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The metamorphosis symbolism essay
The metamorphosis essay
The metamorphosis essay
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More handpicked essays just for you.
The metamorphosis symbolism essay
The metamorphosis essay
The metamorphosis essay
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Gregor Samsa is a traveling salesman working to pay off his parents’ debt. One morning, Gregor wakes up and discovers he is a “monstrous verminous bug.” He thought he was dreaming, but everything in the room appeared to be the same way he left them the night before. He tries to go back to sleep but cannot get on his right side because of his abnormal shape. He wakes up again and looks at his alarm clock, it is six thirty.
Having a Fulfilling Life Imagine where you would be if you have never read a book in your life. Unread every book you’ve ever read. It’s kind of depressing. You live in the same, plain world as everyone else.
1. Almost from the very beginning of Gregor’s metamorphosis, Mr. Samsa has been unwilling to accept Gregor as his son. Furthermore, Gregor’s transformation into an offensive form of an insect, constantly reminds Mr. Samsa of the grotesque, feeble, and pathetic aberration that he has fathered. Consequently, now that Gregor has genuinely revealed himself in all his audacious behavior, his cruel father is driven to destroy him. In his eyes, Gregor has become everything loathsome to him—scrawny, parasitic, and futile—not the kind of son this once successful and ambitious storekeeper could be proud of.
I chose Susan Peters to compare to Gregor. Susan Peters became paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in a duck hunting accident. From then on, she had to use a wheelchair to get around. Gregor and Susan Peters both face difficulties in their life. They’re different because Gregor’s whole identity changed, and Susan Peters lost her ability to use her legs.
Even when times are difficult, you have to live in the present and not the past hold you down. This was evident in the book Gregor the Overlander. Gregor said, ‘Mount up!’ called Gregor… ‘Mount up, we are going home!’ ” (Collins 282) Gregor had to forget about the Struggles and losses he had tried to find his dad and focus on getting home safely; just as Luxa had to overcome the loss of her cousin who had also betrayed her.
Gregor’s isolation and loneliness begins to toy with his composure, he becomes unpredictable and frightening to his family. Although, Gregor’s slow transformation from man to bug eventually becomes beneficial to Gregor. For instance, Gregor’s bug-like appearance allows him to be released from his family's high expectations. As for his developing bug-like qualities helps him to register his inner anger he feels towards his father. Gregor now realizes his father shows no sympathy towards Gregor and instead punishes him for something he has no control over.
Gregor Samsa’s transition from human to vermin was not the only shift that happened through the duration of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The novel is centered around Gregor who wakes up as a vermin, presumably a cockroach, which catalyses a series of emotionally traumatic experiences for him and his family, culminating in Gregor’s death. Yet the most significant change is, in fact, the gender role reversal seen both with Gregor and Grete, his sister, as Gregor becomes more effeminate and Grete becomes more emasculate, directly correlating with their societal and emotional transformation due to Gregor's physical change. From the moment, Gregor wakes up he has transformed. But not just as a vermin.
In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is a traveling salesman who works to provide for his family. One morning though, Gregor wakes up as a massive beetle type insect. The bug can no longer talk, and can barely even get out of bed.
We need to feel every groove, bump and curve. We need to mourn, grieve, and rejoice. A life without all the bumps and bruises is lifeless. We need everything that life throws at us, whether we like it or not. These trials give us an opportunity to grow and transform our lives.
Neither Kafka nor Gregor followed the existentialist idea of freedom of choice in a person’s life. They both had a life they didn’t ask for and responsibilities they were forced to assume. This principle of lack of freedom is clearly shown by the unexpected transformation of Gregor, waking up as an insect and obtaining the freedom he lacked, emancipating himself of obligations, injustice and final duties. He is freed from the obligation to work to maintain his family and liberated himself from his tyrannical father. Although he turned into a horrible insect, the metamorphosis did not change the beauty of his soul.
As the main character, Gregor Samsa, transforms from human state to that of a beetle, there are many aspects that are left unexplained and seemingly unstable. For example, in the novel, Gregor’s transformation into a beetle is left unexplained by Kafka. Kafka opens up the novel by stating, “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin” (Kafka 1). There is no scientific or physical evidence as to why this transformation occurred, but it can be ascertained that it is a psychological transformation.
Gregor the Overlander: An Adventure Below the Ground Think about this: your father mysteriously disappears, after which you end up living with an insane grandma and a wild sister, named Boots, in a small rundown apartment in New York. This is the strange life of Gregor the Overlander, a young boy who lives his life above ground. Until one day, Boots falls down a grate in the laundry room, and of course, Gregor jumps down after her. After many twists and turns down a large pipe, they enter a world of roaches, rats, bats, and humans that live in the underworld, all Gregor wants to do is get back to his family, but he realizes it is not as easy as he thought. With a strange prophecy on his shoulders, Gregor has to fight his way out with his
“He had to leap, and by his death the others would live.” In the compelling fantasy story Gregor The Overlander, by Suzanne Collins, Gregor the main character’s courageous acts to save his father from the Underland will not only heavily inspire you, but also chill you to the bone. At first I thought Gregor was weak and depressed, not wanting to go on another day. It was a horrible judgement. When he learned his dad was still alive somewhere in the Underland he was filled with so much courage to go and save him, that he would lay his own life on the line.
With such a title, one might expect that this story will express the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly, but with Kafka’s troubled upbringing, abuse and feelings of being devalued for most of his life, it’s easy to see how Kafka felt the need to symbolically dehumanize himself. Kafka’s choice of human-to-insect transformation exudes self-loathing because there’s nothing lower than a cockroach. While Gregor is the one who took on the grotesque transformation, it’s actually his family’s behavior towards his change which conveys complete hostility. Grete, for one, had enough near the end when she said, “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). It’s very disheartening knowing that his own family couldn’t handle his transformation when his first thought in the morning was getting to work on time for their
His death marks a new, brighter future for the rest of his family. The Oedipus Complex The Metamorphosis can be interpreted in terms of Freud’s notion of the Oedipus Complex. As an insect, Gregor’s