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The Metamorphosis

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Marxist theory believes that money and power holds a society together. Although many literary perspectives can be applied to “The Metamorphosis”, Marxist perspective is the most significant because of the important role class plays within a society, the way the characters need to maintain a standard of life in order to be happy and the way Gregor was oppressed by his family during hard times.
Gregor Samsa is a travelling sales man who within the story represents the working class and once Gregor is transformed into a bug he is unable to work. The conflict that arises once Gregor turns into a bug represents the dehumanizing structure of class relations. He is forced into labor as a travelling sales man in order to support his family and pay …show more content…

The first to abandon Gregor is his manager, as soon as he shows up at the house and sees Gregor transformed into a bug he flees the house and never returns. The clear observation is that the manager is afraid of the bug form Gregor had taken, but in relation to the metaphor of the story, the manager relized that Gregor was unable to work which meant to him that Gregor no longer had any value to the company. To the manager, Gregor was worth nothing more than his labour, thus without having any labor to offer, Gregor was considered to be worthless. The manager was able to let him go easily, and without any feelings of guilt to the financially burden he caused the …show more content…

Just as Gregors family had depended on him, he began to depend on them in his time of need. Gregor was unable to feed himself, and thus kept fate in his family that they would charitably feed him, but his family didn’t provide him food because he no longer had a paycheck, leading to him starving to death. The day after Gregors death, the cleaning lady comes in and finds him dead, she informs the family but instead of the family being sad, his father shows relief, commenting “Well... now we can thank God!" (55). His father was happy to be freed of the economic burden of supporting his son. Instead of grieving like a normal family, they spoke of the economic benefits that would come from his death and their future financial plans. Due to his inability to work, Gregor had become worthless to his family, and wouldn’t be missed at all. This shows how much Gregors family viewed him as an income instead of a son, no matter how much they loved him while he was an asset to the family, they couldn’t bring themselves to love him while he wasn’t able to provide money. The economic situation within their family outweighed any emotional attachment that they had towards Gregor. The family decides to leave the house, and as their sitting on the trolley with Grete they begin to talk about her upcoming marriage, and the economic benefits that her husband is going to have on their family. The assumption is

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