Gregor Samsa

It's not fun to realize  you're ultimately no more significant than a  cockroach. That's what Kafka's Metamorphosis is about. The most profound irony of Kafka's story is the fact that Gregor Samsa's tormentors are ultimately no better off than he. The inception of life is an unfathomable a mystery as is consciousness in humans yet all living creatures have the same ignoble end. There may be income inequality, but death is the great leveler. There is, in fact, a certain freedom in knowing that one day one will be free from the pain and burden of living itself. In The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt quotes Lucretius' De rerum natura thusly: "Mourners," Lucretius wrote, "always wring their hands in anguish and say, 'Never again will your dear children race for the prize of your first kisses and touch your heart with pleasure too profound for words. But they do not go on to add, 'You will not care, because you will not exist.'"

read "Ultimate Rejection" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star