The Tragedy of Metamorphosis into a Lawyer

In Metamorphosis by Kafka, the main character changes into a vermin, something like a cockroach. It is probably the one of the most despicable figures that a human being can imagine himself or herself turning into.

Perhaps you mean to use "imagine" in one sense, about the reader, rather than in the other sense, about Gregor Samsa. But did Gregor Samsa not find himself transformed in the night in the same sense of "find" that Dante found himself in a dark wood, in which the right way was lost? Does not the carapace of Gregor Samsa exist in precisely the same way that the "selva oscura," or—for that matter—Mount Purgatory exist? To say nothing whatever about Ovid, though one should....

In Robinson’s Metamorphosis, the main character Robinson offers an interesting idea of metamorphosis too.

This is mere connective tissue in a place where the single most important sentence in the essay, the one declaring the theme, ought to have been.

He proposes what he calls a collective metamorphosis: lawyers turning into prisoners, and prisoners turning into lawyers. Robinson seems to be implying that lawyers turning into prisoners, and prisoners turning into lawyers would be as horrendous as a person turning into a vermin to them.

I don't see why that in particular is what he is implying. You made that observation about Kafka's Metamorphosis, but that observation doesn't thereby become what the Metamorphosis as someone else's metaphor implies. Sure, some ironic connotation of that kind is present, but perhaps, as with all irony, Robinson is implying something else too, at the very least? And after all, this is not the only image in the poem that addresses: (a) transformation, (b) degradation, (c) the proximity of lawyering to evil, or (d) the concept of our desert, the exacting justice we deserve. To say that Robinson "seems to be implying" such a flat, stale, and unprofitable implication amidst everything else the poem has going on risks, I should say, mistaking a mountain for a molehill.

It is not difficult to see why it would be so horrific for a lawyer to suddenly wake up and find himself in prison one morning, but why would it be as terrible for a prisoner to find himself in a nice suit, instead of a prison uniform, and inside a court or an office, instead of a prison cell? His use of language indicates that in fact, he believes turning into lawyer is actually more dreadful than turning into a prisoner.

By this point in the argument, a thing you observed that was in danger of being overemphasized at the expense of more resonant meanings has crowded them out altogether. We are left not with a deeper grasp of the whole poem that was made, but rather with our hands firmly wrapped around one shard of what it has been shattered into by the application of a very minute but heavy hammer.

Certainly, Robinson does not mean that it would be terrible for prisoners only because most of them would lack necessary legal knowledge required for the profession. Then what is so “horrendous” about becoming a lawyer, even for a prisoner?

Robinson makes an analogy between lawyers and prisoners, as if they are interchangeable. There seem to be two implications: one clear, and another one rather obscure. The clear implication is that the nature of lawyer includes a criminal aspect. In fact, he seems to think that it is a dominant characteristic of the profession. Robinson is conscious of it throughout the story and does not bother to hide his thinking. His speech begins with a point about a rich lawyer and his lament, his greed; then a Defense Attorney who wanted his “dumb” client dead and a “sexy” prosecutor who showered upon the client numerous exaggerated criminal charges; “nonviolent felonies committed by our sisters and brothers over here in the World Financial Center; criminal lawyers who have to be always around criminals, and the police; and of course, an imaginary, unfortunate prisoner who metamorphosed into a lawyer and now has to defend a doctor who did not “properly disinfect one of those jeweled barbells,” consequently permanently damaging “a twenty-year-old girl’s nasal membrane.”

Robinson points out that lawyers do wrongs or defend people who have done wrongs, and make a lucrative “business” out of it. There is a sense of immorality, injustice in lawyering, as prisoners are morally blameworthy, although lawyers mostly do not commit overt, violent crimes as prisoners have done, or lawyers simply have not been arrested and prosecuted yet. So lawyers share some similarities with prisoners. There exists an impression of lack of morality in both classes. But still, would not one say that lawyers are better off than prisoners? Yet strangely enough, Robinson calls lawyers turning into prisoners a “weird, nasty dream,” while calling prisoners turning into lawyers the “most horrendous nightmare of [one’s] life.” Why is being a lawyer worse than being a prisoner?

The answer to this question is the obscure implication from Robinson’s collective metamorphosis, since Robinson never clearly explains the reason for his expression. Comparison with prisoners is therefore necessary. The biggest disadvantage of being a prisoner is physical imprisonment. Prisoners are deprived of their physical freedom due to what they have done. Lawyers are not. Then what are they deprived of, as the consequence of being lawyers? Justice Holmes. Jr. in the Path of the Law may suggest a hint:

“We cannot all be Descartes or Kant, but we all want happiness. And happiness, I am sure from having known many successful men, cannot be won simply by being counsel for great corporations and having an income of fifty thousand dollars. An intellect great enough to win the prize needs other food besides success.”

Lawyers are successful people. At least most of them are. They are affluent, powerful, privileged. Yet Holmes says there is more to it. Material wealth is insufficient. And that is what Robinson mockingly exclaims in the beginning of the story. Lawyers with “two wives, four cars, three houses, two precociously gifted Ivy League children…one sunny morning…awakens” in a state of lament, due to the “demise” of the profession.

Maybe you should pay more attention to that "awakens" part, right there at the front of the poem. Remind you of anything?

They are not happy. They were not supposed to be what they are now. They are so self-consciously aware of their faults, their wrongs, their responsibilities. It should have been, and should be “lawyers and justice,” not “lawyers and greed.” Lawyers are deprived of their essence. They are physically free, but morally suppressed, spiritually confined, chained; chained to what they have achieved; money, power, and privilege; too hard to let go of now. Prisoners are paying their due. Lawyers are voluntarily digging into their own depravity as if they were digging gold. The degree of fall is incomparable. And as for prisoners, it is over once they are imprisoned. As for lawyers, falling is present continuous.

Robinson’s collective metamorphosis is a hypothesis, a fantasy.

As opposed to what?

Prisoners will not suffer misfortune of suddenly finding themselves being a lawyer one morning. But there are people who are sure to turn into lawyers: law school students. Not all of them will chase after material success, but most of them will; some willingly, and some unwillingly. They will have chance to do some good, and will have to put up with committing some wrongs. And will slowly metamorphose into a lawyer, as a cocoon turns into a butterfly, or a moth, or a vermin. There is something tragic about this process of change, especially because people voluntarily choose to become lawyers, and they think, and they are encouraged to think they have made a wonderful choice. They may eventually find themselves lamenting or they may not. They may never realize it. A bigger tragedy.

Or perhaps the point of metamorphosis, from Ovid to Kafka by way of almost all the poets in between—Marlow and Goethe come particularly to mind—and not a few before is something larger and more complicated than either "tragedy" or "happiness." The biologists have borrowed a word with the largest possible meaning to apply it in the smallest possible way, but we are not therefore compelled to follow their example.

I think the route forward here is to cut loose the anchor cable holding you to a very confined interpretation of one image in a complex work. I think the other major task is to pay attention to the words you did not interpret at all in the very small part of the landscape you surveyed: "exacting justice."