46). Here, because the family’s day is filled with the torment of working, the additional strain of Gregor becomes unbearable. Their inability to disengage from work in the evening deprives them of the only possible respite from labor, and life without some kind of rest is torture. The worst irony is that taking care of the verminous Gregor is a filthy chore. Gregor, by escaping work, has not only forced his former dependents into labor, but has become work: disgusting work that only his disgraced family can perform.

Kafka returns again and again to the idea of vermin—the revolting nomads who communicate like birds in “An Old Leaf,” the dehumanized, emaciated hunger artist, the strange mouse people, among whom even Josephine barely distinguishes herself, and the man from the country in “Before the Law,” who by the end holds the fleas in the doorkeeper’s fur collar above himself. Max Brod actually refers to “The Metamorphosis” as Kafka’s “vermin story” (Franz Kafka: A Biography, 1960, p. 18). Additionally, Kafka regularly inserts himself in his fiction, giving his characters names like K. Some critics have even connected the two short as of Samsa with the identical vowel construction of Kafka. Vermin is in the eye of the beholder, and Kafka clearly sees a self-resemblance.

For Kafka, thinking about vermin was a way to understand the universe, and his own place in it. “A Message from the Emperor” begins by describing “you” as the emperor’s “single most contemptible subject, the minuscule shadow that has fled the farthest distance from the imperial sun” (p. 3). The “you” lives in shadow like a rat or a cockroach. Further, this shadow darkens against the authorial source of light, “the imperial sun.” The lowliness of vermin is created by a hierarchy, at the top of which is an amorphous, omnipotent authority. Kafka’s short parable “The Emperor” echoes this idea: “When a surf flings a drop of water on to the land, that does not interfere with the eternal rolling of the sea, on the contrary, it is caused by it” (The Basic Kafka, 1979, p. 183). Interestingly, Kafka again chooses a laborer to play the role of vermin.

In Kafka’s universe authority and vermin are natural enemies, and each gives rise to the other. In “Letter to His Father,” Kafka addresses himself in the voice of his father, Hermann:

There are two kinds of combat. The chivalrous combat, in which independent opponents pit their strength against each other, each on his own, each losing on his own, each winning on his own. And there is the combat of vermin, which not only sting but, on top of it, suck your blood in order to sustain their own life (Dearest Father, p. 195).

Herr Kafka represented the ultimate figure of authority for Franz, who here accuses himself of operating on the level of vermin. Moreover, this passage lashes out against the inequality intrinsic to an authorial relationship. Kafka’s suspicion of authority governs every word he writes. Throughout his life Kafka committed himself to many things—intellectualism, vegetarianism, teetotaling, Judaism, a string of women—but his subscription to each of these was never total. Once Kafka came to regard any philosophy as nothing more than a system of rules to be enforced, a dogma both bigger and smaller than himself, he withdrew from it.

In Kafka’s story “A Report to an Academy,” the narrator, who five years previous had occupied the form of an ape, has been transformed into a human. In this tale it is difficult to draw a black line between the narrator’s two selves; the differences are subtle. The narrator’s tone implies that his gradual transformation from an ape into a human represents an improvement. But Kafka questions this authorial status of humans. Driven by the desire to escape his cage, the ape observes his observers; the narrator writes, “it was so easy to imitate these people” (Complete Stories, p. 255).