Background Information
Story Title
The Metamorphosis
Date of Original Publication
1915
Author
Franz Kafka
Main Character
Gregor Samsa
Other Characters
The chief, chief clerk, Gregor’s parents, Grete, the porter, lodgers, and charwoman.
Setting
Gregor’s room, inside his family’s home.
Point of View
Gregor’s predicament, from his hard work to repay his parents’ debts to becoming useless and a burden after morphing into an insect.
Summary of Main Events
Gregor transforms into an insect and can no longer work to support his family. He increasingly becomes a burden and nuisance to his parents and sisters. Despite securing jobs, his parents are hesitant to take care of Gregor. Gregor dies, and the family moves to a different location.
Analysis
General Tone
Flat and non-opinionated effect, even when describing the most outlandish events.
Style
Kafka’s signature sardonic attitude, which is characterized by disdain, scornful mocking, and a cynical approach to events. Kafka expresses uncomfortable truths revealed through Gregor’s perspectives and the events around him.
Irony
Gregor’s father acts more like an animal than Gregor, who has become a giant insect. Gregor works extremely hard to provide for his family and repay his parents’ debt. However, his family gives up on him when he becomes an insect.
Central Theme
The central theme is life, consciousness, and existence, manifested through Gregor’s different forms of existence.
Key Symbols
The allegory of Gregor’s metamorphosis into an insect; the insect represents dehumanization and alienation; the lady in the muff symbolizes Gregor’s sole attempt at improving his life and potentially Gregor’s ambitions to find a wife eventually.
Evaluation
Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis“ is a horror story based on the events that occur. First, a human being transforming into a large insect is scary, especially for the characters in the story. Gregor goes to bed one night as a human being and wakes up as an insect the following morning. Gregor has parents, siblings, and colleagues at work who expect him to appear in his standard form. Expectedly, these individuals should be horrified by Gregor’s transformation. The chief clerk’s reaction shows he is terrified to see Gregor as an insect. The chief clerk’s reaction is described as follows:
“…the chief clerk uttered a loud ‘Oh!‘ – it sounded like a gust of wind – and now he could see the man, standing as he was nearest to the door, clapping one hand before his open mouth and slowly backing away as if driven by some invisible steady pressure.”
Different family members reacted differently, but they all showed signs of fear upon seeing the insect. Kafka’s story shares several elements with other horror films and fiction. However, the most obvious shared element is individuals polymorphing into animals.
For example, the 1986 film “The Fly“ involves a scientist testing a telepod without noticing that a fly has entered the telepod. A horrifying sequence of events starts as he slowly transforms into a ‘man-sect.‘ Several horror films share such elements, often involving scientific experiments gone wrong or superpowers transforming human beings into scary animals.
However, Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis“ differs from most horror films and fiction since the cause of the transformation is unknown. For example, the scientist in “The Fly“ makes a mistake in his scientific experiments, which causes the transformation. However, in Kafka’s story, Gregor wakes up and transforms himself into an insect. There is no scientific explanation of the metamorphosis, an element often present in most horror films and fiction.