Metamorphosis by Kafka: Transformation and Family Dynamics

Introduction: A Shocking Opening

There are not many stories that begin with an opening as shocking and unsettling as Kafka's first sentence in The Metamorphosis. It is preposterous, of course, to imagine waking up in bed and discovering you have become a huge roach, but by doing exactly that Kafka immediately captures the reader's undivided attention and sets the tone for everything that follows. Not only has Gregor become a large insect, but his voice now sounds like the buzzing of one. This is a story with a clear psychological dimension; it is widely suggested that Kafka wrote this story in order to work through his rebellion against his father, with whom he had a famously tense relationship.

The protagonist is Gregor Samsa, who must remain hidden in his room lest his family discover that he is no longer human. His family is largely in denial that the creature in the room is really Gregor, and they shove him back inside whenever he appears. The problem is more complicated than a man simply turning into a cockroach: Gregor had been the family's breadwinner, but he obviously cannot report for work in his current state. Confronted by his inability to function as a human being — and by the family's pressing need for income — the other members of the family find jobs. They also take in renters. The lodgers know nothing of Gregor, but one night, drawn by the sound of a violin, Gregor creeps out of his room; when the renters spot him, they threaten to leave without paying rent. It is an altogether bizarre scene in a strange and yet deeply compelling story. Gregor must play a kind of hide-and-seek with every visitor to the house, because cockroaches are not supposed to appear in spaces where a human being once lived.

The story is impossible and even ridiculous, of course, but in fiction a writer may do as he wishes, and the reader is asked to allow the unbelievable to become believable. The reader is supposed to relate to a man who has turned into a bug. When his boss comes to the house to fetch him for work, the boss finds that his employee has become an insect — a scene that is simultaneously funny and deeply strange. It is curious that the bug finds a kind of physical comfort, for the first time in his experience as a cockroach, precisely when his boss is in the house. When Gregor "flopped down upon his many tiny legs…he felt a physical ease and comfort for the first time that morning" (136). A reader can imagine how embarrassing it would be to have your supervisor arrive at your home while you are still in bed; now imagine having turned into a giant cockroach when that supervisor comes looking for you — the terror would be mutual.

Response to the Story

Coming to his senses after the boss fled, Gregor's father "brandished [a] cane and the newspaper at Gregor in order to drive him back into his room" (137). At this point Gregor is reduced to pleading, and Kafka writes that "no pleading was understood" — which is easy enough to understand, since who could make sense of the buzzing of a roach trying to stop its father from stomping on it? (137). Earlier, Gregor had been trying to make his voice "as audible as he could for the crucial discussion about to take place," and when he coughed, he tried to cough softly "since this noise too might sound different from human coughing" (131). Of course a cockroach's cough will not sound like a human cough — and yet Kafka tests the limits of believability with nearly every new passage, which is precisely what makes the story so unsettling and so memorable.

For a broader understanding of how Kafka uses the grotesque in The Metamorphosis to explore themes of alienation and identity, the story has attracted extensive critical commentary since its publication in 1915. The narrative belongs to a tradition of modernist literature that foregrounds psychological interiority and the fragmentation of the self, often through surreal or fantastic scenarios that would be impossible in realist fiction.

Another interesting aspect of this story — perhaps more significant than any other — is that Gregor is not the only character to undergo a metamorphosis. The responses of various family members, especially Gregor's sister Grete and his father Mr. Samsa, to the situation with Gregor cause them to morph into very different people than they were at the story's opening. Grete, the younger sister, who was a spoiled and somewhat lazy girl at the start, becomes more mature and takes a job. Toward the end of the story she is the strongest member of the family and has grown considerably in character. Mr. Samsa, meanwhile, transforms from an overweight, unhappy, and worn-out man into one who appears to have recovered his dignity and authority, and who is visibly happier than he was before.

The point of the metamorphosis, then, is not simply that a man turns into a roach. Gregor's radical physical change sets in motion equally radical — if less literal — changes in the people around him. His dehumanization, paradoxically, enables the humanization and growth of his family. This reading suggests that Kafka's story operates on multiple levels simultaneously: as dark comedy, as psychological allegory, and as a study of how crisis reshapes family identity and individual character.