Literary Traditions: “I Decided to depict Gregor’s New Form as a Cockroach”

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Writes Alex Blaisdell (’22):

For my final art piece for Professor Norrie Epstein’s Literary Traditions  I chose to make an edition of eight relief prints inspired by Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. I am primarily an oil painter, but I felt like oil paint wouldn’t be the right medium to use for a piece about The Metamorphosis. I liked the smaller medium of relief prints because The Metamorphosis is a shorter novella, as opposed to a long, epic novel. I also like the idea of the image repeated. I feel that repeating one image, such as street art does, has a humorous quality, and The Metamorphosis is an absurd and humorous book. I also like the simplicity of relief printing where there are only two values used. This simplicity seemed to fit well with the Metamorphosis and its somewhat simple plot.

For my image, I chose to depict Gregor’s shadow because Kafka had said that he didn’t want Gregor’s “monstrous vermin” self to be illustrated. I decided to depict Gregor’s new form as a cockroach anyways, but I only drew his silhouette as a nod to the ambiguity of Gregor’s new form. I also chose to include Gregor’s poster of the woman in furs because it’s the only thing in Gregor’s room that is specifically described and this says a lot about Gregor and his psyche. The woman in furs felt like a character in the novella; she’s Gregor’s only true ally through his transformation and brings him a sense of normalcy and stability.