The Moths by Viramontes
I read Metamorphosis in high school and believe me, it is no less weird than the first time I read it. But Kafka makes several good points about our societies with the reactions of Gregor, his family, and his boss to this rather disgusting transformation. The fact that Gregor turns into a bug is disgusting in itself, but the more revolting transformation is the underlying changes Gregor has made in his life. He goes to work to earn money for other people that are too lazy to work for themselves, he does not enjoy his job that requires a lot of travel, and he closes himself in his room when he is not traveling. A lot of what we do in our every day lives is done for a monetary purpose, and that realization is somewhat sad.
Transforming from a human being to an animal is obviously a lower connotation in this sense, but the transformation in The Moths is a different meaning for a beloved grandmother that is passing on.
So often we think of the funerial processes as someone else's business. We send our loved ones to an embalmer to prepare the bodies. We let a funeral home make them look nice in their surroundings. In this story, Viramontes shows a loved one bathing and preparing the old woman herself. And in the last moment, moths fly from her body. The last life in the woman flew from her body and was the last sign of the narrator being with her Abuelita.
A transformation from human to animal is very significant in both of these stories, but in different ways. Metamorphosis is about the bad transformations that we let ourselves fall into. The Moths is about a transformation that we must face in order to see the full experience of life.
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