Kafka\'s Metamorphosis Frantz Kafka\'s Metamorphosis

Kafka's Metamorphosis

Frantz Kafka's Metamorphosis is a tale verging on science fiction, that weaves the idea of industry and learned helplessness into one family's lives. The work expresses the need to allow metamorphosis to engage you and help you create a better way for yourself, without relying blindly on others to do so for you, no matter their good intentions. (Kafka 49) Each character in the work, experiences a metamorphosis of sorts, allowing them to reengage in the industry of life, is transformed by the unfortunate transformation of the breadwinner who mysteriously wakes up one morning as a human sized dung beetle. Gregor Samsa, the prodigal son who swooped in to save the family from ruin after his father's business failure, working a job that is emotionally and physically draining,

Bouson 52) much of which involves travel away from his beloved family has become an enabler, allowing his father to become unfit, his mother to lounge about the house complaining of asthma and his seventeen-year-old sister to sleep late and basically live the easy life.

Once this enabling is stopped by Gregor's condition, i.e. that he wakes up one morning mid-metamorphosis into a giant dung beetle that cannot communicate with any human and cannot most of all work, the family each in turn grows and takes responsibility for his or her own welfare and the collective welfare of the family. This work will analyze the metamorphosis of Grete, the sister, the father and the mother to show that the emphasis of this work is on self sufficiency and independent industry, rather than the single metamorphosis of Gregor. The work emphasizes the metamorphosis of all through Gregor's eyes. The metamorphosis is that of the entire family, from one of leisure standing on the back of the willing to one of industry and self-reliance, eking out an existence first by necessity and posthumously as wise independent and successful individuals.

Kafka 88-90) the work will show that as the family changes, beginning with the father's admission that there is at least a small sum left from his failed business, ensuring the family will not starve if they cannot work

Kafka 48) to each individual successively seeking some sort of employment.

If one were seeking to understand this work, solely on the metamorphosis of Gregor, there would be confusion and oversimplification. In a sense the dramatic nature of Gregor's position is a literary device possibly an illusion to what might happen to such a family if Gregor where to become an invalid in any other manner, and yet the dramatic and complete transformation of Gregor into an insect instead is far more engaging and holds an element of the need for the reader to suspend disbelief. "The fact that his voice has altered so that the others can no longer understand what he says, but he can understand them as well as ever, perfectly expresses the pathos of one who is condemned to stand on the outside looking in."

Bloom 22) the subtler transformations of the family, Grete first to a contentious caregiver (of Gregor) and eventually a competent saleswoman, the mother to a piecework seamstress and lastly the father to a bank porter are all much more mundane but meaningful transformations. The reader is simply first drawn into the work by the metamorphosis of Gregor, a device utilized to draw the reader into the fantastic and in this case the helpless nature of the fantastic to reality. As Greenberg says of Kafka, "his magic is not the magic of illusion but of revelation. His gift is only superficially a gift for the fantastic and unreal. In fact his art is devoted to reality."

Greenberg 10)

Gregor's sister, who proves herself to be a compassionate caregiver to the creature that has become her brother, though she makes it clear with her actions that she does not wish to look at him, she feeds him and cleans for him.

Kafka 46) She only abandons this industry when she has abandoned the idea that this is her brother and become an independent soul, rather than the child crying behind the door before the extent of Gregor's condition was even known.

Kafka 29)

Bloom 25)

He must go," cried Gregor's sister, "that's the only solution, Father. You must just try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we've believed it for so long is the root of all our trouble....If this were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that human beings can't live with such a creature, and he'd have gone away on his own accord.

Kafka 81)

Grete is really the first to realize that Gregor must be let go in order for the complete transformation of the family to be realized. Grete, is also the most transformed, as presumably both the father and the mother have in the not so distant past been industrious laborer's for the good of the family, Grete on the other hand has only know the leisure of childhood. Through Gregor's eyes one can see the transformation of the child to the woman as he watched from the open door of the living room in silence and in the dark, "his sister, who had taken a job as a salesgirl, was learning shorthand and French in the evenings on the chance of bettering herself. "

Kafka 66) One of the most poignant moments in the work, expressing the transformation of Grete is one that brings to mind the mergence of a caterpillar as a moth or butterfly at the end of the crysthalist stage When the parent' collectively remark on the nature of Grete's changes, just after the death of Gregor. Grete has, "bloomed into a pretty girl with a good figure. They grew quieter and half unconsciously exchanged glances of complete agreement, having come to the conclusion that it would soon be time to find a good husband for her. "

Bloom 30)

The more subtle though clearly just as total a transformation, such as that of Gregor's father who was transformed into the picture of a middle aged loafer into an industrious worker, who scarcely took off the uniform of his trade and never even put on the dressing gown that had been his home uniform for at least five years.

Truly, this was not the father he had imagined to himself... could that be his father? The man who used to lie wearily sunk in bed whenever Gregor set out on a business journey; who welcomed him back of an evening lying in a long chair in a dressing gown; who could not really rise to his feet but only lifted his arms in greeting,...walked between Gregor and his mother...even more slowly than they did, muffled in his old greatcoat, shuffling laboriously... Now he was standing there in fine shape

Kafka 62-63)

The transformation of the father from a man of a depressed state of failure, allowing his son to shoulder the burden of his own failings, to a man who reinvigorates his life and even his body to meet the needs of his family is completed through the invalidation of his son. He was forced to face his own failings and begin again, stepping away from his leisure, "the first years of leisure in his laborious though unsuccessful life, he had grown rather fat and become sluggish." (Kafka 51) Now, the father must again labor to rebuild his family and he does so, regaining his health and vigor.

The transformation of the mother is even more subtle, than that of the other members of the family, though no less profound or real. The mother must be coaxed to abandon Gregor, as any mother would. She is the first real invalid in the work, "And Gregor's old mother, how was she to earn a living with her asthma, which troubled her even when she walked through the flat and kept her lying on a sofa every other day panting for breath beside an open window? "

Kafka 51) the mother had the employment of servants, and the minimal help of Grete to enable her invalid state and yet even against her better judgment when it is necessary of her to help Grete clear Gregor's room of furniture, to ease his ability to crawl about, she steps forward and moves large pieces of furniture with her daughter.

Kafka 55-59) in the case of his mother's industry, after having taken over a great deal of the household chores from servants who refused to work under such conditions, whether the family could afford them or not, took up sewing piecework, "his mother, bending low over the lamp, stitched at fine sewing for an underwear firm" (Kafka 66)