![]() Insofar as Gregor’s physical manifestation constitutes a translation of the interior self to the external world, “The Metamorphosis” is a stellar achievement of expressionism. He turns himself into a detestable insect, thereby both rebelling against the authority of his firm and father and punishing himself for this rebellion by seeking estrangement, rejection, and death. “The Metamorphosis,” then, can be seen as a punishment fantasy with Gregor Samsa feeling triply guilty of having displaced his father as leading breadwinner for the family, for his hatred of his job, and resentment of his family’s expectations of him. His metamorphosis therefore gives him the worst of both worlds: He is offensive in appearance but defenseless in fact, exposed to the merciless attack of anyone-such as his furious father-ready to exploit his vulnerability. Yet his pacific temperament and lack of claws, teeth, or wings make him far more vulnerable than when his body was human. His enormous size, though an insect (he is at least two feet wide), his ugly features, and his malodorous stench invite fear and revulsion. His loss of human speech prevents him from communicating his humanity. It is a treacherous appeasement of this guilt complex, inviting his isolation, punishment, and death. ![]() Gregor’s change also expresses his sense of guilt at having betrayed his work and his parents, at having broken the familial circle. He accomplishes this by terrorizing the pitiless, arrogant office manager, who tells him, “I am speaking here in the name of your parents and of your chief.” On the conscious level, Gregor pursues the clerk to appease him and secure his advocacy for Gregor’s cause at the office subconsciously, his threatening appearance and apparently hostile gestures humiliate his hated superiors. Moreover, Gregor’s fantasies include aggressive and retaliatory action against the oppressive firm. It thus enables him to “bug out” of his loathsome constraints yet do so on a level of conscious innocence, with Gregor merely a victim of an uncontrollable calamity. Gregor’s metamorphosis accomplishes several of his aims: First, it frees him from his hated job with an odious employer by disabling him from working second, it relieves him of the requirement to make an agonizing choice between his filial duty to his parents-particularly his father-and his desperate yearning to emancipate himself from such obligations and dependence. His parents and sister shut him out, as his miserable existence slopes resignedly toward death. In the third section, Gregor, defeated, yields up all hope of returning to the human community. His sister Grete is his favorite however, although she ministers to his new animal needs, she fails him emotionally. Gregor’s mother is gentle, selfless, weak, and shallow in the story’s development she becomes increasingly her husband’s appendage. Readers learn about his relations, past and present, with his family they have been characterized by concealment, mistrust, and exploitation on the father’s part. In the second section, Gregor’s isolation and alienation intensify. ![]() Instead of worrying about the mystery of his metamorphosis, he worries about the nature and security of his position as traveling salesperson for a firm whose severity he detests. The opening sentence of “The Metamorphosis” is one of the most famous in modern fiction: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” In the story’s first section, Gregor accepts his fantastic transformation matter-of-factly, perhaps wishing to bury its causes in his subconscious mind. Toward the end of his life, he decided that psychoanalysis was a waste of time and abandoned that approach in retrospective reading. Sometimes he realized only several years later what he may have subconsciously meant. ![]() Nothing else will ever satisfy me.” The meaning of the images from his dreamlike inner life was not always clear to him at the time of writing. On August 6, 1914, Kafka wrote in his diary: “My talent for portraying my dreamlike inner life has thrust all other matters into the background my life has dwindled dreadfully, nor will it cease to dwindle. They do not leave the reader feeling comfortable. By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on Decemįranz Kafka’s (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) stories are not about love or success. ![]()
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