The Outsider and The Metamorphosis

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English World Literature Essay: The Outsider and The Metamorphosis

Comparisons between the relationships that the protagonists had with

their parents and how these defined their characters.

In the novels, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and The Outsider by

Albert Camus, there are many important relationships that help define

the protagonists. The protagonist in The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa,

and the protagonist from The Outsider, Meursault, both had significant

relationships with people that helped develop and define their

character, the most important of these being their relationships with

their parents. I will compare the two protagonists in their

relationships with their parents and explain how these relations

define aspects of their character.

Firstly, in the novel, the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Gregor Samsa

is a travelling salesman who hates his job but is forced to keep it in

order to support his family and pay off his father’s debts. Gregor has

only one sister, so their family is quite small. Immediately at the

beginning of the book, Gregor is transformed into a giant insect. He

never comes to terms with his metamorphosis and struggles with intense

feelings of guilt as if his inability to support his family were his

own fault. Though he is now free from having to go to work, Gregor is

now a liability to his family who keep him locked up in his room.

Isolated and neglected, Gregor is a metaphor for the human being

oppressed by capitalism and alienated from work, family, and himself.

In the novel, The Outsider by Albert Camus, Meursault is a young man

who lives alone and is emotionally indifferent to most things in his

life. He cares only for physical pleasures, things that he experien...

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...not my fault” when

he informed his boss he had to take two days off. So this is a key

difference between the two characters. Their sense of duty. We also

see that in different ways, Samsa’s duty to his family, and

Meursault’s lack of emotion towards his mother, both end up causing

their demises.

So Meursault’s mother and Samsa’s parents are important in defining

their characters. Meursault’s mother shows his lack of emotion his

outlook on life and his inability to lie, while Samsa’s parents show

that he was once a provider but throughout the book he loses that

ability. The fact that Samsa was living at home working to support his

family and that Meursault had sent his mother away to a rest home is a

clear example of the different ways in which these men think, and even

though Meursault sent his mother away, he felt he was being kind to

her by doing it.

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