https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_E9aOuf6eI8 (2:35-5:06)
The story, The Metamorphosis, written by Franz Kafka is about a family who depends on Gregor, the son and the brother to make money being a business traveler. Gregor is a very pressured and unappreciated person, which forces him to live day by day being miserable. One day, he wakes up to see that he has transformed into an insect. With this new realization, he doesn’t think too much of it and decides to go back to sleep. However, this conflict does not go away, in fact, it made his family disgusted of him, his tenants to move out without paying rent, and his manager to run away at the sight of his form. Gregor’s family no longer counts on him for anything, and soon decides that life would be better is he just disappears.
I can’t believe how Gregor’s family relationships are because even though they stay together, they don’t give each other purpose or love, they only see each other as means for survival. This leads into the theme of alienation. Once Gregor turned into an insect, not even his family was willing to accept him. People are naturally so unaccepting, which can be very relatable to reality where everyone comes from a different background or is not that blessed. This story brought light onto this sad truth where we live in, and the video that I chose gave an insight on the authors actual feelings for why he wrote this story, which made the story stand out more to me to learn about the author’s life through this video.
According to the video, “I have to deal with the problems of traveling, the worries about train connections, irregular bad food, temporary and constantly changing human relationships which never come from the heart. To hell with it all” Kafka said this about himself how his life is on a bad routine most the time with the ever changing poor relationships he has with people. This part of him can be seen in every part of The Metamorphosis when Gregor misses the the train, gets fed food that doesn’t appeal to him by his sister, Grete, and of course the new isolation he developed after becoming an insect.
Overall, it was very interesting to use an insect to send a message of isolation. Perhaps, Gregor did not turn into an insect, his loneliness made him feel like he did not belong and in his head, becoming an insect was made real to him to make him feel better about why everyone has been so cruel to him.