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Isolation In Franz Kafka's 'Metamorphosis'

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Bugie Eruaga Mrs. Van Dam 10th English Wed 15 February, 2023 The Metamorphosis Summative What is an outcast? What makes someone an outcast? Are you an outcast? I'm sure at least once in our lives we have felt like an outcast, someone who doesn’t belong to someone shunned by society. Being an outcast makes us feel left apart and lonely and it can affect our emotions and our mental and physical health. In literature Authors like Franza Kafka use Absurdist literature to develop the concept of being an outcast. Kafka uses an element of absurdist literature called ambiguity to initiate Gregor's isolation and the differences separating him from his family. Kafka also uses dream-like elements to show how unreal Gregor’s situation is, showing how …show more content…

When Gregor awakes from his nightmare he is in a moment of disbelief because he does not fully understand how he had changed into a bug or why but instead of freaking out like most people Gregor remains calm and tries going back to sleep. It states that “Gregor had awoken from a very anxious dream that he had been turned into a monstrous verminous bug” but soon Gregor will realize it was no dream (2). In an earlier paragraph his features are briefly described to us “His numerous legs pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference flickered helplessly before his eyes”, “He lay on his armor hard back and saw as he lifted his head up a little, his brown arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections” (1). We don’t know how Gregor was turned into a bug because of Ambiguity and this caused Gregor to be isolated by his family because of how he just randomly turned into a bug with no explanation and he will probably never turn back into a human. When Gregor had woken up as a bug instead of freaking out Gregor tries to relax a bit because he believes whatever is happening to him will subside very soon and he has a hard time grasping the situation that whatever happened to him is real and …show more content…

Since Gregor is a bug his appearance seems to affect his family because Even After one month of being a bug Grete Gregor’s sister still seems to find Gregor’s appearance still intolerable and she runs away as soon as she sees him. “From this he realized that his appearance was still constantly intolerable to her” (61) because of this Gregor decides to hide away in order to not bother his sister it say that “In order to spare her even this sight one day he dragged the sheet on his back onto the couch (this task took him four hours)” (61). Even after a month of Gregor living with his family as a bug his family still considers him unappealing and can’t really look at him or interact with him and he has to go under the coach just to not bother them this alienates Gregor cause not being able to see his family makes them forget about him making him get neglected more each time. When Gregor was a human he used to work and was the breadwinner of the family “Gregor later earned so much money that he was in a position to bear the expenses of the entire family” (55) but now that he is no longer able to work and has drastically changed it is as if he only use to the family was for the money that he earned “They took the money with thanks and he happily surrendered it, but the special warmth was no longer present” (55) but now that he can’t even do that he is useless and should not be considered in the family since he is

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