The Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka

When individuals are rejected by family and society, they tend to feel abandoned and unloved. In Franz Kafka’s, The Metamorphosis, Gregor’s transformation into a “monstrous vermin” (Kafka 1) results in him being psychologically and even physically abused by his family. Rejection from his mother, sister, and father leave Gregor feeling unwanted and feeling as if he is a terrible burden on the family and their well being.

Isolation not only changes the personalities of Gregor and his family, but also it changes the role and duties Gregor plays in his family. Before the metamorphosis, Gregor worked alone to provide for the entire family. For example, in the beginning, before the transformation, he says, “But besides that, the money Gregor had brought home every month he had kept only a few dollars for himself” (4). This shows Gregor’s selfishness and his family’s heavy dependency on his income. It establishes the fact that Gregor’s family’s loyalty to Gregor was strong because the family depended on Gregor for their own survival, and shows how they betrayed him by disregarding him after he became an insect. The isolation of Gregor caused by the transformation not only affects Gregor’s role in the family, but also changes the role of Mr. Samsa. Mr. Samsa originally told by Gregor: ”Now his father was still healthy, certainly. But he was an old man who had not worked for the past five years and who in any case could not be expected to undertake that much” (17). This shows how irresponsible Mr. Samsa acted for his family in the beginning. Mr. Samsa, a man in his 50s, blamed his unemployment on anxiety and depression from a past failed business. Mr. Samsa changes his role as the useless drag to the provider of the family, and even obtains a new job as a bank manager.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a reflection on how alienation and isolation begin and develop in a society by employing the characters in his novella as a representation of society as a whole. Using Gregor’s manager to demonstrate the initiation of isolation and alienation of a person, Gregor as the person being isolated and the inhabitants of the Samsa household as the other members of society, Kafka creates an effective model to represent the hierarchically structured effect of isolationism and alienation in society on a larger scale.

Now homebound Gregor is now able to be apart of family conversations. Metamorphosis shows Gregor yearning for human contact from his family, but it also shows his family eagerly alienating him from their life. With continuous alienation, Gregor loss interest in his family and no longer desires to have contact with them. Kafka shows families that are experiencing a financial crisis; a loss, unemployment, abuse or an illness can cause a breakdown in communication as a whole. Once Gregor is unable to communicate, he becomes an observer of the world around him. His insect form symbolizes the emptiness, insignificant and an outcast, which he was at work and at home.

In the Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka bring out the character of a hardworking man, Gregor, who faces an incident where he soon is driven into complications to remain his once isolated life. Gregor’s alienation causes no gain for help from anyone even after the tragedy of transforming into a roach. Isolation removes all social interactions affecting the character of the persona by which can no longer seek help or gain itself being. Isolation in life, results in the expulsion of humankind partying from all social interactions, preventing contact with the world.

In Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up one morning as a cockroach. In his job as a traveling salesman, he is not required to make his own decisions and only has to follow the orders of his boss. Gregor is okay with his job because it allows him to provide for his family, as is parents are in debt and he wants to support them. This leads him to a career that does not allow him to make any choices and therefore doesn’t require any individuality. As a result he never makes his identity unique and he finds himself unable to develop uniqueness because he realizes that he can’t have both individuality and provide for his family. Seeing that he stands in the way of his family’s happiness, he convinces himself that disappearing is what’s best for them.

In The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka conveys the series of emotional and psychological repercussions of a physical transformation that befalls the protagonist, a young salesman called Gregor Samsa. As the story progresses, Gregor finds himself unfairly stigmatized, cruelly rejected because of his clear inability to financially support his family, and consequently increasingly isolated. Through extensive use of symbolism, Kafka is able to relate the surreal and absurd, seemingly arbitrary events of this short story to a general critique of society-particularly on the alienating effects that conformity generates. On a broader level, the combined themes-which include the themes of conformity, freedom, and alienation--found throughout The

Franz Kafka’s clear isolation of Gregor underlines the families’ separation from society. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka emphasizes Gregor’s seclusion from his family. However, Gregor’s separation is involuntary unlike the family who isolates themselves by the choices they make. Each family member has characteristics separating them from society. These characteristics become more unraveling than Gregor, displaying the true isolation contained in The Metamorphosis.

When reading The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, one experiences the surreal transformation of Gregor Samsa from man to vermin. From the beginning of the story to the end, the reader follows Samsa’s difficult life as a man and as a vermin, and also discovers how being a man-sized beetle changes his perspective of life. Although it may seem as though Gregor Samsa is a man-sized vermin that still has the thoughts and personality of a human, this is not so. Being isolated and mistreated for such a long period of time led to the complete dehumanization of Gregor Samsa, and it could not have just been the vermin body and lifestyle taking over his mind. In order to understand how this could be possible, learning about how isolation affects the human

Many views of existentialism are exposed in Kafka's Metamorphosis. One of these main views is alienation or estrangement which is demonstrated by Gregor's relationship with his family, his social life, and the way he lives his life after the metamorphosis. Namely, it suggests that man is reduced to an insect by the modern world and his family; human nature is completely self absorbed. Kafka reflects a belief that the more generous and selfless one is, the worse one is treated. This view is in direct conflict with the way things should be; man, specifically Gregor should be treated in accordance to his actions. Gregor should be greatly beloved by his family regardless of his state. This idea is displayed in three separate themes. First,

Additionally, Gregor realizes that his family is also turning against him because of the burden he has become to them. Robert Silhol eludes to the idea of isolation and separation in a case study called Franz Kafka’s – The Metamorphosis. He states, “What is striking, however, and this is a tribute to the talent of the writer, what is striking is that The Metamorphosis not only provides us with a representation of what it is to be an infant (its sensations) , but also of what it is to be abnormal. And, more specifically, to be abnormal in the eyes of others” (Silhol). In the end, Gregor dies due to his sense of uselessness, loss of intimacy, and abnormality.

Gregor’s transformation to a Vermin created a new life of separation and isolation for him. Before Gregor’s transformation he already felt isolated and stressed out because he was the only one working and he didn’t have that good of a relationship within his family. Kafka states “Constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate.” Gregor is a traveling salesman who sees new people

Although Gregor’s alienation is not a direct cause of his transformation, he experiences the same estrangement as a traveling salesman. The narrator states, “[…] constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate” (1.4), now ironically Gregor’s main complaint about being a traveling salesman is that he can never establish a lasting relationship with anyone because he’s always moving around. But since he is stuck at home as the plot progresses, he is not able to make a connection with anyone, even his family. In reality, Gregor is simply just a vermin who like any other animal should have no burden, but he continues to live under the false impression that he is still a human being that is plagued by the guilt inflicted by his families suffering. Franz Kafka plays goes on further to show how this absurdity plays in this conflict when Gregor expresses his need to support his family when the narrator says, “He felt very proud that he had been able to provide such a life in so nice an apartment for his parents and his sister. But what now if all the peace, the comfort, the contentment were to come to a horrible end?” (2.3), in this passage, Gregor is suppressed with thoughts of how life was before his transformation when he was the main financial provider for his family. In the grand scheme of things, the audience recognizes that Gregor forces himself to dwell in a state of alienation due to the conflict between his illusion and reality. So, by psychologically distancing himself from his family, he believes he cannot bring anymore

Engelberg exclaims, “the common alienation of two urban men, both suffering all the deleterious consequences of subsequent isolation, dehumanization, death” (Engelberg). Gregor’s isolation after turning into a cockroach continually provides evidence that he is no longer a part of the family; thus, he also loses his own instincts as a man. Kafka uses this isolation to exhibit what he experienced throughout his life, especially for being a Jew during World War I. Goldfarb explains, “For one thing, Gregor's repulsive appearance means he has to remain in his room, a prisoner, completely isolated. His existence was always a fairly lonely one, but this is worse: as far as friendship and intimacy are concerned, Gregor's transformation is not an escape from his past loneliness but an intensification of it” (“Goldfarb”). Gregor is isolated from his family because he looks different and he is rejected with any hope of reconnecting with them. Kafka utilises Gregor to show how being different from others leads to being isolated and eventual suffering. The dehumanization of people is caused by the isolation from others; thus, they often lose their will to live.

Authors from the modernist movement such as Franz Kafka; who wrote The Metamorphosis, used alienation to distance his work from reality. In the story The Metamorphosis, the main character wakes from a dream and has turned into a vermin. His family does not accept him for who he has become which causes him to alienate and distance himself from his family. In a way Gregor’s character is suffering because he just wants to be treated as a normal person, but he can’t be because he is no longer of human form. “Throwing off the blanket was quiet simple; all he had to do was puff himself up a little, and it dropped away by itself. Doing anything else, however, was difficult, especially since he was so uncommonly broad” (Kafka). Here Kafka is attempting to do something that was so easy to do when he was a human, but can no longer do since he has become a vermin.