Dehumanization of Gregor Samsa and Kafka's Food Symbolism

Food in Kafka's Metamorphosis Food in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis serves a narrative function and a symbolic function as well. After all, Gregor Samsa's family is seated down to an ordinary bourgeois breakfast at the time when Gregor is awakening from his uneasy dreams: this seems like ordinary narrative but it also establishes the centrality of food to bourgeois family life.

To this extent, we should not be surprised that the succeeding portions of the novella use food to subject Gregor to sub-human positions, as the family gradually ceases to regard him as a member of its cohesive structure. I hope to show through close analysis of episodes in The Metamorphosis that deal with food that the overall symbolism is clear, and that Kafka's use of food in the fiction has a coherent purpose overall. We have noted that the story begins at breakfast.

One reason this setting is so effective for the story's opening is that we all can imagine the experience of having a giant insect turn up at the breakfast table: many translations, including Wylie's, describe Gregor in the opening sentence as a "vermin" and by definition vermin are not welcome in human domestic situations. A regular cockroach at the breakfast table is disgusting, but discovering a human-sized cockroach turning up is inexplicable.

Simon Ryan notes additionally "the anti-Semitic connotations..that the word carried for Kafka" since in "anti-Semitic political publications, Jews were frequently referred to as…'vermin'" (Ryan 209). The family's response is to hide Gregor in his room as though there were something shameful or even potentially contagious about him, although his sister is unwilling to forget entirely who he is: It was only when he had reached the door that he realised what it actually was that had drawn him over to it; it was the smell of something to eat.

By the door there was a dish filled with sweetened milk with little pieces of white bread floating in it. (Kafka, II) Of course two problem undercut the human relationship here. The first is that the sister has essentially left food for Gregor like one would for a pet -- his favorite food is on the floor.

The second problem is that Gregor is no longer human, so even his tastes have changed: "milk like this was normally his favorite drink" however "the milk did not taste at all nice" (Kafka, II). Food here marks a step in Gregor's dehumanization. Of course, the final step in Gregor's dehumanization comes with the symbolism of food as well: this is the apple which ultimately appears to kill Gregor. This is wielded as a weapon when Gregor's "father had decided to bombard him" (Kafka, II).

An apple thrown without much force glanced against Gregor's back and slid off without doing any harm. Another one however, immediately following it, hit squarely and lodged in his back; Gregor wanted to drag himself away, as if he could remove the surprising, the incredible pain by changing his position; but he felt as if nailed to the spot and spread himself out, all his senses in confusion. (Kafka II) It is worth noting the symbolism here.

The apple is familiar from the Hebrew Bible because, of course, it is the forbidden fruit that is responsible for Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden. Here, the apple is a symbol of Gregor's attempted expulsion from his family home: his father wants to hurt him. By emphasizing Gregor's pain and the fact that "he felt as if nailed to the spot" Kafka seems to be enlarging the Biblical reference here by making Gregor sound like he is crucified by his own father.

The irony as Stanley Corngold has noted is that Christ is crucified as a sacrifice but the nature of being "vermin" entails being "unsuited for sacrifice, unacceptable to God" -- Gregor isn't being sacrificed, he's just being exterminated (Corngold 108). The apple, the food that in the Bible signifies human sin, becomes the literal murder weapon whereby Gregor's father kills him. We can therefore see that food is used as symbolism by Kafka, as each stage in Gregor's dehumanization process seems marked by food.

At the start, Gregor's transformation is revealed at the family breakfast -- suddenly his existence renders.