Introduction
Franz Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis is a classic in the genre of fiction that arose in the early 20th century. Following hard upon Karl Marx’s theories of worker alienation, the protagonist of the story, Gregor Samsa, is the personification of the deadening of the soul amidst the rise of the industrial revolution. Gregor is the epitome of management’s conception of the perfect laborer: hardworking and respectful and unyielding in his acceptance of his role in the larger machinery of society. The Metamorphosis is an illustration of how modern society works to alienate people from society by stripping away even the little power they have over their own lives.
Main Character
Unquestionably Gregor Samsa is meant to portray the more dehumanizing aspects of the contemporary struggle against the suppression of human ideals. The mechanism of oppression in Gregor’s case is the bureaucracy in which he is forced to work a meaningless life that contributes nothing to his dreams or aspirations, but instead merely makes of him a human insect playing his role in the greater cycle of nature. The alienation from his work also threatens Gregor’s family life, and the implicit assumption is that all of modern life is constructed to alienate people not only from their work but even from each other. Just as real insects go about their business with no worries about familial ties or love relationships, so is Gregor even before his transformation little more than a bug to begin with. Gregor’s family is dysfunctional yet he manages to find it necessary to work hard and without complaint in order to help them survive. Despite this, it is important to remember that inside Gregor is not the contented worker he appears to be. He holds a deep and abiding hatred for his boss. Clearly, on the inside Gregor Samsa wishes to rebel; his alienation has not reached through to his soul. However, he feels trapped and incapable of breaking free from the constricting rules of society.
Interestingly, Gregor clings stubbornly and one might say almost unthinkingly to those very same constricting rules even after his metamorphosis has taken away any ability to fulfill his role. Despite awaking one morning to find himself transformed into a giant bug, despite realizing that he is no longer human, Gregor persists in thinking like the deprogrammed entity he was before. “Instead of reacting with open anxiety, Gregor thinks, at length, about his job and family; he becomes anxious about the passing time and preoccupied with his new bodily sensations and his strange aches and pains” (Bouson 56). He still remains worried about oversleeping and being late for work just as any other person waking up late that morning. He even considers calling in a sick and then just as quickly faces the quite mundane fear that the office would send a doctor to check on him. The point of these trivial concerns is to show that Gregor is now only a bug in physical form, but that he has been little more than a bug in psychic form all along. Such is Gregor’s utter alienation from life around him that becoming a bug comes to be seen as a just another inconvenience. In addition, he has such a deeply felt sense of doing what is right that it overtakes every other consideration.
Important to fully understanding the theme of alienation in the story is comprehending Karl Marx’s theories on how capitalism is devised to undermine the humanity of the species. Rules and systems dominate his life–and he is profoundly unhappy and isolated. According to Marx, the laborer’s “work is external to the worker, i.e., it does not form part of his essential being so that instead of feeling well in his work, he feels unhappy, instead of developing his free physical and mental energy, he abuses his body and ruins his mind” (Bloom 107). Gregor is a perfect example of what Marx is complaining about; he is alienated from the product he works to create because he doesn’t own it. In addition, he really isn’t even working for a wage for himself; his wages are directed toward taking care of his father’s debts. Gregor is therefore doubly exploited. He is exploited by his bosses and then exploited by his own father. Gregor clearly desires to have a better life and part of that better life would be in no longer having to put up with the drudgery that it is current job. More importantly that getting a better job, however, is what that better job would bring him, which is control over his life. Or at least more control than he has as a result of his unfulfilling job. If he were his own boss or at least owned that which he produced, he would have more self-worth. As it is, Gregor’s worth can be measured only by how much he produces.
In essence, Gregor’s worth is measured in terms of how his production relates to caring for him family; if he doesn’t work, the family will suffer. The family has exploited him into a just as dark a place as his work; it is a place where he has no control and everything is subservient to his family’s acceptance. That acceptance is dependent upon his ability to produce and provide. He is a cog in the machine; an ant dragging sand back to the mound. As a result of the exploitation at work and at home, Gregor never feels comfortably in questioning authority. Making matters worse is that Gregor unfortunately recognizes this, but is either incapable or unwilling to take action to gain control and authority over himself. Both Gregor’s boss and his father are authority figures that server to fully control Gregor’s life from the time he wakes up in the morning to the time he goes to bed at night.
In addition, Gregor’s alienation extends to the world that exists when he is neither working nor at home. Such is his isolation that Gregor has no meaningful contact with anybody, and this even extends to his own family. The limits of his social interactions are determined by the fact he is fully committed to the rut of going daily to a job that provides no inspiration. Gregor’s humanity is repressed to the point where he really has one left. He truly is like a bug, detached from the very things that make one human. Just as an insect is only a small player in the grander scheme of nature, not subject to deep interpersonal relations, so is Gregor a victim of an economic ideology designed to reduce him to a number. Gregor cannot even connect with his own family when he is at home: at night he locks his door as if to lock himself away from the world. Gregor chooses to isolated himself from his family and in doing so it is his only act of rebellion. Locking the door to escape from his family is not just a simple act of separation, it is a bold act of facing off against their oppression and exploitation of him.
Unsurprisingly, once Gregor physically transforms into the bug he was philosophically all along, his isolation and alienation become complete. “Gregor Samsa’s transformation into vermin presents self-alienation in a literal way, not merely a customary metaphor become fictional fact…No manner more drastic could illustrate the alienation of a consciousness from its own being than Gregor Samsa’s startled and startling awakening” (Bloom 105). Finally, Gregor’s alienation from his humanity is totally physicalized and realized: “That is to say, Samsa, having been a successful salesman, was once the pillar of his family, but now, being helpless, his sister assumes in the eyes of his parents the role of leadership and reassuring strength that he had once occupied.”(Scott 37). More importantly, Gregor’s inhumanity is finally realized by his family and co-workers and their abuse becomes more open. Gregor is relegated to the dingiest room in the house in exactly the way that those who are deemed to have the least value in society are hidden away in mental institutions or prisons. Despite the fact that he was little more than a bug before his metamorphosis and changed only in appearance following the transformation, it is only when Gregor is turned physically into a bug that the family views treats him with outright distaste. Gregor must even scamper under the couch to avoid detection when his sister arrives with food lest she experience profound disgust. At long last the family openly treats Gregor like the piece of repulsive creature that he has been all along; a creature lacking in any autonomous control over his own destiny. The final nail in the coffin of Gregor’s humanity comes when his beloved sister resorts to referring to him with the impersonal pronoun “it.” By the end of the story Gregor is well on his way toward becoming a distant memory in the minds of his own parents.
Conclusion
Gregor Samsa’s literal transformation into a bug in Franza Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is merely an extension of the bug that he has always been up to that point. An insect is not expected to have relationships or ambitions; it exists only to carry out its role in the cycle of life that is its lowly species. Long before he turns into a gigantic, disgusting bug, Gregor is already that insect. Though Gregor fervently desires to rebel against the social constraints that have left him an empty vessel, the overriding theme of the novella is that society is constructed in such a way as the dehumanize everyone in an attempt to keep the machinery spinning. What the story of the man who turns into a bug is really saying is that all of us are threatened with the same potential for alienation from each other because social cohesiveness demands that individual ambitions be subordinated to the greater good.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold, ed. Franz Kafka”s the Metamorphosis. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.
Bouson, J. Brooks. A Study of the Narcissistic Character and the Drama of the Self: University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.
Scott, Nathan A. Rehearsals of Discomposure: Alienation and Reconciliation in Modern Literature: Franz Kafka, Ignazio Silone, D. H. Lawrence [And] T. S. Eliot. New York: King’s Crown Press, 1952.