What Kafka Knew About Changing for Others

I picked up The Metamorphosis in Croatian to practice the language. A small act of ambition—one of those ideas that sounds smart in theory but quickly reminds you how terrifying language (and life) can be. On page one, Gregor Samsa wakes up as a bug. Or rather, čudovišni kukac—a monstrous insect. I had to pause and look up kukac. It’s not an easy read, not in Croatian, not in any language. But maybe that’s the point.

Kafka didn’t write to comfort us. He wrote to expose the cracks in what we call normal. And what better way to understand a new language than to dive into a story about isolation, disconnection, and transformation? Because The Metamorphosis isn’t just about waking up one day as a bug. It’s about waking up one day and realizing you’ve become someone unrecognizable—to your family, your world, even to yourself. And somehow, you’re still expected to go to work, to keep going, to perform.

Reading it now, again, in a language I’m still learning, adds a second layer. There’s a slowness to it. I read, I stop, I translate, I think. And in that pause, I feel even closer to Gregor. Trapped in a body that no longer functions the way it used to. Trying to speak and not being understood. Trying to stay part of a life that no longer fits.

It made me think—how many times in life do we go through small metamorphoses? Not the insect kind, but the invisible ones. The ones that happen when we say yes too often, when we adapt too much, when we silence what we truly want. When we slowly forget who we are, just to fit someone else’s expectations. Because what Kafka reveals—so clearly, so painfully—is what happens when people stop seeing you as a person and start seeing you only for what you do, what you provide, what you carry.

And when you stop being “useful”? They step back. They move on. It’s not that you’ve changed—it’s that you stopped serving a purpose they never admitted was transactional. Gregor didn’t stop being himself. But when he could no longer go to work, when he couldn’t meet their expectations, he stopped existing in their eyes. That’s the part that stings the most: realizing how easily you can be erased from a story you helped build.

Kafka teaches something brutal and brilliant: if you change too much to please others, one day they might not even see you as human anymore. That part hurts—but it’s also a reminder. To be seen, you have to stay visible to yourself.

So yes, I’m reading The Metamorphosis in Croatian. And no, it’s not just to practice vocabulary. It’s to remind myself that language is transformation. That reading reshapes us. That even bugs have boundaries. And that becoming unrecognizable shouldn’t be the cost of love.