Gregor Samsa Character Analysis

2ND ARGUMENT. Secondly, Gregor Samsa’s diseased physical state can be referred to as the abject, since Kristeva associates illness with the repulsive bodily condition. To begin with, May argues that “human–animal transitions often act as a metaphor for disease and disability” (74). Similarly, Gregor’s parents perceive his transformation as a temporary plight: each time after Grete comes out of her brother’s room, they enquire about the state of things, namely “whether he [Gregor] had perhaps shown a little improvement” (Kafka “Metamorphosis” 84). Moreover, the(?) mother protests against removing furniture from his son’s room, because by doing this, family members demonstrate that they abandon hope “of his getting better” (86), thus implying that

At a later time in the text, Gregor’s father, deeply frustrated with his behaviour, starts a fight in the course of which he perforates insect’s tender body side with a hard apple. “Gregor’s serious wound, from which he suffered for over a month” becomes inflamed for “the apple remained imbedded in his flesh as a visible souvenir since no one dared to remove it”, causing a lot of pain (Kafka “Metamorphosis” 95). Wounds is an area of special interest in relation to Kristeva’s abject, because these are lesion sites on the skin – a thin surface covering the entire body which keeps our safe from the intrusion of the alien matters and preserves our boundaries. Rudge asserts that the abject constantly anticipates injury, thus “loss of skin integrity” (511) is a threat to the identity, which always verges upon the abject. Moreover, Austin and Santamaria attest that a “chronic wound can render a body abject with its secretions and smells and its disruption of the body’s boundary”