Tone In Fran Kafka's The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka’s short story The Metamorphosis, becoming a beetle gives Gregor insight on his family. Raymond Carver’s short story The Cathedral, shows Bub, a once judgmental man, the insight on blindness. Before their changes, they were blinded by what was in front of them. Life changes cause Gergor’s and Bub’s perspective to differ from what they once were.

In reading Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” the character Gregor is the one that he uses to describe a man who has an acute loss of spirituality. For example, Gregor had a dream he was a bug and this dream became so realistic that it turned into his reality. In Gregor’s perspective, he can’t control himself and has lost his self with this dream that his voice even changes making his family worry about him. Throughout Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” Gregor’s happiness or what he thought was happiness slowly starts to deteriorate. Gregor had a job to help his parent’s pay off debt that they were in and since he can’t function as a normal human being he lost his job.

On the surface, the Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is about a man who becomes disabled from working after waking up one day to find himself turned into a monster of some sorts. Through the dynamic between Samsa and his family and their shared familial roles, as well as the relationship between Samsa and his work, Kafka seems to be making commentary on the futility of life, and how meaningless desperate actions are in the unforgiving cold world. This emptiness can be seen first when Samsa first wakes up and finds himself a vermin, and reflects on his job. It seems that his main purpose for living is to work and eventually pay off the debt his parents have accumulated. He has other goals in life as well, from sending his sister to a conservatory,

Anxiety is another recurring theme in The Metamorphosis. Mrs. Samsa, Gregor’s mother, is a prime example of this. After Gregor’s mother discovers her son has transformed into a bug, she has a hard time staying conscious long enough to even look at him. When Gregor first emerges from his room, she immediately begins screaming and then collapses into the arms of her husband. “‘Help, for God’s sake, help!’

Gregor Samsa’s transition from human to vermin was not the only shift that happened through the duration of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The novel is centered around Gregor who wakes up as a vermin, presumably a cockroach, which catalyses a series of emotionally traumatic experiences for him and his family, culminating in Gregor’s death. Yet the most significant change is, in fact, the gender role reversal seen both with Gregor and Grete, his sister, as Gregor becomes more effeminate and Grete becomes more emasculate, directly correlating with their societal and emotional transformation due to Gregor's physical change. From the moment, Gregor wakes up he has transformed. But not just as a vermin.

What is deconstruction in literature? According to Merriam Webster, a deconstructionist literary criticism is a “philosophical or critical method which asserts that meanings, metaphysical constructs, and hierarchical are always rendered unstable by their dependence on ultimately arbitrary signifiers” (Merriam). In other words, a deconstructionist literary criticism looks at the book as a whole and deconstructs the pieces of the novel and how they may seem unstable when compared to the whole meaning. This mindset is exhibited in that of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Franz Kafka leaves many aspects of the novel unexplained and he includes details that are unstable to the meaning of the novel as a whole.

In December 1915, German author Franz Kafka wrote a short story called The Metamorphosis. It tells of a man named Gregor Samsa who is working as an accountant non-stop over the past few years and does almost nothing outside his job; He also has to pay off debt to his parents for his apprenticeship at his now current job. One morning, he wakes up only to find that he transformed into a cockroach. His family obviously does not react well to his metamorphosis and locks him up in his room. With time, they don’t regard Gregor as a family member; they take away all of his things and use his room for storage; they took away what kept him human.

Explore how Gregor’s metamorphosis can be seen as a symbol of alienation of him in the modern world in Kafka’s Metamorphosis. The literal meaning of the term ‘metamorphosis’ is the process of transformation by which humans change from an adolescent into an adult in two or more stages. The choice of the title by Kafka, creates a significant role for the idea of change to be played. The story suggests a world that is pugnacious and the most salient theme in the book is per say the powerful hegemonizing demeanour of Kafka’s father over him which is shown in correlation with Mr Samsa and Gregor.

There are hundreds of works of literature out in the world, many of them are great, and some are not as great. What makes them great is the truth behind them, the true feelings, and what it truly meant to the author. Many great works of literature are influenced by several different things, in the case of “The Metamorphosis”, it was influenced by the life of Franz Kafka, the author, and his real- life experiences. The Freudian concept help explain why “The Metamorphosis” contains symbols and clues that can be used to compare certain relationships throughout Kafka’s life, one being with his father, and the other with woman who entered his life. Franz Kafka was a German man who worked as a lawyer who worked at the workmen’s Accident Insurance

In The Metamorphosis, Gregor, who has transformed into a vermin, has ignored his transformation and worries about not being able to aid to his family financially. One could say that Gregor’s primary role is to fulfill the role of the financial provider in his family, as he is the only one that works. The father, however, chooses not to take this role and expects Gregor to fulfill this role. When Gregor does not meet up to this expectation, it frustrates the father, as he must begin working. This shows that the father has always been able to work, but would rather not burden himself with this task, and when Grete starts to work afterward it proves this.