In The Metamorphosis Kafka puts himself in to the character named Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman. Kafka starts this story simply: " As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." At first he decides he is dreaming and attempts to go back to sleep. An hour passes with no sleep. Even through all the madness of being a bug, Gregor is still worried about getting to work. The narrator states, “The next train went at seven; to catch it he must hurry madly, and his collection of samples was not packed;” |
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The only person who cares for Samsa is his sister Grete, who feeds him. All the Samsas find work to pay for family, because Gregor was the only one working at the time. From door his family calls him up, but he stayed there and tries to explain that it is an illness. By the end of the day Samsa's father, Herr Samsa, has seen him and is enraged that there is a gigantic insect in his house. The Samsa's lock him in the room and do not allow him out. |
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Gregor was lured into the dining room when Grete began playing the violin. The people renting a room from the Samsa's caught sight of him and were horrified. Gregor's father threw apples at him in anger for leaving his room. The apples lodged in his solid armor and eventually kill the bug. |
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What Kafka intends to show with this is that we should not work like bugs, who live strictly to work. We should work like a family who lives for each other and work because they have to. In his life Kafka was working like a bug. This is a good representation of Kafka's life. This represents Kafka's problem with work. He struggled to find a job that got out early so he could write. He also struggled to make money by doing what he loved, being an author. In The Metamorphosis Kafka is in the position of the bug, who lives to work, not works to live.
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The other way this links to Kafka's life is through family. Kafka's father, Herrmann Kafka, did not like Franz in any way. In the story the father ends up killing his son, and rejoices when he did. The title of the story is truly amazing. At the end of the sotry a reader notices that Gregor Samsa has only changed in appearance, but he is still a bug, as he always has been. There is not change in his personality. The truly beautiful metamorphosis that took place was the in the family, who started to function like a family. |
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