The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis is a novel written by Kafka Franz and published in 1915. The story is about a travelling sales man by the name Samsa Gregor who wakes up to find himself transformed into an insect. The main characters include Gregor Samsa, Grete Samsa, Mr. Samsa, Mrs. Samsa and Samsa. The theme of change is conspicuous on the novel when Gregor Samsa wakes up to find himself transformed into an insect. The theme of economic effects on human relationships is also evident when we find that Gregor Samsa is a slave to his family because he is the breadwinner. Gregor also characterizes the theme of alienation when he is alienated from his family, body, humanity, and job. The themes of personal identity, family duty, and freedom are also evident. In his novel, Kafika has used different writing styles, which include irony, symbolism, and suspense. Kafka wrote the novel in French language, it was translated into English.
Samsa Gregor acts as the protagonist in the story. He is a travelling sales man and the sole provider for his sister and parents. He wakes up one day to find himself transformed into a large insect. After the metamorphosis, he is unable to continue working and his father is left with no option rather than to start working again (Franz 12).
Grete Samsa is Gregor’s sister who takes care of him after the transformation. The sister-brother relationship the two had fades away quickly. While Grete had previously agreed to clean his room and feed him, she now becomes impatient and arrogant. She intentionally leaves his room dirty and unkempt. Grete spends time playing violin and dreams that one day she might visit the conservatory. Gregor had intended to make this dream come into reality. After Gregor’s tra...
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...ing that he intends to take over the whole apartment and ruin their lives. They consider him to be inhuman and not the Gregor they knew. Irony is seen when the narrator describes how, despite being a bug Gregor still wants to work. “The next train went at seven; to catch it he must hurry madly, and his collection of samples was not packed (Cook 529)” Irony is also seen when the family receives the news of their son’s death in a happy mood rather than feeling sorry for him. The family members don’t seem to remember the good things that he had done.
Works Cited
Cook, Kafka Franz and Coleridge. The Meowmorphorsis. Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2011.
Franz, Kafka. The Metamorphorsis and Other Stories. 1996.
Vladimir, Nabokov. Lectures on Literature. New York: Harvest, 1980.
Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis is a masterfully written short story about Gregor Samsa, a man who devotes his life to his family and work, for nothing in return. Only when he is transformed into a helpless beetle does he begin to develop a self-identity and understanding of the relationships around him. The underlying theme of The Metamorphosis is an existential view that says any given choice will govern the later course of a person's life, and that the person has ultimate will over making choices. In this case, Gregor?s lack of identity has caused him to be numb to everything around him.
His sister, who took a job as a salesgirl to help the family. also learns French in the evening so she might get a better position in the future of the world. Mr. Samsa, Gregor's father, takes a job as a messenger for banking institutions and the public. Turning into a bug, Gregor causes a lack of harmony. among the family members.
In Franz Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis, the reader is told the story of a hard working business man, by the name of Gregor Samsa, who one day wakes up to a problem that changes his life. The readers are automatically hooked with the first line where Gregor is waking up from restless dreams to find that he has turned into a “monstrous verminous bug” overnight. As he struggles to move around and go back to sleep, to try and forget the situation, he starts to think of his job and how it has taken over his life but he cannot leave it because of his parent’s debt that he is trying to pay off. With the repetitive motifs of money and food, the story goes around the themes of alienation and the absurdity of life. The reader sees these themes being used when Gregor’s change happens. He isolates himself in his room without being able to speak to anyone if need be and when his sister, Grete, does go into his room to change his food and tidy the place up, he hides under the couch, with a blanket over him, so that his sister does not get
However the central theme of the masterpiece “The Metamorphosis” is change. The novel illustrates the idea of change and transformation through its main character Gregor Samsa who transforms into a large insect. The real transformation is not specified in the novel, but many signs of him being an insect are pointed. This book shows lifestyle of an ordinary man who gets transformed into an insect. Gregor’s life before the transformation was very simple and undemanding as he was a very hardworking man who worked to pay back his dad’s debt. He worked as a postman who delivered m...
In his story The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka gives us the story of Gregor Samsa, a young man who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into an insect-like creature. Gregor, however, remains strangely indifferent to his plight, in a manner that seems inhuman to most readers. This is not due to a lack of omniscience on the narrator's part that causes the indifference to go unmentioned, and neither is it due to inobservance on the part of Gregor to the point of not noticing that he has been changed into an insect. Rather, Gregor does not pay much attention to his new form as an insect because his life as a human lacked many ordinary human characteristics. In other words, Gregor was mentally not human even before his change in physical form.
Metamorphosis is about Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning and is transformed into a
Samsa throughout The Metamorphosis. Before he turned into a bug, Gregor showed numerous caring qualities, and he worked to pay off his debt and earn money for his family. He even did his best to make their lives easier when he turned into a bug. Grete took on most of the responsibility of caring for her family and also was very compassionate towards Gregor, and Mrs Samsa did her best, despite her fragile state, to continue to support her family and Gregor. To be human means that caring for others will always be an instinct, no matter what the circumstances
The Samsa family consists of a mother, a father, a brother and a sister. Gregor Samsa was a loving son and brother. He contributed most of his time and money making sure that his family was well taken care of, essentially taking over his father`s position in the family. He gave his family the ability to enjoy the services of a live-in maid as well as a live-in cook. Gregor's parents did not work, as his mother was asthmatic, his father took Gregor's success and translated i...
In The Metamorphosis Kafka illustrates a grotesque story of a working salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking up one day to discover that his body resembles a bug. Through jarring, almost unrealistic narration, Kafka opens up the readers to a view of Gregor’s futile and disappointing life as a human bug. By captivating the reader with this imaginary world Kafka is able to introduce the idea that Gregor’s bug body resembles his human life. From the use of improbable symbolism Kafka provokes the reader to believe that Gregor turning into a bug is realistic and more authentic compared to his unauthentic life as a human.
Gregor Samsa, the protagonist in The Metamorphosis, brought society against him when he questioned his life as a travelling salesperson. Social expectations had put him in his place, but he decided, that it was not the place for him. His wish to remove all social burdens from his shoulders, first show to him through his transformation into a `monstrous vermin. The Metamorphosis is narrated in third person where the reader receives an unbiased view of Gregor Samsa's attempts to become existentialist. Gregor Samsa wakes to a new set of ideas, and he sees himself torn of the external sign of a human with all the assumptions and presumptions of men. He must then choose some different assumptions, ultimately making his own choices and not being drawn down by the consequences of his actions. This way of thinking that Samsa resorts to leads to his feelings of existentialism,
Franz Kafka’s novella, The Metamorphosis, has been a popular topic amongst the literary world for years. Many articles, papers, and lectures have been inspired by the curious story of a man waking to find himself transformed into a large insect. The topic has been widely debated. Did Kafka simply write an absurd story meant to entertain the audience? Was it meant to be a satirical piece about the different economic classes, as Marxists have theorized? Or is the character of Gregor Samsa the reflection of a real life person, with Kafka using his transformation into a bug as an allegory for something much deeper and more complex?
Mr. Samsa is characterized as a dominant and lazy figure that lived a “laborious though unsuccessful life” due to his entrepreneurial failure. Mr. Samsa forces Gregor into a non-satisfying job that forced Gregor to “constantly see new faces” that never “last or get more intimate” which made it harder for Gregor to establish a connection or a relationship, which was non-existent in his own home. This is exemplified when Gregor locked “all the doors during the night even at his home” suggesting that his home was where he was completely alienated. Furthermore, Gregor was the only secure income the family had. Gregor...
Franz Kafka seems to have had a tough time growing up with his father, who was apparently a domineering, unapproachable man. A few years before Franz's untimely death, he wrote a long letter to his father in an attempt to address many of the lingering issues which had plagued their relationship. He may have tried through his fictional writing to reach his father prior to the letter, using a kind of "metaphor code." Franz Kafka became other characters representing himself in his fiction. In The Metamorphosis, his character, whose name is Gregor Samsa, becomes a giant beetle as the result of an unexplained transformation at the very beginning. The fact that the author is actually the main character is so cleverly disguised and the details so carefully presented that this encoded message becomes an entertaining literary work in its own right. While many of Kafka's short stories, e.g. The Judgment, A Country Doctor, appear to be vignettes, The Metamorphosis is more or less a surreal self-portrait of Franz's life and his troubled relationship with his family. The concepts of psychological abuse, entrapment and escape are ongoing themes in Kafka's work, and The Metamorphosis contains several examples that specifically relate to his father.
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: