Metamorphosis Essay, Research Paper
Metamorphosis: Response
Gregor had alienated himself long before his metamorphosis into abeetle. His obsession with his job had dehumanized him, made himless 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.