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Franz Kafkas story The Metamorphosis is a thought-provoking story of a young man and his family and their trials and tribulations. Although many perspectives can be applied to this story such as Marxism, one relationship I would like to explore is Gregors struggle to belong and the resulting tragedy. Gregors struggle can be understood from the humanistic perspective of psychology. According to Abraham Maslow, people have many needs that must be fulfilled in order to become self-actualized which is the need to fulfill ones potential (Weiten 80). One of these needs is the need for love and belonging (Weiten 81) and it is this need that Kafka writes about in The Metamorphosis.
The main character, Gregor Samsa, is a hard working young man just trying to put food on the table and support his family because of his […] parents debts to [the chief], who is his boss (Kafka 76). He is just like everyone else; he hates his job. The work is very stressful on him. He finds his job exhausting and irritating (Kafka 75). He is as human as anyone, which means that he was constantly changing. Not very much, but a little each day, the same way everyone changes a little as they progress through life. His life takes a turn for the worse when he wakes up one morning for work only to find that he has turned into an insect. Even that did not stop Gregor from wanting to carry out his duties as a son and an employee. When his boss arrives at Gregors home to find out what has happened to him, Gregor maintains that he is still perfectly willing to work and asks that the chief provide Gregor with an opportunity to prove this (Kafka 8-4).
Gregor is depicted as having human qualities despite the fact that he is an insect. In Gregors mind, he is still Gregor regardless of what he looks like. While he is aware of his physical changes, Gregor has essentially not changed. Gregor ruminates on banal things such as catching the train on time and whether or not his alarm went off (Kafka 76). Gregor speaks English […] doing his best to make his voice sound as normal as possible by enunciating the words very clearly and leaving long pauses between them (Kafka 77). However, his ability to communicate due to […] the lack of all direct human speech […] (Kafka 5) fails and his family can no longer understand him. It is the lack of understanding that has the most effect on Gregor. It separates him even more from his family. The new Gregor was so unfathomable that his family could not deal with it and shut him away. His father pushes him into a room and [t]he door was slammed behind him… (Kafka 86).
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It is the familys unwillingness to accept Gregor that widens the chasm between them. Even in his condition, Gregor hopes […] that by exercising patience and the utmost consideration [he can] help the family to bear the inconvenience he was bound to cause them in his present condition (Kafka 88). Despite what Gregor himself is enduring, his thoughts are selflessly with his family and their consternation. He is worried about their finances because of the role he plays as a breadwinner. At that time Gregors sole desire was to do his utmost to help the family to forget as soon as possible the catastrophe which had befallen the business [….] (Kafka 0-1). He remembers with regret his sisters lost opportunity to go to the Conservatorium to study music (Kafka 1). While Gregor is despairing for his family instead of himself, his familys thoughts are not on him at all. They are thinking of themselves and how to make their money last (Kafka -). Gregor just wants to resume his place in the family and they seem to care less about trying to resolve his condition. Out of sight, out of mind appears to be the way his family is reacting to him.
After the metamorphosis, the respect his family treats him with fades. This can be seen in the slow process of removing things from his room. By taking his furniture and other things from his room, they are making him less human and confirming his belief that they no longer care. It matters not to Gregor that at first the intentions of his sister and mother were good, he eventually resents them for taking away the things that meant so much to him. Kafka writes, [d]id he really want his warm room …turned into a naked den…at the price of shedding simultaneously all recollection of his human background? (Kafka 5) He then decides to rescue (Kafka 6) some of his belongings that give him so much comfort. This is Gregors method of stating that he is in fact still Gregor and deserves to be treated as such. For his family, it was easier to ignore any human qualities that may still have existed in Gregor in order to justify their treatment of him. It is their fear and their inability to see Gregor as he really is and their inability to accept him for what he is, that ultimately destroys Gregor.
The most pivotal point in the story comes when Gregor follows his sister out of his room when she and her mother are cleaning it. He gets shut out of his room and when his father arrives, his father immediately sets about to hurt Gregor […] his father was determined to bombard him with apples (Kafka ). It is an ironic twist that apples thrown by his father, then assault Gregor who should be the apple of his fathers eye for being the saviour of the family. The apple festers in Gregors back, and ultimately leads to his demise. Whether the irony was intentional by Kafka of not, I thought it was an interesting choice of objects. It is at this point that Gregor ceases to be human, at least to his father.
His status with his other family members too changes for the worse. His sister, who until this time had been his staunchest ally and caregiver, begins to neglect Gregor. [She] no longer took thought to bring what might especially please him and […] hurriedly pushed into his room with her foot any food that was available […] (Kafka 401). His family took to storing […] in his room things [that] there was no room for elsewhere […] such as furnishings, the ash-can and the kitchen garbage can (Kafka 40). It is as if they had already relegated him to the trash heap. The familys regard for the lodgers aversion to filth and disorder is more important to them than Gregors feelings on the same subject.
Gregor suffers immensely because he feels that he has to be something he is not in order to be accepted again. The only time he felt good about himself was when he was working for the chief to take care of his family and now that he is unable to do so, […] he [feels] so hot with shame and grief ( Kafka ). Kafka shows the reader how important being accepted is to Gregor when he explains that Gregor is comforted by the fact that Gregor […] felt himself drawn once more into the human circle […] (8). This need for acceptance and belonging is recognized as a fundamental need of all humans who are social creatures. According to Baumeister and Leary, people form social attachments readily under most conditions and resist the dissolution of existing bonds and the lack of attachments is linked to a variety of ill effects on health, adjustment, and well-being. Gregor is haunted by the hope that he will recover and resume his place in the family (Kafka 401).
The evening his sister plays violin for the lodgers is when the reader gets a glimpse of how devastating the isolation has been for Gregor. He felt hardly any surprise at his growing lack of consideration for the others… (Kafka 405), he had to let his sister know that […] no one here appreciated her playing as he would appreciate it (Kafka 405). The music stirred something in Gregor that he could not resist; [h]e felt as if the way were opening before him to the unknown nourishment he craved (Kafka 405). Unfortunately for Gregor, he was caught and that hardened his sisters heart against him. We must try to get rid of it (Kafka 407) […] I cant stand it any longer (Kafka 407) she tells her parents. She refers to him as a creature( Kafka 408) and states that if he were really […] Gregor, he would have realized that human beings cant live with such a creature, and hed have gone away on his own accord (Kafka 408). When Gregor returns to his room after hearing the conversation, it is his sister who locks him for the last time (Kafka 408-). Gregor decides to save his family one last time and dies. This final act is the only way he can show his sister that he is still Gregor and he does […] [go] away of his own accord (Kafka 408). At the end, it is Gregors need to belong that ultimately frees his family from the human responsibilities of love and compassion.
Some people are regarded as inferior by other people simply because they look different. It is important to understand that this whole identification is subjective and depends on the point of view. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor turns into an insect. It is interesting that Kafka chose an insect as a creature to turn Gregor into. Generally insects are loathed and considered to be a lower form of creature in the Great Chain of Being. Humans do not like insects because insects have no human qualities that humans can relate to. We do not think of insects as equal to humans. This is a quality associated more with mammals. We are afraid of insects and hate them because they are different. Gregor, because of his being an insect, is loathed despite the fact that he is still fundamentally Gregor. It is because of the human instinct to bond with others of our species that Gregor in the end dies. He is still human enough to recognize what would happen to himself and selfless enough to spare his family the burden of his existence.
Works Cited
Baumeister, R.F. and M.R. Leary (15). The Need to Belong Desire for
Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation.
Psychological Bulletin 117 () , 47-5.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. The Writers Path An Introduction
to Short Fiction. Rooke and Rooke Eds. Scarborough, ON ITP Nelson,
18. 74-41.
Weiten, Wayne. Psychology Themes and Variations. rd. ed. Pacific Grove CA
Brooks/ Cole, 15.
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