Samsa In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis

On the surface, the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is about a man who becomes disabled from working after waking up one day to find himself turned into a monster of some sorts. Through the dynamic between Samsa and his family and their shared familial roles, as well as the relationship between Samsa and his work, Kafka seems to be making commentary on the futility of life, and how meaningless desperate actions are in the unforgiving cold world. This emptiness can be seen first when Samsa first wakes up and finds himself a vermin, and reflects on his job. It seems that his main purpose for living is to work and eventually pay off the debt his parents have accumulated. He has other goals in life as well, from sending his sister to a conservatory,

Even after becoming a vermin, Samsa still expresses his desire to be able to continue working for his family and taking the burden of debt off their shoulders. But as the family adapted to his transformation, slowly but surely each was able to begin working. Even as the family struggled at first to make up for Samsa used to provide, in the moment of his death, he had been replaced with a sense of relief. Before his death, in the final conflict with his family, his sister exclaims, “It has to go… If it were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that it isn’t possible for human beings to live with such a creature, and he would have gone away of his own free will,” (Kafka 38). No longer able to contribute to his family, he is made to be thrown out. Kafka’s use of a vermin here seems to demonstrate the hostility of man to one who can no longer pull their weight, that once deemed useless, one is no more than a monster or insect. All his efforts in the past have become insignificant, now that he is the problem. Once a worker to the family, and then a burden, once he had died, then the family was finally able to move out and find peace, the scene ending with, “she had

Despite all his efforts, the roles he played were soon replaced by others. Kafka commentates on the fruitlessness of the labors of man, and how quickly man moves on. Man eventually returns to