips.

It is really difficult, though, to explain my feelings about his work or towards this particular masterpiece. It must have been guilt, sorrow, pity, hatred, and even joy. I couldn’t figure it out; still, one thing I know, a lot of good books or authors are truly remarkable, but not as remarkable as this. What he created is an impression of having an old scar that never ceases to open to reveal a new wound with each heartbeat. Surely, I’ll forever visit different places, but I know for a fact that I’ll always be a prisoner: I can never escape the cold room of Kafka’s soul.