Grete’s Metamorphosis
People change when things become difficult or they are faced with an unfamiliar situation. This is made very apparent in the novella The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Throughout the story Grete seems to go through her own metamorphosis. She changes from a nice warm hearted person to a uncaring and cold hearted sister towards Gregor. This is displayed in each part of the story through Kafka's use of diction and symbolism.
In the beginning Grete is very kind and caring towards Gregor. For example at the start of the story Gregor had not come out of his room, there was a growing concern from the family, but most of all from Grete. Kafka uses the word “fretted” (947) The use of the word fretted brings to mind connotations like anxious and concerned, which Grete is for her brother. The use of this word shows her care for her brother. She is very worried and continues to knock on his door and at one point begs him to come out. She is very distressed and wants to make sure he is okay. Further into the story when
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Firstly, After a few months of Grete in her routine, she starts to seem more annoyed than earlier in the story. “But he had to wait until midday for her return she seemed more agitated than usual.” (961) The word agitated makes me think of someone being irritated and troubled. The word is significant because it's starting to display a change in Gretes attitude. She starts to become more agitated with her brother which isn't the behavior we saw towards the beginning. Secondly, When Gregor scares his mother into fainting, Grete gets angry and raises her fist towards Gregor.(964) I feel like Grete raising her fist symbolizes her tension and her true feelings towards Gregor. A raised fist is usually portrayed as power and being ready to fight. This shows she thinks of him as lesser than her and how she can control
Grete’s isolation from society stems from her passion and interest for her loved ones. Grete spends all her time at home caring for her family members. Kafka describes her as “perceptive; she had already begun to cry when Gregor was still lying calmly on his back” (Kafka 16). Throughout the text she becomes the sole reason Gregor stays alive. Grete spends her days worrying about the various foods Gregor likes and dislikes, how to make his room more comfortable, and trying to make him feel more comfortable. Gregor is not the only family member whose health is cared for by Grete. “Now his sister, working with her mother, had to do the cooking too; of course that did not cause her much trouble, since they hardly ate anything” (Kafka 25). Kafka incorporates household chores and her mother’s illness, escalating Grete’s isolation. During her mother’s many asthma attacks, Grete arrives first
One of the major symbols in the story is the window in Gregor’s room. Gregor always seems to be looking out the window admiring the external domain. The window represents freedom in a way he feels a strong connection with the outside world despite the fact he is grounded indoors. He realizes is no longer associated with the real world. Grete, Gregor’s younger sister supports Gregor at the beginning. Grete helps out with Gregor’s complication by taking care of him. She gives him his food, cleans up after him, and she even came up with an idea to make it easier for him to move around in his room. She wanted to make Gregor feel like he is appreciated and link to the world so she moved the chair by the window so he could see more clearly.
Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis is so strikingly absurd that it has engendered countless essays dissecting every possible rational and irrational aspect of the book. One such essay is entitled "Kafka's Obscurity" by Ralph Freedman in which he delves down into the pages of The Metamorphosis and ferrets out the esoteric aspects of Kafka's writing. Freedman postulates that Gregor Samsa progresses through several transformations: a transformation of spatial relations, a transformation of time, and a transformation of self consciousness, with his conscious mutation having an antithetical effect on the family opposite to that of Gregor. His conjectures are, for the most part, fairly accurate; Gregor devolves in both his spatial awareness and his consciousness. However, Freedman also asserts that after Gregor's father throws the wounding apple, Gregor loses his sense of time. While his hypothesis certainly appears erudite and insightful, there really is no evidence within the book itself to determine whether if Gregor has a deteriorating sense of time. If Freedman had only written about Gregor's spatial and conscious degradation, then his entire thesis would be accurate.
Thirdly, he suffers isolation from the physical world, which he is no longer able to participate in due to his presence and lack of mobility. Lastly, he suffers isolation from other people around him, especially his family. By the end even his sister, Grete, the most compassionate member of the family, explanations that they should stop thoughtful of the creature as the person they knew. She says that “the fact that we’ve believed it so long is the root of our trouble” (Kafka 48), which can be taken to mean that at some point Gregor stopped being a person not only because of his entrance but since of his non-conformist actions. The beating he receives from his father shows the extent of the cruelty he endures, though his father knows that “family duty compulsory the conquest of disgust and the use of endurance, nothing but patience” (Kafka 36). The tragedy is that this alienation ends up killing Gregor, who “dies not as a vermin, but as a human being thinking of his family”. The transformation is an indication of the breakdown of Gregor’s psyche and alienation within his self. The reader is not told how the transformation
Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to discover that he has been transformed into a repugnant vermin. One may never know what initiated this makeover, but the simple truth is that Gregor is now a bug, and everyone must learn to live and move on in this strenuous situation. In Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, the characters that interact with Gregor, including his mother, his father, and his sister Grete, must come to terms with his unfortunate metamorphosis, and each does so by reacting in a unique way. Gregor’s family members are constantly strained by this unusual event, and all three of them are pressed to their breaking point.
The story The Metamorphosis revolves around Gregor Samsa, a devoted son and brother who works tirelessly to provide for his family, waking up finding out that he has been transformed into a larger than life insect. Franz Kafka enlightens the readers to how being dependent on one person can lead a family to being weak when that support system is ripped away from them. The situations that Gregor is put into knocks him down from the head of the family into nothingness while at the same time boosts his family from that nothingness into being a strong support system for each other. Gregor 's transformation, his dependency on his sister for food, his injury, the family choosing strangers over him, and ultimately his death are all things that lead to this downfall, or metamorphosis.
The authors chose two different initial relationships in their works. Marquez uses a soon to be married couple, Florentino and Fermina. Kafka decides to use a brother-sister relationship between Gregor and Grete. The relationship between Fermina and Florentino began when Florentino said “All I ask is that you accept a letter from me”(Marquez 60). Their initial relationship was characterized by their newfound love. They sent letters and poems back and forth to one another, engaged in a long distance relationship when Lorenzo Daza, Fermina’s father, moved Fermina away with her cousin Hildebranda and even had secret passwords. Florentino was noted in the book for making himself sick by eating flowers because he was so in love with Fermina. In the case of Gregor and Grete, they treated each other just as any brother and sister would. They could count on each other and i...
Franz Kafka 's The Metamorphosis revolves around Gregor Samsa, a businessman who one day turned into a beetle. While this whole novel seems purely a work of fiction, it has a realistic feel to it as well. Apart from the metamorphosis of the main character, everything else is set in the contemporary world. While the book focuses on Gregor’s metamorphosis, each character in the family experiences their own metamorphosis, and realistically shows how metamorphoses happens in each of our lives.
Her hard work at her job through her determination to learn stenography and French in order to obtain a higher position shows that she has developed the mature and focused mindset of a young adult (62). She does not seem like the carefree child that was described in part one, nor is she easily frightened like she was in part two. Instead, Grete has come to a consummation of a developed young adult. The resolution of her transformation is evident in two other instances towards the end of the book. The first is when she decides that it is time to let go of her brother in order to move on with the well-being of her family (79-81). This contrasts her younger spirit because her tone towards Gregor was that he deserved her care and subtle coercing in order to possibly reverse his transformation. However, she recognizes that this is in fact impossible, and decides to focus on other aspects of the family's life. The second is at the end of the book when her family notices how much she has grown physically and describes her as a voluptuous young woman that deserves a good husband (90). Kafka reinforces this through his narration of Grete by saying, "the daughter first lifted herself up and stretched her young body" (90). His narration symbolically shows that through her action of being the first to stand and stretch, she is now the first of the household and is ready to emerge in the world and put her young, strong, developed mind and body
She renounced the idea that Gregor could actually still be there. Despite hesitation from her father Grete demanded his removal, “It has to go… that’s the only answer father” (Kafka 49). This illustrates that he went from a person to a thing in Grete’s eyes. The lack of remorse she displays after his death further solidifies her feelings. Gregor was betrayed by the person he least expected and it was one of the main influences in his
According to Arp and Johnson, “Literary fiction plunges us, through the author’s imaginative vision and artistic ability, more deeply into the real world, enabling us to understand life’s difficulties and to empathize with others.” In the story The Metamorphosis by Kafka he uses his genius imaginative vision and artistic ability, making us understand and feel empathy toward his main character, Gregor. Kafka uses a tremendous amount of symbolism and metaphors to get us to feel the mood in the story and in general life’s difficulties.
By Mr. Samsa’s stowing his pain in his proverbial soul effects his actions in life and the people surrounding him including his children. His childhood equally lacked a health structure. When family coexists under the same household, especially children, they begin to take on certain roles in the family. Grete’s role in the family structure was the one as the initiator. She’s the one who suggested killing Gregor or disposing of him and the father followed pursuit in agreement.
The family had lost all three of their boarders because Gregor came out of his room and startled them. In Grete’s eyes, Gregor caused them to lose this major source of income and she is ready to get rid of him. Grete tells her parents, “’things can’t go on like this. Maybe you don’t realize it, but I do. I won’t pronounce the name of my brother in front of this monster, and so all I say is: we have to get rid of it.’ ‘She’s absolutely right,’” [said Grete’s father] (Kafka 1187). This family who has had to deal with this insect, which is still their son, has just agreed to remove him from their house and their support. They have taken the final steps into isolating their son
Grete is a character who appears to have the most tolerance for Gregor shortly after his metamorphosis. Gregor was apparently rather fond of his sister and had hoped to finance her education in a conservatory. He was also rather mesmerized with her violin playing. His inability to follow through with these planned acts of kindness may have led to a faster deterioration of Grete’s maintenance of Gregor’s room. Although she could never get used to Gregor’s new freakish appearance, she was his sole provider throughout his life after the metamorphosis:
Who you are is essential to the life you live and is often times jaded by the opinions that others have of you. It’s imperative as you go through life that you hold onto who you are because somewhere along the line someone will happily let you be who you are. While Gregor’s fate was dismal the hardships he went through molded this new character he grew into and he would not have been able to do that without Grete who accepted him for who he was no matter what he looked like. Something to take away from this novel is that who you are on the outside is not defined by who you are on the