The Metamorphosis support literary analysis - Essay Example

Despite the fact that he hates his job, he never utters a single word to distress his parents. He says, “What a strenuous career it is that I've chosen! Travelling day in and day out” (Kafka 2). This is quite ironic because his career had been selected by his father as he was in debt to his boss. He could only pay it off if Gregor chose that very career. Moreover, his father’s attitude is insensitive and callous: “The washing up from breakfast lay on the table; there was so much of it because, for Gregor's father, breakfast was the most important meal of the day and he would stretch it out for several hours as he sat reading a number of different newspapers” (Kafka 9).

This shows how his father sits idly throughout the day while his son struggles harder and then comes back home only to get insulted by his father for not earning more money. He only thinks about his job and how he has to support his family and nothing else. But when he turns into a bug, the parents and the sisters’ attitude is very harsh and reproachable. He is literally like an animal with which a family is happy till he serves them; when he grows useless they either sell it or kill it. The Samsa family was happy with Gregor when he was bringing in the money but when he could not, they killed him with their harsh words and cruel behavior (Tymieniecka 388). Mr. Samsa grows more ruthless when Gregor turns into a vermin.

He sees that now he will not be able to take care of the family, so why be ice to him? One day when Gregor meekly comes out of the room, his father shoos him away with a stick and newspaper. In this strenuous and depressing time for Gregor, his father should have talked to him and consoled him, but that thought never crossed his mind. Due to his father’s ugly attitude, Gregor’s mother and sister stop taking care of him. First they used to put milk for him but later they started to put debris for him, the food on which insects feed.

They do not clean his room, no one talks to him and so he grows frailer, not only physically but emotionally. And at last he dies. “He watched as it slowly began to get light everywhere outside the window too. Then, without his willing it, his head sank down completely, and his last breath flowed weakly from his nostrils” (Kafka 29). And instead of mourning their son’s death, the family’s response is: “We can thank God for that” (30). The metamorphosis in the character of Gregor from almost being a human to a disgusting insect might seem as an exaggeration.

However, Kafka wanted to unveil and discover the hardships of the human psyche which altered and evolved with each event or condition to delineate the periphery of just behavior and mercy (Smith). Another symbolic meaning of the protagonist’s metamorphosis is that how human beings forget to live. They do remember to pay their dues, put food on the table, clothes and everything but they forget the meaning of their existence and in doing so, they do not provide nutrition to the souls. They forget that they have to take care of their inner beings as well.

Furthermore, Gregor, despite being abused by his father’s stick, still tries to talk to him. However, it should have been his family who should have tried to connect with him. But in the metamorphosis state, Gregor holds himself guilty