In Kafka’s Metamorphosis, the word metamorphosis is used to describe Gregor’s awakening to the irrationalities around him, and his committing suicide after the awakening. After reading this novel I felt like this theme is relates to everyone’s daily life – wake up, go to work, work, go home and sleep. People do not have problems keeping this kind of repeating cycle, but one day one might wonder, ‘why?’. One can suddenly feel ridiculous about the repetitive daily life and starts to suffer, which leads to self-alienation, which ultimately causes metamorphosis at last. The main character, Gregor also experiences this state of ‘being’.
“At that time Gregor’s sole desire was to do his utmost to help the family to forget as soon as possible the catastrophe that had overwhelmed the business and thrown them all into a state of complete despair.”
As you can see from the passage, Gregors’s family had a financial problem and Gregor becomes the breadwinner. As the one who is in charge of his family’s income, Gregor works hard even though he is not really happy with his job. He has little dreams, paying off all debts, and sending his sister to music school. Gregor is an ordinary person character that we can easily find around us. He realizes how ridiculous his life is, repeating the same thing endlessly, and the story starts with him recognizing occurrence of his metamorphosis.
Before Gregor is transformed, he is like a machine earning money. After his father’s business fails, Gregor sacrifices himself to earn money for the family. The whole family was proud of Gregor when he got his first paycheck. However, as time goes by, it does not impress anyone anymore, their gratitude toward Gregor gradually diminished – it just became a necessary and inevitable thing for Gregor to do. As his family treats him like a machine, Gregor starts to wonder about his existence. Though, as an earnest person, the first thing Gregor worries after he sees his transformed body is ‘work’. He tries so hard to go to work and begs the chief clerk to explain what has happened, which reminds lots of breadwinners in these days. However, other members of the family easily replaced Gregor’s position. After Gregor became a bug and could not earn money anymore, his parents and sister each gets a job, as if they are replacing the broken part of the machine. Therefore, Gregor’s reason for being no longer exists, and his little dreams are gone. He is treated as a burden, and at last, the family goes on a picnic without him, as if Gregor never existed. Just Like Gregor, people will easily lose their reason for being, and will become part of a large machine as if he never existed.
Being a bug, Gregor is totally disconnected from the world. He cannot communicate with the others, and because of his appearance, he feels an infinite distance between him and the others. After he becomes a useless person in the family and in the society in a broader context, he gradually becomes nobody, as if he was not part of the family from the beginning.
How the family treats Gregor shows the self-centeredness and cowardice of human nature and the alienation by the society. Though, Gregor’s case can be little different, that it is even more dramatic since his appearance transformed. The family’s reaction after seeing Gregor is literally hatred. Gregor cannot even communicate with the family, and it totally separates them apart. Even when Gregor tries to unite with the family in any circumstances, his father exerts direct force to separate him; no morality exists. Since his appearance has changed, no one cares about morality and hypocrisy – especially Gregor’s father, who exerts direct force on Gregor. At the end, Gregor gradually dies in the irrationality of reality.
Even though Gregor failed to maintain his life after his awakening of the irrationalities around him, people must be able to find other things that are meaningful besides the irrationalities they encounter. Gregor could have found such things that are meaningful and stayed alive such as finding pleasure walking around the walls and ceiling. However, he could not maintain his life because he was so shocked after realizing the irrationalities within his family. Kafka’s Metamorphosis explains a lot about alienation, boredom, irrationality, and the distance between people. Even though irrationality is something one will find in life, he can find hope, happiness in the middle of it. One should not lose the meaning of life even after realizing the irrationality but fight against it, and prove the value of one’s existence.