A live-streamed Chinese language lesson under the sky—the ancients were taken aback.

Shen Moyan stood in front of the podium, waiting for the students to finish taking notes.

"Patriarchy presents men and women with completely different dilemmas, but we must remind everyone of this."

What we've discussed—labor alienation, patriarchy—are all interpretations by later generations, not answers provided by Kafka.

If you think there's only one interpretation of "The Metamorphosis," then you're seriously underestimating this novel.

She leaned closer to the podium, her tone becoming more relaxed.

"Kafka's greatest strength is that his stories are like an empty room, and everyone who walks in will see something different."

You can't pinpoint which one is the true theme, because they're all hidden within the text.

She walked to the blackboard and tapped the word "alienation".

"Let's start with the first type of alienation of labor (from Marx's perspective)."

Before Gregor transformed into a beetle, he was already drained by work, debt, and family responsibilities.

He stopped living for himself a long time ago, he just hadn't had time to transform.

This interpretation is the most direct, but it has a flaw: pure economic determinism simplifies the characters' complexity, portraying Gregor as a complete victim and his family as passive cogs in a social machine. However, they too possess desires, cowardice, and selfishness, and the novel retains the complexity of human nature.

Shen Moyan paused for a moment.

"The second interpretation is to view the beetle as a sudden and serious disease."

Imagine this: a person suddenly loses the ability to take care of themselves, stops speaking, eats completely different things than before, is locked in a room and slowly weakens, and finally dies.

Doesn't this process resemble a family caring for a seriously ill relative?

Several students nodded unconsciously.

"My sister was genuinely willing to take care of him at first."

She eventually broke down, not because she was inherently cold-blooded, but because caring for someone who couldn't communicate, couldn't take care of themselves, and was becoming less and less like a "human being" for years on end would exhaust even the closest person.

"This way of reading it is cruel, but it is closer to reality than simply cursing family members for being cold-blooded."

The problem is, Gregor wasn't sick; he had actually turned into a beetle.

If read solely as a metaphor for illness, the novel's absurdity is stripped away.

Shen Moyan wrote a few words on the blackboard.

"So there's a third way to read it: existentialism."

A student by the window raised his hand. "Teacher, what is existentialism?"

"Existentialism, simply put, is the belief that life does not have a pre-written meaning."

Humans are not born into this world with an instruction manual.

Who you are is not determined by what you are born, nor by what others decide for you.

You have to make your own choices, take your own actions, and gradually become a person yourself.

She paused, then put the chalk back in the box.

"This statement sounds liberating, but it is also very heavy."

Because if there are no standard answers in life, it means you have to bear all the consequences of your choices, and the consequences of those choices are unknown.

Many people can't stand this freedom of choice, so they run away.

Where to escape to? Escape to the daily lives of most people, escape to the expectations of others, escape to "I can't help it," "I have to do it this way."

She looked at the whole class, her voice soft and clear.

"That's how Gregor is; he never makes a real choice for himself."

He didn't choose the job; his family needed money. Getting up early to catch the train wasn't his choice; his boss and debt forced him to do it.

Of course, he could resign, leave, or question his father about why he wasn't working.

But he didn't. He treated these "necessities" as life itself, never asking "why."

The classroom was quiet.

The boy who asked the question opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but then stopped.

Shen Moyan didn't continue immediately; she waited a few seconds.

"However, existentialist interpretation also has its limitations; it places too much emphasis on individual choice."

But is Gregor truly free? Did he have a choice? If he resigned, what would his family eat? If he ran away, who would pay off the debts?

In an era without social security or a way out, individuals have very limited choices.

So you can't say that he turned into a beetle because he wasn't brave enough.

This is why existentialism alone cannot explain this novel.

"Interpretations such as alienation of labor, patriarchy, disease care, existentialism, and even religious allegory and spiritual dilemmas can explain some aspects, but none can fully cover them."

They were like lamps, illuminating the dark room from different directions, yet half of the room itself remained in shadow.

"So how should we truly understand Kafka's *The Metamorphosis*?"

Shen Moyan didn't ask the students; he gave the answer directly.

That is modernism.

She reopened the textbook and turned to the footnotes on the last page.

"There's a footnote at the end of the text that many people may not have noticed."

Kafka, one of the founders of 20th-century modernist literature.

What is modernism? Let's go back to the beginning of the novel to find the answer.

The famous sentence at the beginning is printed on the first page of the textbook.

Instead of reading it aloud immediately, she turned around and wrote it down on the blackboard.

One morning, Gregor Samsa awoke from a restless sleep to find himself transformed into a giant beetle in his bed.

The chalk settled, and she turned around to look at the whole class.

"Most novels start with a trailer in the first sentence."

When you open "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," the first sentence is, "It is said that the world, after a long period of division, tends to unite; after a long period of unity, tends to divide." This trailer tells you that what you are about to read is a grand story about the rise and fall of the world.

When you open *One Hundred Years of Solitude*, the first sentence is, "Years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía would remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." This trailer tells you that what you're about to face is a triple fold of memory, fate, and time.

She drew a line under the phrase "one morning" on the blackboard with chalk.

"Kafka's opening has been considered by countless writers and critics for over a century to be one of the most moving openings in literary history."

Why? Just this one ordinary sentence, and a salesman is transformed into a beetle—what's so remarkable about that?

She put the chalk down.

"First, it tells the most incredible things in the most ordinary tone."

"One morning," which day? It doesn't matter.

It wasn't a predetermined day, nor a stormy night, nor a moment of divine wrath.

It's just another morning, just like yesterday, just like tomorrow.

"Waking up from an uneasy dream," uneasy, but just uneasy, not a nightmare, nor a passage to another world.

He found himself lying in bed, in the same bed, in the same room, everything exactly the same as when he went to sleep last night, except for himself.

Kafka didn't use any exclamation marks, no "Good heavens!", no "Unbelievable!"; he simply stated a fact calmly.

This calm was more chilling than any scream.

It tells you that absurdity doesn't come from the outside; it's a part of your daily life.

You might wake up this morning as Gregor, and I might wake up tomorrow morning as Gregor.

She paused.

"Secondly, this opening directly blocks all the reader's escape routes."

Look closely at this sentence: "It turned into a giant beetle".

It's not about "feeling like you've become" or "looking like a beetle," but rather a real physiological transformation.

The novel never explains why he turned into a beetle, nor does it show any indication that he will be turned back.

Kafka refused to offer any explanation to his readers.

In past stories of transformation, whether into a swan, a wild animal, or a frog, the characters would eventually revert back to their original forms. The transformation was a test, and the ending was redemption.

Kafka closed that door.

Gregor was transformed into a worm, and he remains a worm throughout the story until his death.

This stance of refusing explanation and refusing salvation is the most chilling judgment of 20th-century literature on the world:

Some dilemmas are unsolvable.

Some deformations are irreversible.

She walked back to the center of the podium, her voice softening slightly.

"Third, and most importantly."

This opening contains an extremely cruel misalignment: the body has become an insect, but the soul is still concerned with human affairs.

What was Gregor's first reaction after he discovered he had been turned into a beetle?

It's not about "how do I turn back?" or "will I die?", but about "how do I catch the 7 o'clock train?"

Becoming an insect is absurd enough, but what's even more absurd is that this insect is anxious about being late.

In this opening, Kafka depicts the deepest predicament of one person, no, of all people.

Your body is no longer yours, but your soul is still firmly bound by those "shoulds".

You should go to work, you should earn money, you should be worthy of your family, you should... even if you become an insect, you can't take a breath.

This is the most terrible.

Kafka did not rely on bizarre plots, moralizing, or heroic figures, but rather on extremely precise, calm, and even absurd methods.

It depicts the most hidden state of existence for modern people: alienation, loneliness, being swallowed up by the system, inability to escape, and an inability to understand themselves.