Summary Of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis

Everyone has people they depend on. People that he or she knows will always be there when they’re needed. But what happens when those people just don’t show up or just all of a sudden stop caring? The feeling of loneliness can break down a person’s character and reduce him to a shell, or in this case and exoskeleton, of who he once was. We can see this in The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. When Gregor Samsa finds himself transformed into a giant beetle-like creature, what he needs more than anything is the love and support of his family, but he disgusts them. They shut him up in his room so that no one can see him. They are ashamed of him, and quickly forget that he was part of their own flesh and blood. All that they can see is the monster that appears on the on the outside. Gregor’s sister and parents betray his love for them and leave him feeling lonely in the most terrifying and desperate time of his life.

Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, is the story of Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman who is responsible for the financial well-being of his entire family, yet experiences an unfortunate metamorphosis into a giant bug. However, while Gregor undergoes a disturbing physical transformation, the family dynamic changes drastically as well. The family’s treatment of Gregor slowly deteriorates from them regarding him as the basis for their financial success and security to regarding him as no more than an extraordinary nuisance that holds them back from a brighter future.

Growing up, Franz Kafka questioned his father’s use of power not only at home but also in the workplace. Kafka’s father referred to his employees as “paid enemies.” Upon noticing “the submissiveness expected of [workers] toward their superiors” in his own asbestos factory, Kafka found this true for not only his father but also most of the upper class (Speirs and Sandberg 7). Disappointed by this class hierarchy, Kafka attended anarchist meetings and referenced communist writers in his diaries (Cohn). These meetings led him to develop a similar ideology to Karl Marx, who attributed “all… [of] history [to] class struggles.” In The Metamorphosis, Kafka channels a Marxist viewpoint through Gregor Samsa’s life before his metamorphosis and his family’s life after the metamorphosis.

In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, Gregor’s life dramatically changes with the event of his transformation to a bug. His family is not in full acceptance of what has become of him and Gregor begins to lose himself. He had once been the provider for his family and now it is as if his family reproaches him for his inability to take care of them. Gregor wants to again have a role in his family yet recognizes that his family would be better off without him and dies. There are several situations that Gregor experiences that makes him lose all hope. From Maslow’s hierarchy of needs it can be be seen that Gregor loses his humanity including the essential needs to humans such as his safety, his desire to be successful, and his desire for affection from others. The desire to feel love from his family and their rejection is the final event that leads to his depression and at the end to his death.

In The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka tells the story of a young man named Gregor who observes the radical changes in his life after transforming into an insect. Gregor’s life was centered on his job as a traveling salesperson and his family. One morning Gregor woke up transformed into an insect. Afraid of the transformation Gregor stays in his room and ignores calls from his family. When Gregor realized that his new body did not allow him to have a normal life, he tried to adapt. After his metamorphosis, Gregor is abandoned by his family and only maintains a small relationship with his sister Grete, who is in charge of serving and provide him with food, but always leaving some distance because of his ugly appearance.

Selfishness is omnipresent in the context of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. Throughout the story, the Samsa family struggle to balance their own lives and the sympathy for Gregor, the only son, as his transformation from human to cockroach leaves a burden on the family and results in the loss of Gregor’s humanity. Despite the fact that Gregor had been the sole income of the family, the loss of humanity from becoming a cockroach was overwhelming to the family, resulting in selfish tendencies. Kafka displays how humans are unintentionally selfish, especially when the inability to sympathize diminishes through the family’s relationships.

Sometimes when a death happens in a family, especially if that death was unexpected, family members react in ways that are destructive to others and themselves. In the Metamorphosis, Kafka blends this idea of “angry grief” into his story with the images of the poor treatment of Gregor in bug form. In part two of the book, Gregor’s rapport with his parents takes a sharp decline (initially they knew that the bug that took Gregor’s place had to be Gregor) starting with his father throwing an apple at him, an injury that would later cost him his life. We realize from this action, and from the family's attitude towards Gregor in part three, that at a certain point in the story, Gregor’s family has come to the false conclusion that their son is either missing or dead, and that the creature they have been housing for months is nothing but a disgusting animal. However, they are only angered and ashamed at this bug that “took” Gregor because they were not willing to adapt to that change in their lives.

The Menace of Expectations In Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, he describes a huge life change for a man named Gregor. One day, Gregor wakes up and finds himself transformed into a bug. Scholars have tirelessly debated whether Gregor transforms into an actual bug or a figurative bug. State aside, it is impossible, unrealistic, to think that a man can one day become a bug. Gregor becoming a literal bug is more extreme than if he would wake up just “think” that he is a bug.

Metamorphosis is a story of a traveling salesman who woke up one morning and found himself transformed into a bug. Though the movie version of Kafka’s Metamorphosis tells the major events of the story similar to the book, but it is hard to grasp the dynamic of the transformation and how one might interpret all this without examining the different details, and point of view of Gregor.

Language forms the basis of civilization. Without language there can be no memory, culture, social structure and definitely no humanity. Throughout the novella, Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, Humanity plays as an important theme, as Gregor’s sacrifice grows more than already, after waking up as a bug, leaving himself to self-disgust, anger, and suddenly inhuman thoughts. At first his family is shuttered in denial. Humanity, is mostly affected by Gregor, as being disgusted from his own body and thoughts, but not only is Gregor disgusted from appearance, he can’t figure how to return as human and escape his inhuman body.

In “Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, the author employs Gregor as a vehicle for not only Gregor’s own metamorphosis, but also the metamorphosis of his entire family. In the beginning of the story, Gregor transforms into a bug that disables his movement. Without his ability to move, Gregor handicaps his family, unable to help pay off Mr. Samsa’s debt. Meanwhile, Mr. Samsa finds a new job at a banking company to satisfy the masculine prerogative of having to work and provide for his family. Additionally, Mrs. Samsa finds her role as a caretaker for Gregor in his helpless state. Even though Mrs. Samsa was afraid of the sight of her son, she still views him in a mutual manner . However, with the fulfillment of Mr. Samsa and Mrs. Samsa finding their

So I read the book Metamorphosis and I did not like it very much. To me it was very boring. The book is about a man named Gregor. He is a traveling salesmen who makes all the money for his family. Gregor does not like his job working as a traveling salesmen. If his family did not depend on the income so much, then he would’ve quit his job. One day he wakes up in his bed and finds that he has turned into a large insect. Gregor is a bit upset and confused about why he turned into an insect. He struggles to get his new large body out of bed as he realizes that he is late for his job. Gregor's mother, father, and sister knock on his locked bedroom door to try to get him out of bed for his job. While Gregor gets out of bed, he hears his office manager

Franz Kafka is known for his fusion of realism and fantasy elements in his stories, often featuring characters in isolated scenarios where the characters have unexplained attributes or powers. In the Kafka novella, The Metamorphosis features a protagonist that become isolated from his family. Gregor, the main character, wakes up as a bug mysteriously. The transformation leads to Gregor and his family adjusting to his metamorphosis. Furthermore, strangely, the novella is about Gregor’s family changes and development throughout novella and about him as a character.

Kafka was critical in bringing the new outlook on modern culture and particularly on modern man. Franz Kafka studied the modern man in the face of contemporary culture, and how he was steadfast in retaining his spirituality and identity, and gravitate towards authenticity and happiness. However, Kafka saw how the dehumanizing forces of industrialization and capitalism in the post- the WWI Europe posed a challenge to the modern man. Modern culture can be viewed tolerating and open to all. To Franz Kafka, modern culture coupled with technology is fast changing, and man has to maintain his self-consciousness in order not lose his spirituality and identity amidst these changes (Wintle pp. 708-710). Hence, as modern culture changes with the changing technology, religions are poised to change too, which presents fears to a man about losing his spirituality and identity upon embracing the modern culture. Interestingly, Kafka was mystical in his writings, with a keen interest in themes such as metamorphosis, existential and identity. If we look at “The Metamorphosis,” we can view the idea of how the dehumanizing effects of capitalism and industrialism are indicated within the writings. Kafka contends we become dehumanized with buying power and working too much. The transformation of Gregor seems to indicate a denial of responsibility to the changing forms of society’s conventions and values.

In the opening lines of German author Franz Kafkas’ short story narrative “The Metamorphosis”, the protagonist Gregor Samsa a disgruntled traveling salesman who lives with and supports his parents and little sister, awakens from a night of unpleasant dreams to find that he has been metamorphosed into a cockroach he calls a “monstrous vermin” (Kafka, page 89). This particularly strange opening sets the stage for in my opinion, a very strange and very vague play. I say this because throughout the whole story we never find out much less are given any clue of how or why he managed to be metamorphosed into this insect. Not to mention what the moral of the story is or the fact that this whole book reads like one big