A black, billowing cloud of smoke unfurls itself across the sky: the Industrial Revolution has begun. Peasants begin to migrate to the cities so they can cough up soot in dark, overcrowded workhouses. Labourers risk their life so that they may live so that they can buy food and water. Now, one must pay just to be alive. And thus, capitalism is born. Franz Kafka uses Gregor’s alienation in The Metamorphosis to highlight and condemn the values of a capitalist society—one in which one who cannot contribute to the economy through labour is worthless—and suggests that a person is valuable and worthwhile by simple virtue of humanity, not based on how well they can play the game of capitalism: we all have wings. Kafka juxtaposes Gregor’s mindset …show more content…
It is a startling mirror of the way society continues to treat those who cannot play the game of capitalism as well as we’d like—the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill, the disabled. In the end, the worth of a person does not come from how much wealth may be squeezed out of them, or how many hours they can toil over a task. Gregor was special and deserving of respect even though he had no way to contribute financially to his society or his family. Because while Kafka highlights Gregor’s dehumanization under the capitalist system, he simultaneously demonstrates all the good qualities of Gregor. His loyalty, his kindness, his enduring love for his family even after they begin to disparage and assault him. Though his death happens silently and without struggle, it is a tragedy nonetheless. In Nabokov’s lecture on The Metamorphosis, he goes to great pains to emphasize that Gregor was not a cockroach but a beetle—beetle’s can fly. Gregor, it seems, like many people, did not realize he had wings. Like so many people, he was never told that he was worthy of something, that he was capable, that he was cherished and valued. Gregor could fly if only he