Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis - Essay Example

But of course, he can't tell his boss how he feels. How he feels is thoroughly beside the point. Gregor is a cog in the machine, not much different from a drone bee or a worker ant. The queens of those colonies have no more interest in the ambitions of their underlings than Gregor's boss has in his. Gregor alienation is symbolically represented in his transformation; his bugdom is symbolic of his uselessness to the cycle once he has begun to question the validity of it. Just as humans crush bugs because they serve no purpose to their society, Gregor can no longer serve his purpose because he is aware of its emptiness.

Gregor's family's buying into societal demands makes them just as buglike as Gregor, but they are the ones who are really more like the bugs we step on. The final scene of the story confirms this as they so very quickly settle comfortably into the rat rate on the bus as "they discussed their prospects and found that on closer examination they were not at all bad - until then they had never asked each other about their work but all three had jobs which were very good and held particularly good promise for the future.

" Things were not bad at all, despite the fact that their son or brother had turned into a bug and died. Normalcy had returned with a vengeance and they were comfortably back into the antlike pattern of work defining their existence. The point of view of the novel is thematically coherent; it is detached, alienated, cold. The lack of a consciousness behind the narration lends to the overall effect of detachment and loss of individuality. In fact, there is no individuality at all to the narration.

It is event-tempered and matter-of-fact, reflecting the soul-numbing society in which the story takes place. The opening line sets the stage with description that could have started off a bizarre science fiction story. But the story isn't science fiction, there is nothing really incredible about it all other than the circumstances of the lead character. Although the point of view could seem at times to be first person, it really isn't. Gregor isn't telling his story and that's important because to allow Gregor to tell his story would be imbue his individuality with a meaning that isn't really there.

This lack of meaning even extends to the minor characters. The character of the chief clerk is probably the most insect-like of all the characters, much more so than Gregor. Gregor has dreams and ambitions beyond his expected lot in life. He is held down by the expectations of society. The chief clerk has been assimilated to completely that nothing but work matters. Society is reflected in all its gloriously conformist lack of imagination in the clerk. In some ways the true tragic figure of this story is the clerk.

He could never be metamorphosed into an actual bug, because he'll become something that society needs to step on. He is society, he is everything that Gregor wants, but can't, rebel again. "I thought I knew you as a calm and sensible person, and now you suddenly seem to be showing off with peculiar whims." For a person like the clerk, peculiar whims would include such strange and questionable activities as wondering whether there is more to life than work. His officiousness, his lack of true sympathy or empathy for Gregor all point to his