A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF METAMORPHOSIS IN KAFKA'S 'METAMORPHOSIS' AND THE TV SERIES 'DOCTOR WHO'
The BBC television series 'Doctor Who' has had eleven different actors in the lead role, yet has remained popular due to the overriding conceit that the central character remains the same despite dramatic changes in appearance and personality. This kind of positive metamorphosis is comparatively rare in literature and film, since metamorphosis is more often allied to the idea of change and loss. At an extreme, metamorphosis is even equated to mutation, which is seen as a potentially devastating assault on the body. Comparing the Doctor to a character such as Kafka's Gregor Samsa, the main character in 'Metamorphosis', it's apparent that 'Doctor Who' presents change as a necessary and positive thing (albeit with religious overtones, especially in the cases of Tom Baker and Christopher Eccleston), while for Samsa change is a negative and degenrative process that ultimately leads to his isolation and death. Between them, 'Doctor Who' and 'Metamorphosis' present opposite accounts of the process of change.
In 'Doctor Who', the titular character is able to regenerate his body whenever he's injured or ill. The regeneration process is in many ways a counter-metamorphosis, in the sense that the Doctor regenerates in order to survive - in other words, he's doing it in order to avoid death. In classical European (particularly German) litereature, death is above all representative of change, which is at the heart of the metamorphosis as experienced by, for example, Kafka's Gregor. In 'Doctor Who', regeneration is a form of renewal, albeit one that alters the individual's physical appearance and certain personality traits. This kind of renewal is far removed from the idea of metamorphosis as a kind of mutation, and whenever this 'renewal' in 'Doctor Who' goes wrong - as was the case when the fifth Doctor regenerated into Colin Baker's borderline psychopathic sixth Doctor, it's often down to a fundamental change in the Doctor's character, e.g. related to violence in this case. It's therefore clearly possible to argue that regeneration, for the Doctor, is less a process of metamorphosis than of renewal.
In Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', the protagonist Gregor Samsa undergoes a metamorphosis into a beetle at the start that progresses as the story continues. Initially, this seems less like a renewal and more like a deterioration, since the idea of a human becoming a cockroach is loaded with imagery associate with degredation and de-evolution. As Gregor is locked in his room and forcibly isolated from society by his family, so his physical form continues to metamorphose: it's notable that at the start of the story, he's a human-sized beetle, but later on as his isolation becomes more and more complete he starts to shrink and become the size of a normal beetle, scurrying about and hiding under sofas so as not to cause a fuss when people come into the room. Gregor's metamorphosis is on-going and, crucially, degenerative - in which case, it can be seen to be counter to the main tenets of the regeneration process in 'Doctor Who'. Furthermore, later in 'Metamorphosis', when Gregor is drawn by his sister's music to attempt to join a gathering with the tenants, his appearance leads the tenants to leave and to threaten the family with legal action for having allowed Gregor, as a beetle, to remain in the house. The lodgers literally make a spectacle of him:
"(the middle lodger) pointed his index finger, without uttering a further word, at Gregor as he was moving slowly forward. The violin fell silent. The middle lodger smiled, first shaking his head once at his friends, and then looked down at Gregor once more." (Kafka, 2007 ed., p. 37).
Responding to this, the family lock Gregor in his room and his isolation, which was initially mostly self-imposed, becomes a form of capture. Gregor eventually dies from a combination of starvation (self-inflicted) and a wound caused when his father threw fruit at him. Kafka is clearly showing that Gregor's destruction is at least partly down to his own reaction to his metamorphosis, as well as the reaction of his family. There are clearly a number of reasons for Gregor's isolation, and these are linked with his destruction. His family clearly find it hard to deal with him, and when the lodgers arrive Gregor is locked in his room. It's at this point that contact with his family becomes far less frequent, and Gregor's downward spiral is hastened. However, Preece argues that in this case "the family cannot be taken to represent society, because of the familial bonds" (Preece, 2005, p. 137), so it's possible to argue that Gregor's isolation from society began even before the metamorphosis and the story began, since he was working long hours at the firm to which his father owes money, and therefore has no life outside the family unit.
When Gregor turns into a beetle, this is merely his isolation becoming visible and it's the destruction of his status in society that leads to the destruction of his life. In this respect, it's possible to compare Gregor's fate with the fate of Meursault, the protagonist of Camus' 'The Stranger', since in both cases their destruction is not a single strike, but a series of destructions of parts of their souls that lead, seemingly inevitably, to the final destruction of their bodies. However, in the case of Kafka's Gregor, his human body is destroyed (by becoming a beetle) before his soul is destroyed, as if Kafka is reversing the usual order in order to show how these different levels of destruction impact upon each other.
For the Doctor in 'Doctor Who', isolation is a constant danger, and has been dealt with in a number of different ways. At times, the Doctor seems to enjoy his isolation - for example, he seems content to be travelling alone at the start of the 1996 TV movie, and seems to have no particular compunctions in terms of being alone in, for example, 'The Hand of Fear' when he leaves Sarah-Jane Smith behind in order to return to his home planet, Gallifrey. However, it's notable that in the series' long history, this is the first time that the Doctor chooses to leave with no companion. The first time he was truly shown to be alone was in 'The Green Death', when Jo decides to marry Clifford Jones, and the Doctor bids her a sad farewell before driving off alone in Bessie. Ironically, this was at a time in the show's history when the UNIT family was regarded as being one of the strongest social bonds in the show's history.
Nevertheless, there was a palpable increase in the Doctor's sense of isolation when the show returned in 2005. Partly, this was due to his realisation that he was now the last of his species. He is clearly despondent when he loses Rose at the end of the second series, and it's Martha who makes the decision to leave at the end of the third series. Added to regular comments from the Doctor about his loneliness throughout his ninth and tenth incarnations, this makes it clear that the Doctor would prefer not to be travelling alone. Regeneration, which can be seen to have a social function as an instigator of change, seems in this context to be partly based on the need to freshen up social relationships from time to time. For example, the fifth and sixth Doctors have very different relationships with Peri - the fifth sacrifices his persona in order to save her, only for the sixth to try to kill her moments later. This is a far cry from the supposedly ancient traveller played by William Hartnell in the show's early days, when the idea of great age (the Doctor variously claims to be between 400 and 600 years old) is a virtual synonym for loneliness.
Ultimately, it's clear that change has a vital function in literature, especially when it afflicts the corporeal body. For the Doctor in 'Doctor Who', change is a renewal, almost a rebirth, and at times has a religious (or more specifically Christian) overtone. For Gregor Samsa in Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', however, change is a moment of deterioration, although it's notable that Kafka intentionally doesn't show us Samsa's life before his transformation; doubtlessly, this was done mainly for dramatic purposes, but it also serves to create a sense that perhaps Samsa's pre-beetle life was in some way indicative of his eventual fate. For the Doctor, however, life is a continual series of renewals and changes, and it's notable that as the series continues (it will shortly celebrate its 46th anniversary) the Doctor is slowly but undeniably becoming younger. If this process continues, there would have to be a body-shock moment where he becomes too young, almost infantile, and ceases to be able to function. Whether this questions is addressed, or whether he will simply remain within a broad age range, only time will tell.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Camus, Albert, 'The Stranger'. London: Vintage Books, 1989 ed.
Preece, Julian. 'The Cambridge Companion to Kafka'. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005
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