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The Metamorphosis By Franz Kafk Literary Analysis

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Brenda Umana Daniels 4 August 2014 English 3 The Metamorphosis The short novel written by Franz Kafka had been recommended to me countless amounts of times, and now that I have finished it my only regret is that it toke me this long to pick up the book. It has many strong themes, one of which being the theme of alienation, along with other robust literary devices. And just as it was recommended to me, I recommend it fully to others in high schools so they get the chance to fully analyze this great piece of literature. Starting with the theme of The Metamorphosis, I think the one in regards to the alienation of the protagonist of the story, Gregor Samsa. Gregor is a salesman whom is the source of income to the family, with long days …show more content…

His little sister Grete is the one whom goes to feed and care for Gregor. So now the roles are reversed and he is the one who is need of his family’s support, who besides Grete, are too disturbed by him to do so. And even though Grete is the one whom shows the most empathy from the family to help Gregor, she is still appalled by the sight of him and Gregor who is filled with guilt for putting her in that position, he further alienates himself to make her more comfortable with helping him. “ 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) and arranged it in such a way that he was now completely concealed and his sister, even if she bent down, could not see him” (Page 40). His father is quick to injure him, his mother cannot look at him without the risk of getting ill, Grete no longer brings him varieties of food and has grown tired of the whole situation, so Gregor has been becoming less and less accounted for. Gregor reflects that he is imprisoned in his room, which is turned into a junk room showing the family is losing nearly all compassion they had for him. Then the night that the lodgers take sight of Gregor and refuse to pay for the time they spent there, Grete has had enough. She explains that the monster is no longer Gregor, and that they have been fools

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Despite her best efforts, however, Grete’s fondness for Gregor begin to fade just as do the rest of the family’s (Sweeney 1.) She becomes more and more weary of him, even going so far as to outright avoid the room after seeing him. Eventually, the day to day caretaking of Gregor becomes a job for her, something she must do for the sake of the family. She feeds him as one who do any animal that is under their care. During the last portion of the the story, Grete even becomes hostile towards Gregor.

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In dealing with what seems like a nightmarish disaster, Gregor was neutral, but his family became very pessimistic. Despite being alienated by his entire family, his sister Grete was the one person in his life who maintained an optimistic outlook and kept a close relationship with Gregor. But the moment she begins to neglect Gregor and lets her pessimism get the best of her, Gregor succumbs to the darkness. " He watched as it slowly began to get light everywhere outside the window too. Then, without his willing it, his head sank down completely, and his last breath flowed weakly from his nostrils."

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He isolated himself and would hide under the couch when his sister came in his room because he knew no one wanted to see him as anyone different. Gregor’s room had become an unknown part of the house, the door was rarely ever opened. His side of the room portrayed how he viewed himself as which is shown when he holds on to the picture of the woman with furs. The picture idealized how he wanted to resemble the women. While the family’s living room which was separated from Gregor, had a picture of him in his military uniform which represented how they saw Gregor and how they never came to accept his new

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In the coming months, she cleans his room and feeds him. Grete decides to move the furniture out of Gregor's room so that he can climb around the walls. In doing so, the mother catches another glimpse of Gregor and faints. As time passes, Gregor realizes that without him working, the family is in deep financial trouble. The family brings

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Callie Gray Lybarger-Monson English M01B February 21, 2017 In Support of “Transforming Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’” In Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka recounts the transformation of a man into an insect, an idea that has been subject to a multitude of interpretations and almost constant analysis. Nina Pelikan Straus, Professor of Literature at Purchase College, State University of New York, makes a strong argument for the validity of a gender based approach to the analysis of Kafka’s work in her 1989 article, “Transforming Franz Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis.’” While criticism of Kafka’s work is plentiful, it was not until the 1980’s that feminist theories entered the expository debate.

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In addition, she becomes more controlling over Gregor. She decides to lock Gregor in his room “He was hardly in his room when the door was hastily pushed to, bolted fast and locked” (974). The door symbolizes this barrier between Grete and Gregor. Grete is becoming overpowering and controlling his life. Having more responsibilities gives her the power to control Gregor.

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Gregor even attempts to chase after his manager, but he is physically unable to. Seeing the expressions on his family’s faces, Gregor locks himself in his room. When their maid comes into his room to clean and sees him, his sister Grete begins caring for him as his parents are unable to come to terms with the fact that Gregor is suffering from severe mental illness (“She walked to the side, caught sight of the enormous brown splotch on the flowered wallpaper, and, before she became truly aware that what she was looking at was Gregor, screamed out in a high pitched raw voice ‘Oh God, oh God’ and fell with outstretched arms, as if she was surrendering everything, down onto the couch and lay there motionless”). His sister is disgusted by Gregor; as he does not even shower or attempt to practice personal hygiene. He regresses into a more primal state, only focused on survival.

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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.

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The family reacts in such shock that they leave Gregor in his room and they are scared to even see Gregor in his bug form. While Gregor’s father and mother were both unable to look or even bare to take care of their transformed son, their daughter, Grete, took on the role as care taker of Gregor. The short story is written in such great detail of how Gregor was treated and what happened during the life of his metamorphosis. Throughout the story Grete continued to try to make Gregor’s situation better and it was impressive that she tried to do the things she did for Gregor, but near the end of the story she begins to question whether Gregor is still in the form that used to be her brother. Although the story ends tragically for Gregor, the story portrays Grete to grow stronger in the end and how she became a

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In Kafka’s Metamorphosis and Other Stories the author utilizes the relationships within a family to demonstrate characterization through stream of consciousness, metaphors,and allusions with the intention of the audience discovering that many people are not how they seem, even if they have been close to each other. Kafka achieves this through his perspective on his family and the ways the characters’ actions reflect those who they are substituting along with his personal thoughts of acceptance as everyone wants to be accepted and as Kafka many physiological and physical disorders. In the text Metamorphosis, Kafka develops relationships between the characters in order to create the possibility that not everything is as it might appear. Kafka

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Grete, the once loving sister, now treats Gregor as a chore, leaving their house maid to care for him, this causes for Grete to lose hope in seeing Gregor as a human again. " He must go," cried Gregor's sister, "that's the only solution, Father. You must try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we've believed it for so long is the root of all our trouble. "(Kafka,

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