Comparing Power In Metamorphosis And A Doll's House

Family: If no one cares about you or treats you well are you still a part of it? The family pays attention to Gregor less and less through the book. They abuse him with violent abuse and verbal abuse. They treat him as if he is not a family member and as if he has always been a bug. Gregors family in the novella treats him better sometimes. What this claim overlooks is that the family does not care about Gregor or want to have anything to do with him. In Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka the treatment of Gregor deteriorated because he turned into a bug.

In the first part of the book, Gregor wakes up and has evolved into a huge bug, or so he thinks. Doubting his ability to get out of bed, he looks for answers for the cause, but can not find any. Then, his mom comes to his room and is only concerned at the fact he is late for work and does not ask if he is all right. As said on page 5, by Gregor’s mother, “Gregor—it’s a quarter to seven. Didn’t you want to catch the train?” This is the only thing she asks her son Gregor when he wakes up unusually late. Expectedly Gregor was looking for a careful remark but this shows us that his mom is only concerned about the money Gregor makes instead of his well-being. In accordance, Gregor is starting to feel ashamed of this condition he must deal with, “Just don’t stay in bed being useless” (Kafka, 7). This shows us, Gregor feels useless because he cannot work for his family and help them at all. He made a ginormous effort to get out of his bed to work and yet is family is only worried about him losing his job instead of his well being. As we see, his family doesn’t love him genuinely and do not love Gregor like they should, being his family.

     Throughout the story there is a metamorphosis that is taking place in his home. He has traded places with the family and is now living the life they had previously embelished in. His father begins to work along with his sister and his mother must now work and do the cooking and cleaning. Gregor on the other hand does nothing but daydream, crawl, and nap through his days. One ironic statement from his sister “He must go, if this were Gregor he would have realized long ago human beings can’t live with such a creature, he’d have gone away one his own accord. This creature persecutes us, drives away our lodgers, obviously wants the whole apartment to himself, and would have us all sleep in the gutter.” How selfish of her, had he not taken care of them and he was not the only one working

Once I’ve got together the money to pay off the parent 's debt to him— that should take another five or six years—I’ll do it for sure. Then I’ll make the big break.”(pg.5) In other words, Gregor is working so much for his parents and the debt that he needs to pay off. As a result of that, Gregor is overworked, he never really goes out, and spends his time reading the newspaper or looking at the bus schedule. Kafka writes, “The young man has nothing in his head except business. I’m almost angry that he never goes out at night. Right now he’s been in the city eight days, but he’s been at home every evening. He sits there with us at the table and reads the newspaper quietly or studies his travel schedules.” (pg. 15) Gregor has lost his sense of humanity and spends his time thinking about business. He has also lost all sorts of creativity he had before he started working so much. He is pretty much used to a routine based lifestyle, which lacks creativity because he has a set schedule that he follows almost everyday. This resulted into his metamorphosis. His parents relied on him to work so much, they forgot that Gregor is human just like themselves. Gregor is human who needs basic human essentials. Like going out with his friends, relaxing, and learning to appreciate the things and people around him. He could not do so because he was stuck paying off debt with a job that he hated.

Gregor was betrayed by society turning its back on him due to the transformation from human to a human-sized bug. After the metamorphosis, Gregor was pondering the idea of what people would think of him in his new form. He had high hopes that society would still accept him. "A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacle has been removed, he's

Isolation not only changes the personalities of Gregor and his family, but also it changes the role and duties Gregor plays in his family. Before the metamorphosis, Gregor worked alone to provide for the entire family. For example, in the beginning, before the transformation, he says, “But besides that, the money Gregor had brought home every month he had kept only a few dollars for himself” (4). This shows Gregor’s selfishness and his family’s heavy dependency on his income. It establishes the fact that Gregor’s family’s loyalty to Gregor was strong because the family depended on Gregor for their own survival, and shows how they betrayed him by disregarding him after he became an insect. The isolation of Gregor caused by the transformation not only affects Gregor’s role in the family, but also changes the role of Mr. Samsa. Mr. Samsa originally told by Gregor: ”Now his father was still healthy, certainly. But he was an old man who had not worked for the past five years and who in any case could not be expected to undertake that much” (17). This shows how irresponsible Mr. Samsa acted for his family in the beginning. Mr. Samsa, a man in his 50s, blamed his unemployment on anxiety and depression from a past failed business. Mr. Samsa changes his role as the useless drag to the provider of the family, and even obtains a new job as a bank manager.

To fully understand the depths of Gregor’s family’s betrayal, it must be mentioned how much he does for his family. His father had once owned a very unsuccessful small business, and when the business went under the family’s financial woes were unimaginable. Gregor saw this and wanted to bring joy to his family again. Kafka states, “At that time Gregor’s sole desire was to do his utmost to help the family to forget as soon as possible the catastrophe that had overwhelmed the business and thrown them all into a state of complete despair” (Kafka 25) He found a job so that

The deterioration of Gregor's life was in part due to the ostracism associated with his being turned into a bug. Once his family found out what happened, they banished him to his room, and his parents could not even bear to look at him. Prior to his metamorphosis, Gregor was an integral part of the family. He provided the money by which the family survived. Yet as soon as he changed, he was labeled an outcast, who was useless to the family, and therefore not paid any attention. He felt this ostracism, and it made him not want to continue on in life, he gave up because he felt unloved.

Since Gregor put so much of his energy towards his family’s well-being rather than his own, he never formed a unique identity. After waking up as a cockroach and regretting that he wouldn’t be able to attend work, he thinks of his unhappy work life and says, “If I didn’t hold back for my parents’ sake, I would have quit long ago” (4). In sacrificing the time that he spends at work to support his family, Gregor shows the lengths he is willing to go to allow his family to survive. Gregor recognizes that his work is uninteresting, but he decides it is more important to support his family than to follow his own desires, essentially letting his parents control his life. Another example of Gregor admitting to putting his parents’ needs above his own is when he admits that a lot of his unhappiness comes from the fact that he is just a subordinate of the boss and he has no real power. As a travelling salesman, all he has to do is go from door to door trying to sell items that people don’t want. As Gregor continues to think about his life at work after his transformation, he recognizes: “He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone” (5). Gregor sees that he is lacking “brains or backbone”, which is recognition that he does not need individuality to perform his job. However, after his transformation, his lack of a “backbone” is externalized since, as a cockroach, he literally lacks a backbone. Gregor can see that he is a drone, since

His family shuns him and will not look at him. In time, his family abuses him and keeps him in filth and debris, which is not only in his room, but clinging to his carapace. They also forget to feed him, or just kick scraps into his room. By showing how much Gregor's identity is affected by his treatment from family and others' treatment of him, the story shows how identity is socially constructed, rather than being an inborn trait. The devolution of Gregor's room from a human bedroom to a storage closet reflects how his connection to human society deteriorates as the story progresses.

So concerned with ensuring his parents and sister were taken care of, he forgot his own needs. It was apparent to everyone that he was no longer thought of as a son or an extension of the family, but merely as a "support system." The tragic fact is that "everyone had grown accustomed to it, his family as much as himself; they took the money gratefully, he gave it willingly but the act was accompanied by no remarkable effusiveness" (Kafka 48). It appears that in the course of his hectic work schedule, he overlooks that in return for dedication to his family, he remains unloved and unappreciated. Yet Gregor still "believed he had to provide his family with a pleasant, contented, secure life" (Emrich 149), regardless of how they treated him.

Gregor’s role in his family characterizes him as an altruistic individual whose nature made him ignorant to his family’s manipulation. Gregor endures most of his hardships without complaint and puts the needs of his family firmly above his own. Upon realizing his transformation at the beginning of the novella, his first thoughts were not of alarm but of great concern about being late to work because it is his only means of taking care of his family (Kafka 6). After his father’s business failed, Gregor “work[ed] with special ardor” (27) doing laborious work as a traveling salesman, not only to “pay off [his] parents’ debt”(4), but to also spend what little money he has to give Grete the opportunity to perform violin professionally (26). With all these responsibilities, it’s inevitable for Gregor to be under great stress, which can infer that Gregor’s transformation is a result of his willful desire to escape the pressures his overburdened life. Gregor struggled between remaining a steadfast provider or following his desire for independence, however, his metamorphosis freed him from a job he detests. Now that it is impossible for Gregor to work, Mr.Samsa reveals that “he possessed more money than Gregor knew about” (#). This is a significant event where Kafka uses the motif of betrayal to emphasize the corruption in familial infrastructure represented through Gregor’s sacrifice and interaction with his family, as well as to socially comment about how people in society use

Throughout the novella, Gregor’s deeply rooted sense of guilt transitions from having the power to drive his actions to merely plaguing his thoughts. Immediately after his transformation, Gregor reveals that he has to “deal with the problems of traveling, the worries about train connections, irregular bad food, temporary and constantly changing human relationships…” (Kafka 4), in his daily work. Although he appears to hate his job, Gregor does not quit, as he has both intrinsic motivation to provide and extrinsic pressure from his family to keep them afloat. Rather than reflecting on his feelings and emotional baggage attached to his job, Gregor focuses on grievances set in reality, and allows this to occupy his conscious mind. After Gregor’s transformation, his

With all of Gregor dedication in helping his family and at work, he has not once been praised or rewarded. His family and coworker take his dedication for granted, therefore causing selfishness within them. Gregor’s family selfishness really showed when Gregor

According to Kafka and existentialism, people have both an individual side and a side with the commitment of society. It is our choices that must be in moderation of the two, to maintain balance. If a person chooses himself over society, he will lose the support of society; however, if a person chooses society, he will lose his individuality. Gregor initially chooses society over himself, which in turn transformed him into the working drone he was. After his physical transformation, he is forced reassert his focus to himself, and society abandons him. Through Gregor’s plight, his family became cohesive and productive in society, each contributing through work and leisure. Gregor learned to live for himself too late to become a whole person. Gregor begins to look for entertainment and fun in the form of a bug, a form that knows nothing but work, by crawling up to the ceiling and hanging from there, or from wall to wall over the various objects, this gave him a feeling of “almost happy absent-mindedness” (32). Haven given up any hope of returning to his human form or being a civilized working part of society ever again, this was one of the only joys Gregor had left in his life. By ignoring the purpose of being an