Dehumanization In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis

616 Words3 Pages

The novella Metamorphosis written by Franz Kafka tells the story of Gregor, a traveling salesman, who one day wakes up to find himself a massive, monstrous insect-like creature, an explanation for which is never provided, leaving him in a position where he can’t really do much anymore because of his looks. In Gregor’s family life, before the bug situation happened. He was the sole provider who took care of the family. Including his weak, dependent father, his mother and sister. Who ignored him when he was stuck in his room as a cockroach while he died covered in trash and lonely. Kafka uses the picture of the woman, doors, and the father’s uniform to signify Gregor’s dehumanization.
The picture of the woman in furs represents a symbol of Gregor and his former humanity. It shows a a depiction of a woman with a fur hat, a thick fur muff that covers her arms, and a fur boa. Although it does not matter of the content of the picture at the time Grete and the mother as they are clearing …show more content…

He feels closest to his sister Grete in the family because she is the only one who feeds him most of the time in the whole story. For example, in part 2, she leaves him bread and milk because milk used to be his favorite as a human. Since he has changed into a cockroach he had stopped liking foods he used to like, so instead she leaves a tray of various foods to find out what he likes as a bug, for example rotten foods. But at one point the family had start to lose interest in feeding Gregor. One night as the family had dinner with the samsa’s family, he had been locked out of his room, not allowed to join. It shows dehumanization because he was allowed to watch while they were stuffing their faces with food, while he was not being fed at all and starving. Showing another example of dehumanization is when the father causes injury on Gregor by throwing an apple in his back and wounds him, adding to the cause of his