"The Metamorphosis", by Franz Kafka, is the story of a responsible man named Gregor who financially supports his mother, father and sister by working as a traveling salesman for years after his father goes into debt after a bad business decision. Then one day he wakes to see himself as a bug. But he only sees himself as a bug because he doesn't want to work as a traveling salesman to support his family anymore and he sees himself as a lower species of life for it. Whenever he try's to roll on his side to go back to sleep he feels a pain in his side. The pain that he feels is a manifestation of the guilt that he has for not wanting to work to care for his family. When his parents and office manager come to his door to see why he did not catch the train that he is supposed to for work he replies and they cannot understand what he is saying. They cannot understand him because he is not the Gregor that they are used to, he has gone through a metamorphosis.

Gregor awakes to look down at himself and see that he has transformed into a bug. But he has not actually physically changed into a bug but only sees

himself as a bug. He sees himself as a bug because he decided to stop working as a traveling salesman to support his family and feels that he is less than human for it. Gregor does not want to work as a traveling salesman because he finds it to be an arduous occupation. At the moment when he decides to not work anymore he thinks to himself "what a grueling job . . . The torture of traveling . . . no relationships that last . . . To the devil with it all!" He sees himself as an insect because he feel that he is the lowest life form in the world for not wanting to work to maintain the quality of life that his mother, father, and sister are accustomed to.

When Gregor decides to not work anymore he is still in bed and wants to go back to sleep. He try's to roll over to go back to sleep and he can not because he feels a pain, " . . . he began to feel a . . . pain . . . which he had never felt before." The pain that Gregor was feeling was guilt. The guilt is represented as pain because guilt is an inner pain that we feel when we don't do what we know we should do. The guilt that he feels is from the fact that he does not want to get up and go to work so his family can live with some degree of wealth. He feels guilty about this because he knows that if he doesn't then his family will not have enough money to live as they do and the

Some topics in this essay:
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