After reading the short novel “The Metamorphois” by Franz Kafra, I feel Gregor Samsa’s situation is like reflecting a situation in real life as someone who gets a strange disease and the reactions the person would have when being sick. I feel Gregor Samsa’s situation suggests a living attitude of thinking job is very important. It is really true that in twentieth century, people are living in a circumstance of worrying about losing their job every second. Every adult is living under working pressure.
On the first day of Gregor became an “insect,” he still thinks how he can keep his job other than how he can recover from his sickness. Also, on that day, Gregor did not get to work on time and a manager came to his house to ask for reasons. I wonder is this kind of situation really happened in Germany. Managers come to workers’ houses when they do not go to work on time? However, it shows human beings are living under time pressure as well. I have heard that competition and stress can help a person to improve. I think that is true, but I also feel today’s human being are often over-stress especially people who live in city.
Gregor has “worried about making trains, having bad, irregular meals, meeting new people all the time, but never forming any lasting friendships that mellow into anything intimate” (P,2000). When I read this, I just feel that is so true because I have worried about those things too. I have worrying about being late if a train suddenly runs on local, or if a train comes late. From my home to school, it takes one hour and thirty minutes. To avoid lateness, I would prepare two hours for my traveling. So, if the train runs on local and I still will not be late. But sometimes, when I go out early and suddenly the train runs on express, then I arrive to school one hour earlier. Sometimes I would have the thought of “I can actually have one more hour sleep, why I come to school so early!!! “ I just feel although everyone is having dissatisfaction and living under pressure today, but we still have to continue our living because we have family around and we have to support them.
After reading this short novel, I did not get a happy mood although at the end the family was like refresh and ready for a new start. Maybe my mind is still on stressful life that Gregor got, like living under stress, lack of family’s care, getting weird disease and unfortunately did not recover and died.