Economic Drive In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis

Economic Drive in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka was raised in early twentieth century Prague where, for Jewish families, economic status was of utmost importance. Approximately sixteen percent of the members of the German corporate network was Jewish. Yet, Jews composed less than one percent of the population (Windolf 2). The Kafka’s were part of that sixteen percent in German corporate. Kafka was born into a middle-class family; his mother was well educated, and his father had a long history in business. Kafka, however, didn’t have the greatest relationship with his parents. His father had a terrible temper and didn’t approve of Kafka’s writing endeavors. He also put Kafka under tremendous pressure to continue the family business since he was the only son. Kafka’s childhood experience with an economically driven family dynamic was manifested in his novella The Metamorphosis. In which Kafka, through rhetoric, diction, and symbolism, communicated the negative correlation between an economically driven society and its concern for humanity. Kafka also displays this type of society’s creation of economic pressure, its impact on individuals personally and on the family.

Kafka uses diction and symbolism to convey the family’s dissatisfaction and the deterioration in their family ties. Each family member acquires a job to compensate the loss of Gregor’s salary. Kafka writes:

“They were fulfilling to the utmost the demands the world makes on the poor:
Gregor’s father fetched breakfast for the petty employees at the bank, his mother sacrificed herself for the underclothes of strangers, his sister ran back and forth behind the shop counter at her costumers’ behest... And the wound in Gregor’s back would begin to ache anew when… Gregor’s mother…would say: ‘shut the door now Grete’; and Gregor was left in the dark again” (Kafka