“Gregor Samsa awoke from troubling dreams one morning to find that his life had remained conspicuously the same.†This – in context of the entire book – is the actual opening line of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Gregor Samsa, the unfortunate protagonist and indirect narrator of the story has been “inexplicably†transformed into a bug. But quite truly, Gregor – his persona, and the role he plays – has remained quite the same.
Franz Kafka’s theme of isolation is very thick in this novel. Driven – by himself and by the needs of others – to work at a job he hates, Gregor is in fact a very lonely, remote individual. Before his “metamorphosis†Gregor’s isolation was apparent mostly in his occupation and stature in society: he was appreciated by his family and mostly adored by his sister, Grete. After he finds himself turned into a bug, Gregorâ
Metamorphosis contains quite a few interesting literary devices. Irony is one in particular that Kafka uses to strike heavily. While the protagonist of the story awakes one morning to be entirely different, he really has not at all changed. He had always played the underdog, the one to be taken advantage of. This sense of lowliness pervades his life, but expands as he accumulates unfamiliar resentment from his family. The question as to why Gregor has fallen to this change is barely ever asked, and his misfortune is readily accepted. It seems as if Kafka has transformed Gregor – suffering from his own internal self-hindrance and lack of ambition –into a symbolically lowly by Kafka because he has lost all drive, ambition, and hope.
This small book is the story of an unfortunate man who finds himself in a horrible place – precisely where he had always been. This ironic tale is told masterfully by Franz Kafka in a sett
Example Essays Home
