A traveling salesman who works to pay off his family's debt. One morning he wakes up as a giant insect. His family is horrified. His first thought is that he'll miss work.
"What has happened to me?"
KEIKO FURUKURA
Convenience Store Woman — Sayaka Murata (2016)
Thirty-six years old. Unmarried. Works the same part-time convenience store job she has had since college. Society thinks she is broken. She has never felt more complete.
"Is it wrong to be happy like this?"
HIRAYAMA
Perfect Days — dir. Wim Wenders (2023)
Cleans public toilets in Tokyo. Came from a wealthy family. Chose this life deliberately. Wakes before dawn. Listens to cassette tapes. Photographs light through leaves. Says almost nothing.
"Every day is a perfect day."
When "Normal" Becomes Strange
An introduction to existentialism through three lives
TEXT ONE
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
TEXT TWO
Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata
TEXT THREE
Perfect Days
Dir. Wim Wenders, 2023
Before we begin — a question.
What do you think existentialism is? (honest answers only)
Something French philosophers made up to sound smart
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Being sad about how meaningless everything is
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The idea that you have to create your own meaning
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I genuinely have no idea
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Total responses: 0
Here's what we're going to do.
We're going to meet three characters who are each asking the same question in different ways.
You're going to notice what they have in common.
And then we're going to name it.
The word comes at the end. The experience comes first.
Text One: The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka — Prague, 1915
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
His first thought is not "why did this happen?"
His first thought is: "I'll miss the morning train."
Gregor has spent his entire adult life working to pay off a debt that was never his. He has no hobbies, no friends, no identity outside his job. When he transforms, his family's concern is: who will support them?
The transformation Kafka describes may have already happened — long before the first sentence.
Key question: Was Gregor already less than human before he became a bug?
Text Two: Convenience Store Woman
Sayaka Murata — Tokyo, 2016
"I am a convenience store worker. That's the one and only thing I've ever been. It's like a gear has slotted into place inside me."
She is 36. Unmarried. Part-time. Her family holds intervention-style dinners.
She has never been happier.
Keiko has always been strange. As a child she couldn't read social rules. She learned, over years, to mimic others just enough to function. At the convenience store, the rules are clear, the sounds are familiar, and she knows exactly who she is.
This is not a compromise. This is her authentic life. The novel asks why society can't accept that.
Key question: Who has the right to tell someone their happiness is wrong?
Text Three: Perfect Days
Dir. Wim Wenders — Tokyo, 2023 · Starring Kōji Yakusho
"The shadows don't disappear when they overlap. They become richer."
Hirayama came from wealth. He left that world behind.
Now: wake. Water plants. Drive. Clean toilets. Eat lunch in the park. Photograph the light. Read. Sleep. Repeat.
The film has almost no plot. It simply watches Hirayama live — with extraordinary patience and care. He notices what most people walk past: komorebi (木漏れ日), the Japanese word for light filtering through leaves.
He is not searching for meaning. He has found it, in the most ordinary things imaginable. The film's question is whether we can see it too.
Key question: Is a life without ambition or drama still a full life?
Your turn. Three minutes.
Gregor, Keiko, and Hirayama each live differently from everyone around them.
What do they seem to have in common?
What question does each of their lives seem to be raising?
There is no right answer yet. Write what you actually think.
0 words
3:00
What patterns did you notice?
Let's see if these match what you wrote.
All three characters are judged by the people around them for not living the "right" kind of life — even when they are not hurting anyone.
All three raise the question: who decides what a life is worth? And by whose standards?
All three, in different ways, are searching for — or have already found — something genuine beneath the surface of everyday routine.
None of them fits society's idea of a successful, normal person. And yet they are the most interesting people in their stories.
Philosophers have a word for what these three share.
They have been wrestling with this since the 1840s.
EXISTENTIALISM
Existentialism is a way of thinking that says: there is no pre-assigned meaning to your life. You were not born with a fixed purpose. There is no script. The only meaning that exists is the meaning you create through your choices and your actions — and the weight of that freedom is both exhilarating and terrifying.
Associated thinkers: Kierkegaard · Nietzsche · Heidegger · Sartre · Camus · Simone de Beauvoir
Five ideas that keep coming back
You already identified most of these. Here are the names.
Authenticity — Living in a way that is genuinely yours, not a role performed for others. Keiko has it. Hirayama has it. Gregor is still finding it.
Freedom & Responsibility — You are radically free to choose how you live — and radically responsible for those choices. There is no script, and no one to blame for how you use your freedom.
The Absurd — The universe does not care about your meaning-making. Life has no built-in purpose. Kafka understood this viscerally. It is simultaneously funny and awful.
Alienation — The feeling of being a stranger in your own world — to your family, your society, yourself. All three of our characters know this feeling from the inside.
Presence — Confronting the reality of your situation — including death, loneliness, and meaninglessness — honestly, rather than hiding from it. Hirayama does this with unusual grace.
The questions we'll carry through this unit
Who has the right to define a "successful" or "normal" life?
If meaning isn't given to us, what does it actually feel like to make it for ourselves?
Can alienation — feeling like an outsider — ever be a form of freedom?
What is the cost of living authentically? And what is the cost of not?
These questions don't have answers. They have better and worse responses. That distinction matters.
Think. Pair. Share.
"Have you ever felt like the rules everyone else seems to live by
didn't quite apply to you — or that you were playing a role
that didn't feel entirely like your own?"
30 seconds to yourself first. Then discuss with the person next to you. Be honest.
2:00
2 minutes total
Why these three. Why now.
Literature doesn't just describe problems. It asks us to look at them honestly.
CAREER ANXIETY
What does it mean to "succeed"? How do we separate who we are from what we do? Gregor and Keiko press directly on this — with very different results.
SOCIAL CONFORMITY
What happens when you don't fit the script — for gender, relationships, ambition, lifestyle? All three texts take this seriously and refuse easy answers.
PRESENCE & ATTENTION
Hirayama has no smartphone. He is fully here. What do we lose when we are always somewhere else? What might we gain by actually showing up?
Our journey — three phases
The sequence is intentional. Each text builds on the one before.
PHASE ONE
The Metamorphosis
The diagnosis. Kafka asks: what does it mean when a person is treated as a function rather than a human being? What remains of identity when everything that defined you is stripped away?
PHASE TWO
Convenience Store Woman
The challenge. Murata asks: what if being "abnormal" is the only honest choice available? A dark comedy about the cost of fitting in, and the stranger cost of refusing to.
PHASE THREE
Perfect Days
The (tentative) answer. Wenders doesn't argue for a philosophy — he shows us a man who has built a life of extraordinary presence and care. Is it enough? That is for you to decide.
Before you go — 3 minutes.
Choose one and write 4–6 sentences:
A. Describe a moment when you felt like you were performing a version of yourself rather than being yourself.
B. Which of the three characters do you find most confusing — and why? (Confusion is a valid response.)
C. What does "a meaningful life" actually look like to you, right now, honestly?
0 words
3:00
Back to the beginning.
Now that we've talked through the ideas — what do you think existentialism is?
Something French philosophers made up to sound smart
0
Being sad about how meaningless everything is
0
The idea that you have to create your own meaning
0
I genuinely have no idea
0
Total responses: 0
Three voices.
"What has happened to me?"
"I am a convenience store worker. That's the one and only thing I've ever been."
"The shadows don't disappear when they overlap. They become richer."