Gregor Samsa's Similarities in The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka has undoubtedly left behind a vast legacy; he is considered by many academics to be one of the foremost figures of 20* century literature. His life, however, was far less absolute – he was often unsure, conflicted, and doubtful. Works by Kafka often examine or explore themes of alienation, doubt, and displacement, and his 1915 novella The Metamorphosis is an analogy of estrangement and isolation.

The Metamorphosis is an exploration of Kafka’s own life, with large and distinct parallels between the protagonist and Kafka himself.

Kafka often struggled with his identity in his youth. Aspects of life such as religion, family and romantic relationships, and work, were constantly on uncertain ground. Of course, that is not to say one’s youth is the time to have such things figured out; but that experience – the struggle – commands an extensive role within the development of works such as The Metamorphosis. Also highly influential was his relationship with his father; strained and heavily damaged, and the two differed greatly in nearly every facet.

At the time The Metamorphosis was published (1915), Kafka was working for an insurance company. Previously (1907), he had worked for a different insurance company; but deeply disliked the rigid schedule and resigned after around a year – he began working for another insurance company under a more flexible schedule that was friendlier to his writing pursuits.

He also worked for his father’s store, and in 1911 became a partner in an asbestos factory. Despite success, he was often unhappy with his work; finding it unfulfilling and preferring writing.

Get quality help now

Writer Lyla

Verified

Proficient in: Metamorphosis

5 (876)

“ Have been using her for a while and please believe when I tell you, she never fail. Thanks Writer Lyla you are indeed awesome ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

It would not be until two years after the publishing of The Metamorphosis that Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis (August 1917), which would cause his health to deteriorate until eventually ending his life in 1924. There are many similarities between the profession of the novella’s protagonist, Gregor, and positions Kafka held in his life. Gregor, a salesman, complains of having to wake up early, thinking, “This getting up early… makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep.” This conflict closely resembles Kafka’s discontent with his first job after school – he found the 8:00am to 6:00pm schedule to be both tiresome and incompatible with writing. Also similar is Gregor’s desire to quit, and Kafka’s resignation from said job in 1908. Gregor, however, does not have this option, and determines that he will have enough money to quit in “another five or six years”. He desires to reject his responsibilities and be free of his obligations – this actually does occur, quite quickly, in the story, but not in the fashion that Gregor had hoped for. Perhaps Kafka muses that, had he not been able to leave his first job, he would have suffered the same fate as Gregor?

Or, possibly, does Kafka considers Gregor’s fate to also be his fate, later in his life? It is very early within the story – within the first sentence, actually, that the “metamorphosis” happens (or is discovered, rather) in The Metamorphosis. Gregor Samsa awakes to find himself transformed into a strange, verminous creature. It is worth noting that the German to English translation is done with some difficulty; the literal translation of what Gregor becomes is “an animal unclean for sacrifice”; however the German word Ungeziefer has generally come to mean vermin, or sometimes, broadly, “bug”. The product of Gregor’s transformation is generally regarded as that of a cockroach. And so it is one morning that Gregor Samsa awakens as a cockroach (not as a butterfly, as many have erroneously predicted via the title). Clearly, a supernatural event has occurred – but Gregor’s state may be more a metaphor than anything else. He awakens a verminous bug, with small legs, a scaly back, no teeth, and a wealth of other undesirable features. He has become repulsive, disgusting.

It is this feeling of disgust that Kafka is conveying through the story – disgust with what he had become, with trading off his writing for his day job. And so Gregor Samsa and Franz Kafka share many similarities. They are both firstborn sons, without brothers (Kafka had two brothers that died when he was young). They both appear to be of similar age (20-30), and both Gregor and Kafka have a dominant father, timid mother, and nurturing sister. While we aren’t given an abundance of information on Gregor’s pre-cockroach days, we can ascertain he has a more restrained, reserved personality type based on his pondering of his workplace. Gregor desires to tell his ungrateful and lazy bosses that they’re full of crap – but it will have to wait. He shares this personality type with Kafka, who was often described as quiet, yet cool, calm, and intelligent, with a dry sense of humor accompanied by an air of austerity. Abundant similarities exist between Gregor Samsa’s father and Kafka’s father as well. Gregor’s father is a vehicle through which Kafka illustrates his father’s tyrannical and cruel nature – he would go on to voice a culmination of his frustrations clearly and directly four years later in Letter to My Father.

In it, Kafka cites their strongly differing dispositions and his father’s dominant, oppressive tendencies as the irreconcilable difference between them. This is precisely how Gregor’s father behaves when Gregor can no longer deliver the utility that is expected of him. This draws a disdainful parallel between Kafka’s relationship to his father and Gregor’s relationship to his father. When Kafka did not do as was desired of him by his father (pursuing business as opposed to writing), he would incur his father’s wrath. Even personal aspects of Kafka’s life – such as who he chose to marry – were subject to his father’s scrutiny and forceful guidance. Similarly, when Gregor can no longer do what is desired and expected of him by his father, his father attacks him in more ways than one, and at one point grievously injures Gregor. This exposes the relationship between father and son as pitifully shallow, and largely conditional in nature. Kafka once described his father, Hermann, as “A true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, and knowledge of human nature.”

One can heavily contrast this to Gregor in every facet – he is weak, unhealthy, ultimately starves to death, wields a muted, garbled voice; is about as eloquent as a cockroach can be (not very), he suffers from anxiety, doubt, and conflict; he is subjected to the will of others, and he also doesn’t appear to control or even own close to anything… His condition wears down on him until he eventually expires, and fades away; and he demonstrates an acute lack of mental clarity – rarely seeming to foresee how people will react to his actions. Both Kafka’s father and Gregor’s father exhibit despotic qualities, unlike their sons, who are not pathfinders, but instead travelers along a path already created for them. Also contrasting these qualities is Gregor’s mother. She is quiet and timid, but comes to Gregor’s aid when he is being persecuted. Kafka observed this nature of his ow mother. Gregor’s sister, Grete, also cares for him; going so far as to offer him different options for eating until discovering what he had become best suited to. Grete’s nature, and behavior towards Gregor, strongly resembles the relationship Kafka had with his youngest sister, Ottla, who began caring for him when he fell ill with tuberculosis in August of 1917. While Gregor’s mother and sister care about him and are dismayed at his condition, their patience and compassion are finite.

Grete loses her enthusiasm in the process of caring after Gregor – it being noted that “The task of cleaning his room, which she now always carried out in the evening, could not be done any more quickly.” The burden grows to the point that each member of the family, now including Grete, desire Gregor’s death and departure. The shared displeasure experienced by all members of the family creates a rift that eventually ends with Gregor’s death. After he dies, the burden of caring for him is lifted off of the family, and they emerge out of the experience altogether rejuvenated. The Samsa family’s eerily positive disposition following the death of Gregor is an effect of the toxic environment they were living in being concluded. In some ways, they too have undergone a metamorphosis. Naturally, living with a giant, repulsive cockroach as a roommate has been both stressful and trying for them.

But the extent of their relief, and the complete lack of grief or recollection of those pre-cockroach days, is indicative of Kafka’s state of mind in writing the story. Gregor’s death, and the relief and satisfaction following, is an indicator of Kafka’s self-doubt and self-loathing, perhaps illustrating a “they’ d-be-better- off-without-me” way of seeing things. It is with the death of Gregor that Kafka’s exploration of his life comes to an end. It is within Gregor’s transformation from man to bug that Kafka examines that decidedly human feeling of isolation and detachment that we all experience from time to time. And what is more detaching, more isolating than waking up as something other than human? Or could the feeling of losing one’s self, one’s direction in life, be compared to such a thing? It is this sense of loss that directs the winding tale that is The Metamorphosis, from the end of Gregor as a human to the end of Gregor as a thing.