Kafka is unique and Kafkaesque is something characteristic of his writings.
I have gone through the Metamorphosis several times and yet I end up far from comprehending him.
I tend to seek a meaning, a commonality. I seek to order, systematize or sequence things.
I try to conventionalize him or chain him to a world of systems or orders or conformity.
No he breaks with conventions and wherein he succeeds. And we fail.
Kafka takes us away, far away from conventional realities. Our understanding of man is different from Kafka. We try to confine the study of man within parameters of our understanding, derived from religions, creeds, nationalities, geographies.
Englishness, Arabness, Americanness is nothing but an idea of stupidity at the bottom of the thing. Beneath the ness man is just a vermin and nothing else.
All attributes we call ethics, love, moralities, disciplines are skin-deep and go beyond the margins there remain nothing but the man-insect only.
Man-the insect then stings.
We love to choose hypocrisy. Kafka speaking truth is unpalatable to our taste.
That is how I understand him.