When the cicada no longer sings
Bureaucracy, identity and the kafkaesque metamorphosis in Cicada (2018), by Shaun Tan
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21814/2i.7167Keywords:
Franz Kafka, bureaucratic terror, The trial, The metamorphosis, picturebooks, children’s and young adult literatureAbstract
This article aims to analyse the picturebook Cicada (2018) by Shaun Tan from an intertextual and intermedial perspective. It highlights the dialogue the work establishes with two canonical texts by Franz Kafka (1883–1924): Die Verwandlung [The Metamorphosis] (1915) and Der Process [The Trial] (1925). The study is grounded in a Benjaminian reading of Kafka’s universe as a “theatre of the world” and focuses on how Cicada reinscribes central themes of Kafka’s poetics. These include institutional dehumanisation, labour alienation, and the oppressive power of bureaucracy, all reframed in a contemporary context and in a format intended for a young readership. The analysis considers both the verbal and visual components of the work. It emphasises how text, illustrations, and paratexts contribute to the construction of a symbolic universe marked by oppression and by the anonymisation of the subject caught in the grip of bureaucratic terror. In contrast to the tragic outcomes that characterise the literary trajectories of Gregor Samsa and Josef K., Cicada’s final metamorphosis is interpreted as an act of rupture and liberation. In this way, the Kafkaesque motif is semantically redirected towards an ethical and emancipatory horizon.
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