Self Identity In Gregor Samsa's Metamorphosis

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It is easy for someone to know what their favorite animal is, or what foods they like and don’t like. It is much more difficult to know what one’s core values are, or what kind of person someone wants to be as they grow through life and gain different experiences. The above refers to someone’s identity, which defined by Merriam-Webster, is “the distinguishing character or personality of an individual” (Merriam-Webster, 2018). Figuring out the identity of yourself is an issue that takes much time and energy to resolve, and can change drastically in response to a crisis or a life-altering event such as a death of a loved one or the birth of a child. It is a process that happens largely on a solitarily basis unaccompanied by anyone else; only …show more content…

If Gregor Samsa had been basin his self-identity based upon what others thought of his new appearance, then he would have changed his identity of himself into that of a freak within the first second of witnessing how the general manager and his family reacts to him leaving the room. Samsa would hate himself and die minutes into his transformation, not weeks. However, well past this point within the novella, Kafka, in Bernofsky’s translation, …show more content…

He believes that being able to see his mother, father, and sister regularly is better than being able to be comfortable and to feel fine, which shows that his identity has not changed, antithetical to what others involved in the situation believe. Within Suture, when Arlington and Renee Descartes are first shown to have a conversation, he is shown to have a sense of humor and high interest in what Descartes is saying (Suture, 41:06). If Arlington had the identity that Descartes first ascribes to him in her conversation with Shinoda, in which she says that her impression of her patient based upon background knowledge is poor because “he has no job, he has very expensive tastes, he has no friends or relatives who care to see him and people seem to think he killed his father,” (Suture, 34:18), Arlington would not be able to become closer to Descartes as he does. He does not have the identity that she thinks he will have, a self-identity that only he has figured out and

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