Boab's God: Welsh's Kafkaesque Metamorphosis and Latent Agency

The provided text from "Philosophics" offers a comparative analysis of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis and Irvine Welsh's short story The Granton Star Cause. It examines how both narratives portray alienation and metamorphosis, but highlights key differences in their depiction of agency. While Kafka's character, Gregor Samsa, experiences a transformation that leads to inertia and deeper alienation, Welsh's Boab Coyle develops a "god" of vengeance that represents his latent agency and repressed desires. The article uses Critical Theory lenses from thinkers like Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Bataille, and Kristeva to contrast their respective explorations of power, abjection, and social marginalisation, ultimately concluding that both works illustrate the tragedy of alienation, albeit through distinct paths of stasis versus destructive spite.https://philosophics.blog/2025/08/29/boabs-god-latent-agency-in-welshs-kafkaesque-metamorphosis/