Essay about The Outsider and The Metamorphosis

It appears that the people who care the most end up getting hurt by the ones they love. The more time, energy, love, and money that a person sometimes invests get thrown back in their face once something drastic happens. In turn, this causes feelings of worthlessness and isolation and can eventually lead to death. Franz Kafka understands this better than anyone else and can portray this in his novella, the Metamorphosis. In his novella, The Metamorphosis, the protagonist, Gregor Samsa is one who undergoes a physical and mental transformation due to the unrelenting pressures that his father placed upon him which eventually cause him to die. At the heart of the father-son relationship lies Gregor and his father whose relationship is explored

In Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, the character Gregor transforms from a man into a bug, specifically a cockroach. Although Gregor physically changes, he does not change as a person. Gregor merely accepts his new condition as a bug and his family’s continuous abuse and hostility. Gregor’s acceptance of his new bug form is representative of his passive personality before and after his transformation. Gregor’s passivity, in response to the hostile world around him, causes his eventual downfall. Therefore, Kafka uses the character Gregor to exemplify how a passive attitude can cause one’s demise.

He glanced out of the window, watching the sky turning from a deep blue shade to a clear, blue, breezy morning. ‘A good day.’ He made a mental note to himself. The sun baked through the curtains, sharpening his enormous shadow. He thought of that fussy factory owner and sighed.

Love in itself is a very complicated emotion, being either the driving force for a great blessing or a pressing burden. When comparing the surrealist chronicle, The Metamorphosis, written by Franz Kafka, and the down-to-earth short story Samsa in Love, written by Haruki Murakami, this idea truly takes form. The Metamorphosis is the story of Gregor Samsa, a young man who works vigorously to support his disconnected family. One morning, Samsa awakens to find spontaneously himself transformed into a giant cockroach. No longer able to support them, the roles are flipped and Gregor is now being cared for and quickly becomes a burden on his family. On the other hand, Samsa in Love transforms Kafka’s original story as in this version, Gregor Samsa

Have you ever walked into school or a job and felt like you were not like everyone else? Many people struggle with the feeling of not fitting into a certain norm, which causes them to feel as though they are an outsider. In the story Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka Gregor Samsa becomes an outsider when he wakes up to discover he is a monstrous bug. Not only does his family misjudge him but they starve, mistreat, and seclude him. Outsiders like Gregor Samsa have always been different and misjudged.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a reflection on how alienation and isolation begin and develop in a society by employing the characters in his novella as a representation of society as a whole. Using Gregor’s manager to demonstrate the initiation of isolation and alienation of a person, Gregor as the person being isolated and the inhabitants of the Samsa household as the other members of society, Kafka creates an effective model to represent the hierarchically structured effect of isolationism and alienation in society on a larger scale.

The deeper meaning of “The Metamorphosis”, by Frank Kafka, can be interpreted in many ways depending on critical theory is used to examine it. From a feminist criticism, one can observe how Gregor’s dominance as a male diminishes after he becomes a bug as his sister’s strength and role in the family grows stronger. From a biographical criticism, one can compare and contrast the traits of Gregor and the people around him with that of Kafka’s own life and his relationships. However, the focus of this essay will be applying a psychoanalytical criticism to the characters in “The Metamorphosis”, using the studies of Sigmund Freud to approach

Would it be more difficult to be told by your father that the world is full of hate because of your skin color or to not be able to communicate with those around you? The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, and Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, both deal with the alienation of a person or group of people. To be looked upon as somebody who does not fit into society, can cause people to feel remote and isolated. The negative impact of this isolation is not only damaging to the person but to society as a whole. This isolation, like in Coates’ modern day biography and Kafka’s dated book, is something people today experience in all walks of life and for many reasons.

Alienation is the primary theme in Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Much of early twentieth-century literature makes as its basic premise that man is alienated from his fellow humans and forced to work in dehumanizing jobs in order to survive. There is no choice for most in this matter.

In The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka conveys the series of emotional and psychological repercussions of a physical transformation that befalls the protagonist, a young salesman called Gregor Samsa. As the story progresses, Gregor finds himself unfairly stigmatized, cruelly rejected because of his clear inability to financially support his family, and consequently increasingly isolated. Through extensive use of symbolism, Kafka is able to relate the surreal and absurd, seemingly arbitrary events of this short story to a general critique of society-particularly on the alienating effects that conformity generates. On a broader level, the combined themes-which include the themes of conformity, freedom, and alienation--found throughout The

Franz Kafka’s clear isolation of Gregor underlines the families’ separation from society. In The Metamorphosis, Kafka emphasizes Gregor’s seclusion from his family. However, Gregor’s separation is involuntary unlike the family who isolates themselves by the choices they make. Each family member has characteristics separating them from society. These characteristics become more unraveling than Gregor, displaying the true isolation contained in The Metamorphosis.

In The Metamorphosis Gregor Samsa is forced to deal with his transformation from a human being into an insect. After his transformation Gregor is no longer able to do everyday ordinary things. He now has to depend on someone to do these things for him. His younger sister, Grete, makes herself responsible for Gregor. She takes it upon herself to make sure that Gregor is fed and his room is cleaned. This leads to the question; why does she place such a huge responsibility on herself? An optimist like Gregor who only sees the good side of people would say it is because she is a loving and caring person. That her brother’s current condition makes her feel sorry for him and

At times in life there comes something called change. In my opinion, I was not a big fan of change. You cannot imagine how I was feeling when my mother announced that we were moving. It was the middle of my sixth-grade year, I was feeling countless emotions, none that could be explained at the moment of the announcement. The main thing on my mind was school; my friends, my outstanding teachers, and the environment. All things I had left behind. All I could think about was, “How will I ever adjust?” I knew exactly what was to come, I knew exactly what I was going to become, an outcast. There were numerous of ways on why I was feeling this way, but

“The woman kept on crying” (10) – this ability to experience and express emotions is shown as something both the protagonists in both novels - The Metamorphosis written by Franz Kafka and The Stranger by Albert Camus – lack. Women are usually portrayed as the element of society who are more likely to show this ability which connects them to the world surrounding them and keeps them (and men) from being “strangers” to society. The protagonists have especial difficulties relating to women in a profound level because of their lacking this ability. Their relationship with women symbolizes their relationship with

Franz Kafka was thought to have been the master of the parable. A parable is a fictitious tale in only which he could succeed. Kafka has a riveting sense of humanity and the overall tone from the actuality of human worth and desire, but Kafka’s metaphorical tongue is one spoken in morals. It is said that a parable cannot be explained in its purity because the individual will translate the emotion more clearly than the author’s full understanding of the situation. In theory, this means that, as people, a parable will reveal more about a critic than the author. With this in mind, the prompt has asked me to delve into the meanings behind Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, and arrive at an adequate interpretation for such an unobstructed inquiry. Kafka will use Gregor Samsa to demonstrate the many morals through this character’s life and death while also displaying his Jewish hardships and life through the intimacy of writing. I believe that the most important concept in the story is the realization of what you have become and the manifestation of how others influence you with their own thoughts. In this essay, I hope to defend my point of view and my selected moral from the aspects of Gregor’s family, work, and his changed sense of self.