The Metamorphosis Identity Quotes & Sayings

The themes of metamorphosis (transformation-particularly
human transformation-and identity (particularly human identity) are drawn from the treasury of pre-class world folklore. The folkloric image of man is intimately bound up with transformation and identity. This combination may be seen with particular clarity in the popular folktale )skazkaj. The folktale image of man-throughout the extraordinary variety of folkloric narratives-always orders itself around the motifs of transformation and identity (no matter how varied in its turn the concrete expression of these motifs might be). — Mikhail Bakhtin

The seductive invitation of metamorphosis - of turning into something other - has continued to suffuse fantasies of identity; on the one hand holding out a way of escape from humanity, on the other annihilating the self. — Marina Warner

Did he really want this warm room of his, so comfortably fitted with old family furniture, to be transformed into a cave, in which, no doubt, he would be free to crawl about unimpeded in all directions, but only at the price of rapidly and completely forgetting his human past at the same time? — Franz Kafka

Human beings *do* metamorphose. They change their identity constantly. However, each new identity thrives on the delusion that it was always in possession of the body it has just conquered. — Orson Scott Card