Bugged by the Bug

Reading Challenge 2017: book by an author from a country you've never visited. I chose The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, to fit this challenge.  I used to teach this to juniors in IB English and read it aloud to them.  The last time I read this was 2008.  It was not the same as having read it and taught it. It was a much faster read, as I had read it so many times before that I had much of it memorized.

Gregor Samsa seems dirtier than before, and not just physically.  Maybe I have a better understanding of cockroaches at this point, or maybe I am more fastidious in my cleaning. I could see the fuzz clinging to his body and smell the rotten food he did not eat.  I could see the slimy tracks on the walls where he moved during his incarceration in his room.

From a psychological standpoint, Gregor has many issues that need be addressed, including the idea he would get better and the sexual tension he created, or rather the author created.  Keeping a glossy picture (obviously from a magazine) of a nearly nude woman on the wall in a frame he had made tells how depraved Gregor is.  The author's use of visual imagery with sexual connotations leaves me wondering if he was in love with his own sister and sexually needy as his character.

It took an hour to read the short novel, which less me wondering why is this book so important. The impact is just not there any more.  I realize it is a good book to annotate, but where is the connection that students need when reading literature to their own lives.  They live in a modern world full of technology.  I find it difficult for them to connect to the underlying theme of dirtiness and duty to family which is found throughout the book.  

One unanswered question always plagues me.  Why would the Samsas have a housekeeper or cook when they could barely afford living expenses.  It seems to be a conundrum that will be unanswered by the now dead author.  

Here is another book where the cover art brings the novel into question.  Is that the sister, Grete, in her undergarments?  Is that his father and mother looking exasperated?  And lastly, is that the housekeeper waiting for non-transformed Gregor to die?