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Gregor's Bodily Changes In The Metamorphosis

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In Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, a traveling salesman named Gregor awakes and finds that his body has undergone a transformation into a cockroach. Because Gregor provided for his family financially, he sees that his family is struggling to pay their bills and are transitioning into poverty. Over time, Gregor is familiarized with his body and takes to crawling on the walls and ceiling of his room. Grete, Gregor’s sister, is more sympathetic towards Gregor than her father and mother are and decides to move some of the furniture into his room so that he has more surfaces to climb on. However, her and her mother eventually remove the furniture, this greatly saddens Gregor. Throughout the story, Gregor reflects upon how his bodily changes have affected …show more content…

"...and learned from the burning pain he felt that the lower part of his body might well, at present, be the most sensitive.”. Gregor feels that the most sensitive part of his body is his lower body. -NOT SURE OF SIGNIFICANCE- . As a cockroach that was once a human being, Gregor is able to compare physical stimuli from the perspective of a cockroach to that of a human being. In Gregor’s observations he finds things are different about his sense of touch, “Am I less sensitive than I used to be, then?, he thought…”. Gregor compares what he remembers touch to be with what he now feels to be a dulled sense of touch that is less responsive to pain. Gregor is not just evaluating his sensitivity to physical stimuli but also his sensitivity to emotional pain. Throughout his life as a cockroach, Gregor experiences emotional pain. “He could already hardly feel the decayed apple in his back or the inflamed area around it…”. The physical act of the father hurling the apple at him and the subsequent pain from the apple being lodged in his back creates an even greater sense of resentment towards his father. However, as mentioned earlier, Gregor still thinks of them with love and emotion in his last moments. Given that we (humans) are introspective beings, and that Gregor is still human, it is only because Gregor’s limbs are different that he is unable to experience sensations the same way human do and not because his mind is any less capable. This means that the essence of a human being lies within the mind rather than within the body. Without the mind the body is

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