Significance of Gregor Samsa's Transformation to Human Life - Essay Example

Kafka’s Metamorphosis is therefore a testament to the truth that “You eventually become what you actually believe yourself to be.” Gregor Samsa’s transformation is in fact a symbol of the eventual destruction of the sense of identity of a pretentious man who is actually living in insecurity and disgust of himself. First of all, Gregor Samsa’s transformation was a result of the deprivation of his biological needs. At the beginning of the story, the transformed Gregor Samsa says, “I’ve got torture of traveling [as a salesman],…eating miserable food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate” (Kafka 4).

The significance of this passage is that it somehow explains one of the root causes why Gregor transformed into a vermin – and that is stress and the deprivation of his needs as a human being. Gregor is actually complaining about two difficult things he has to deal with as a traveling salesman – the fact that he cannot eat on time and the idea of being too busy to be able to develop an intimate relationship with a woman. If there is a day that one cannot eat on time, it may be fine, but if this goes on daily, one will most probably soon begin thinking that he is a prisoner or a creature of a lower type, who does not even have the basic freedom to fulfill the most elementary of his biological needs, which is eating.

If one goes on with this level of animal existence, he will begin thinking that he is an animal and, symbolically, like Gregor, eventually become that animal. Another thing is the biological need for sex and intimacy. In fact, Gregor lives not only a difficult life but also one void of emotion – “constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate.” When one is in a state of dire physical stress, sometimes the only consolation would be a few moments of emotional intimacy but Gregor does not even have this.

His job, which defines his very existence, has somehow deprived him of humanness. Thus, he eventually became a vermin, because he somehow unconsciously realized that his hungry existence and emotionless life only belonged to that of a lower creature. Why then is Kafka working so hard? It is because he has been wanting to please his superiors at work. Gregor Samsa’s transformation is brought about by excessive submission to the ideals of work. In fact, in the first part of the story, Gregor obviously wants to sleep longer for he says, “Getting up early all the time.

it makes you stupid. You've got to get enough sleep” (3). He also further says, “How about going back to sleep for a few minutes” (3). The fact that Gregor lacks sleep somehow makes the reader think that he has been working too hard and that he does not like his job at all. The stress that Gregor gets from work is evident when he says, “What a gruelling job I’ve picked! Day in, day out – on the road” (4). Gregor therefore views his job as a mere gruelling mechanical routine that he is definitely sick and tired of.

Nevertheless, despite these complaints, Gregor manages to pretend to be obedient to his duty by being overly conscious of time even to the point of being paranoid about it: “God Almighty!.It was six-thirty” (4). Furthermore, when Gregor’s manager arrives at his house perhaps out of the curiosity that Gregor has not showed up at work yet, the latter blurts out another condescending remark that