How is Gregor’s family transformed in the wake of his metamorphosis?
Gregor’s family didn’t start out with disdain but rather with detachment. However I do think that the three different chapters shows that the detachment feeling slowly starts to change into disdain for each individual family member. It starts out with an outright rejection by Gregor’s father when Gregor first shows himself in chapter one. On page 219, we can see that the father grabs a cane and newspaper to drive Gregor back into his room and even hisses at him. This obviously shows how much a disgust his father had for him. On the contrary, even though his mother and sister, still in shock, don’t actually find Gregor repulsive but continue to care for him throughout the rest of the story. However towards the end of chapter 2, his sister also starts to show hatred towards Gregor. In the moment when Gregor startles his mother, we can see his sister’s patience grow thin. “Ooh Gregor! Cried his sister, brandishing her fist and glowering at him”(pg, 229). His sister starts out with detachment and passivity in the beginning of the story but is now filled with hatred and disgust for Gregor. By the end of chapter three, we can still see Gregor’s mother’s hope for his son to return and even tries to clean Gregor’s room. Then when Gregor ruins the dinner, she gives up on him too. She finally breaks and says “ I can’t do it any more either” (pg 238).
Ultimately, what do you think Gregor’s metamorphosis means? What does it mean to be transformed into a giant bug?
I don’t think it really mattered if it was he was a giant bug at all, it could’ve been any sort of permanent damage to the ability to provide for a family. The story could well portray the same effect if Gregor wasn’t transformed into a giant bug but instead got sick and was bedridden. His family’s hatred for Gregor is partially because he turned into a disgusting bug but it isn’t the main reason. It was because who was once the breadwinner of the family is now useless and needs to be taken care of. The question of whether someone’s worth should be determined by their ability to work and make money came up in class and it connects to this question. When all there is for a person is work all the time, what happens when they can’t? Well in Gregor’s family, they start to disdain him for the extra work even as far as trying to replace him by talking about a marriage for Grete at the end of chapter three. But what the family isn’t trying to do is move forward from the grief of losing Gregor but the loss of the income he provided.
I think you are right to suggest that the three sections of the text present us with a kind of continuum in terms of the family’s response to Gregor (and perhaps in terms of his relationship to his own “bug-ness” as well). While in the second section, we find Gregor’s sister and mother caring for him and trying to make him comfortable in his room, by the time we get to the third section, his family has stopped showing him this kind of care, and his room has become a garbage filled repository for all kinds of junk the family no longer wants. By the time he emerges to hear his sister play violin, she has already moved past the caregiver role she took on in the second chapter.