FEATURED ESSAYS 1. Analysis 2 2. Analysis 3. Metamorphosis: Metamorphosis Taki... 4. Metamorphosis: A Review 5. Greek Mythology: Metamorphosis 6. Kafka's Metamorphosis: Existentia... 7. The Metamorphosis: Complexity And... 8. The Metamorphosis: Gregor Was An ... 9. Similarities And Differences In K... 10. Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka 11. Metamorphosis 2 12. The Metamorphosis 13. Metamorphosis: Response 14. Metamorphosis Response

Metamorphosis: Response

Gregor had alienated himself long before his metamorphosis into a beetle.
His obsession with his job had dehumanized him, made him less personal and
more mechanical. While on business trips, he began to lock his doors at
night in the hotels. He carried this action back to his homelife. His
family did not know him anymore partially because they took him for granted
for making their money for them and partially because that was simply how
he wanted in to be. Gregor's metamorphosis into a beetle only allowed his
family and himself to consciously alienate him from society and the world.

As someone said to meI can't remember who it was-it is really remarkable
that when you wake up in the morning you nearly always find everything in
exactly the same place as the night before. For when asleep and dreaming
you are, apparently at least, in as essentially different state from that
of wakefulness; and therefore, as that man truly said, it requires enormous,
presence of mind or rather quickness of wit, when opening your eyes to
seize hold as it were of everything in the room at exactly the same place
where you had let it go on the previous evening. That was why, he said, the
moment of waking up was the riskiest moment of the say. Once that was well
over without deflecting you from your orbit, you could take heart of grace
for the rest of your day.

Gregor woke up one morning to find himself turned from a human being to a
beetle. People found that to be extremely hard to grasp. Many felt as
though Gregor should have been more shocked at this change, or at least
less understanding towards it. But really, why should he? The only part
about being a beetle that seemed to truly negatively shock Gregor was that
he could no longer attend to his job at the office. Gregor's family life
did not change drastically. His loss of relation with his family was
nothing very new, there was a lacking of personal connection with his
parents for quite awhile before hand. His parents treated him as a form of
hired help since he had taken the job to pay for his father's debts. Grete,
Gregor's sister, seemed to be the only family member to change her
perception of Gregor. She went from being the overemotional, little
seventeen-year-old girl to a bitter, matured stranger_the first in the
Samsa household to declare that Gregor needed to be exterminated.

Gregor did not seemed shocked that his family wanted to kill him off either,
almost as if he had been expecting it. He was only upset because he had
scared his sister. It was as though Gregor had removed himself completely
from his self, bordering on indifference. Self-alienation was the word
commonly used to describe Gregor's state in the end. Although this self-
alienation came strongest in the end of his life, it had been occurring
from the moment Gregor accepted his life at the office. Alienation coming
from his family had been occurring from the moment as well. Could anything
have been done to stop either?

Pessimistically speaking, no. Gregor accepted the office thinking that it
would later lead to a happier and more self-fulfilling future. Most people
do this in everyday life. We do one thing after another, building stepping
stones that we will rarely achieve only because we will never be satisfied
with what we have in the end and force ourselves to keep going. This is the
way of a vast portion of the world's population. Lack of satisfaction is
what keeps us going. Should we ever achieve full satisfaction, we will have
no purpose.