James CBI

Having read Metamorphosis so much I've always been taken by the application of his main themes in real life, and how perceptions of self and body affect how one goes about in the world. To this end I'm including two images, one directly related to Metamorphosis, and one that I view as an example of it's inverse in our world.

Gregor views himself as a vermin, (though yes, he is actually a horrible bug monster in the book). He actually eats garbage, gives up on speech, and when the chance presents itself to sink deeper into the mindset fitting with the body he is trapped in, he finds himself completely unwilling to try to battle against it. Gregor is a prisoner of his body, yes, but he's a willing prisoner all to happy to coalesce to his apathy.

There are, of course, many real life examples of similar situations. People who are slaves to depression and apathy, who find themselves bound by broken bodies, or bodies unwilling to work and grow. Situations like that are not rare, and it's completely understandable how someone in that situation could grow hopeless.

The second image is one I've always really liked, one I had as a desktop wallpaper for a while. It does seem to present a bit of a dystopian, Matrix-esque depiction of love and reality, but my preferred interpretation is to see it through the lens of rampant digital escapism, where people are all too willing to wallow in the ego boosts of things like video games and modern media, living exclusively through vicarious connection with the digital world and social media, conflating their status and their being while their bodies atrophy away because of neglect; an interesting phenomenon when juxtaposed with Gregor.