There can be no doubt as to the fact that people are highly social beings who do not simply think of social interaction as the mean of fighting boredom but as the essential element of their very mode of existence. This is why; it became the customary practice to discuss people within the context of their social value as individuals. However, such practice often appears to be counter-productive, as it implies that an individual’s inability to conform to the rules of social conduct associated with the particular society directly corresponds to his or her existential worthlessness. Franz Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis” illustrates the validity of this statement. Its main character Gregor Zamza realizes that he is being turned into a giant insect after he wakes up in the morning. Despite his horrible appearance, Gregor’s mental state never changes, and he continues to consider himself being a part of the family. However, his mother, father, and his sister have a different perspective of Gregor’s “metamorphosis.” Apparently, what happened to Gregor had dehumanized him in the eyes of his relatives to such an extent that they were no longer considering themselves as being related to him. In fact, they managed to convince themselves that their desire to get rid of Gregor was absolutely moral, in its essence: “You must try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we have believed this for so long is truly our real misfortune. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long ago realized that a communal life among human beings is not possible with such a creature and would have gone away voluntarily” (Kafka). Once Gregor realizes that he is no longer needed by the members of his own family, he slowly loses his will to live and dies while sincerely believing that his death is absolutely necessary to ensure the well-being of people he never stopped loving. No matter how hard he tried, Gregor was never able to embrace the identity of a “bug” as his own. We can say that Kafka’s story portrays how society’s strive to maintain its inner integrity affects people who do not quite fit for the social roles that are being prescribed to them.
The same theme can be traced in William Faulkner’s story “Rose for Emily,” even though the author looks at it from a different perspective. Story’s main character Emily Grierson was raised to believe that woman’s virtuousness corresponds to her ability to get married to a man of a social standing that would be at least equal to her own. Given the fact that Emily’s parents were trying to prevent her daughter from dating men they considered as “unworthy,” Emily was gradually becoming mentally deviated, without the townsfolk being able to recognize her existential inadequateness as potentially dangerous. At the end of this Faulkner’s story, we get to learn that Emily had murdered the man she was expecting to marry her, after having realized that he did not intend to do it and that she had actually been sleeping with the corpse of this man for over twenty years as if she was married to him: “The man himself lay in the bed. For a long while, we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin… What was left of him, rotted beneath what was left of the nightshirt, had become inextricable from the bed in which he lay” (Faulkner)? Just as Kafka’s “Metamorphosis,” Faulkner’s story overplays the motif of social alienation; as such, that affects the life of a particular individual in a very immediate manner. Apparently, people who deeply believe in the metaphysical necessity of social rules and regulations are being deprived of their ability to evaluate these rules critically. It is needless to say that such an inability can hardly be described as beneficial because highly socialized individuals appear as being incapable of relying on their own sense of rationale while dealing with life’s challenges. They continue to follow a particular “behavioral pattern,” even after it ceases to make any sense in their own eyes. As it appears from both stories – “urbanists,” such as Gregor, and “country traditionalists,” such as Emily, are equally incapable of adjusting their “behavioral programs” to correspond to ever-changing social circumstances, simply because of their existential mode lacks flexibility.
Bibliography
Faulkner, William “Rose for Emily”. 2002. Rants! 2008. Web.
Kafka, Franz “The Metamorphosis”. 2007. Vancouver Island University. 2008. Web.