Essay on The Metamorphosis

        The story is full of tragic events happening to Gregor Samsa. It is important to mention that story is all about Gregor Samsa, who is said to be a travelling salesman. The start of the story is tragic itself in a way that Gregor founds himself to be an insect, when he wakes up one morning. Gregor experiences the saddest thing that he has been transformed from human into a large insect. Everything around him was quite normal, except him as he was not human anymore. This is just the beginning of the tragic story of Gregor, as other coming events are going to be more tragic and painful for him. Gregor has lost his voice as human, and his voice has completely changed. His new voice and language was not understandable for his inmates. The mother asks him to open the door, but he does not know that how should maneuver his new body to open the door. Then his office manager comes and threatens him that he will be fired if he does not come to work (GoodReads 2015)

            The other tragic part was when he gave a reply to is mother and office manager, no one was able to understand that he has said to them. But when somehow, he managed to open his room’s door, everyone was shocked to see his new body shaped into an insect. It is certainly a shock for anyone, if they suddenly find out that any of their loved ones are no more human, and they are transformed into an insect. This is what was happening with Gregor’s mother, father and sister. They could not understand that what has happened to Gregor in one night time. When he tried to get out of his room, he was forcefully squeezed back to his room by his father, and meanwhile he gets injured as well. The other tragic part of his story was that he lost his food taste as when his sister put some bread and milk in his room; he found out that he had no taste for these things, whereas milk used to be his favorite earlier in his normal life (Kohzadi, Azizmohammadi and Nouri 2012)

            The new taste of his food was of rotten food. The tragic days of Gregor’s life were going on because of his new transformation. It was sad to see that his own mother, sister and father were not able to accept him in this new transformed shape. One day, when Gregor gets out of his room and his father thinks that he has attacked any of the family members, and throws apples at him. The apple hits his back and he severely gets injured by that. The most tragic event of his life was, when his loved ones are sick of his presence. It was so sad to observe that his mother, sister an father agreed that they should get rid of Gregor; otherwise his presence will be a threat to their normal life. It was so tragic to find out for Gregor that his own loved ones want to get rid of him. It is certainly a painful fact to face, and this is what brought Gregor’s life to an end. The family wanted that Gregor should spare their lives and this is what Gregor did. He understood their feeling of hatred and eventually dies. The tragic life began from transformation into an insect, and then seeing his own loved ones going away from him. He then experienced so many sad events, where he was disgusted by his parents and sister, and once got injured by his father, and left in pain. And when he dies, his family takes a sigh of relief (Rowe 2002)

            In this story, Kafka tried to present various social and human problems, which humans face in their daily lives. Actually, he was trying to convey a message by showing a social problems, that how cruel this world could be for those, who are not needed anymore. The society and humans do give importance to those, who can give some sort of benefits, and if someone is not able to give any benefits, and not needed in the daily life, then society thinks to get rid of such person. He also comes out with a bitter reality that when someone needs help from the people around them, and how their cold response socially isolates them. Gregor eventually died due to this social isolation, where he was thought to be a wasted thing, and not needed in the lives of his loved ones (Gooderham 2015). A study has highlighted that risk of death of socially isolated people is 30% higher than the normal people. It means that Kafka was actually trying to focus on the social problem that when humans around us need help, they are rather socially isolated instead of getting that help. The society needs to be more gentle and supportive in this regard and they should not isolate people, when they are in need of support to get back to their normal lives (Smith 2018)

References of The Metamorphosis

Gooderham, WB. 2015. Kafka's Metamorphosis and its mutations in translation. Accessed December 7, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2015/may/13/kafka-metamorphosis-translations.

GoodReads. 2015. The Problems Behind Metamorphosis. Accessed December 7, 2018. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/2286738-the-problems-behind-metamorphosis.

Kohzadi, Hamedreza, Fatemeh Azizmohammadi, and Mahboubeh Nouri. 2012. "A Study of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis." Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research 2 (2): 1600-1607.

Rowe, Michael. 2002. "Metamorphosis : Defending the Human." Literature and medicine 21 (2): 264-80.

Smith, Ann Kowal. 2018. Text to Text | ‘The Metamorphosis’ and ‘How Social Isolation Is Killing Us’. Accessed December 7, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/learning/lesson-plans/text-to-text-the-metamorphosis-and-how-social-isolation-is-killing-us.html.