Which theme is best reflected in this excerpt from Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis?

Answer 1

The theme of alienation is best reflected in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis." The protagonist, Gregor Samsa, wakes up transformed into a giant insect, leading to his isolation and rejection by his family. This transformation mirrors his feelings of being disconnected from society and his own identity.

Answer 2

To exemplify the ideals of existentialism, where Gregor is living an inauthentic life by living for others, instead of himself. The main point of Gregor becoming a dung beetle is to emphasize that with or without his transformation, Gregor is not true living.

Answer 3

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphisis is riddled with irony from start to finish. Outside of the story itself, it is perhaps Kafka's best example of a story with a sense of "completeness" and while upon first finishing the story after a three week marathon of writing he seemed content with the work he would later denounce the work, particularly the end as being "incomplete". Yet, symmetrically speaking, it is astonishingly complete and with its hero, Gregor Samsa, there is a complete metamorphisis of life to inevitable demise. The story begins with an ironic twist as the reader is thrust into a climax of a dreaded life made real by a horrible dream that is not at all a dream when poor little Gregor awakes to the harsh reality that he is no longer a young man with hopes and dreams but instead a bug just waiting to be squashed. Whatever dreams he had as a young man already squashed by his father demise as patriarch and breadwinner for the family leaving the constant bills and obligations to Gregor. His father is now weak and incapable of standing tall so it was Gregor who trudged each day to the train station to work at a job he couldn't stand to support his father, mother and little sister grette. Irony is a device, literary or otherwise, where the literal truth brings direct discordance with a perceived truth. Irony then, can be used verbally as in a nightmare not but a dream but real, can be used situationally as in a young man who finds himself the caretaker of his mother and father or cosmically as when a man wakes up to find that a cruel twist of fate has turned him into some sort of giant beetle. The situational irony runs rampant in The Metamorphisis as Gregors slow and steady demise as a beetle parallels his fathers resurgence as patriarch and rise to power while his little sister Grete transforms from a little girl into a blossoming young woman full of sexual power and shedding of innocence. While the intitial metamorphisis is treated with revulsion by his father who literally tries to thrust his son out of the door to get to work, by confusion by his mother riddled with doubt, it is Grette the young adolescent who assumes a motherly love for her older brother by feeding and caring for him while his parents refuse to accept the ridiculousness of this situation. But, as Grette grows older her fondness for her brother the beetle also turns to revulsion while her own beauty and charm signals human attraction. By the end, it is his father, cruel and spiteful who tosses fruit at his son the bug finally lodging a discarded remnant of fruit in the beetles flesh mortally wounding his son Gregor. Yet it is ultimately Grette's betrayal of Gregor and final rejection that convinces Gregor that all he can do as a loving son and brother is ultimately die and leave his family to the living. A family once dead from the failure of a father now alive with his new found success as Gregors usefulness has long since gone. The story ends with Gregors dutifull death leaving a refreshened father with his continually doubtful wife as both watch their young daughter become an animalistic woman of sexual desire. A story that began with Gregors innocence long since lost to the harsh reality of the responsibilities of life paralleled by Grettes youthful innocence that would shed its own skin as the story transformed and in the end there is no one that is innocent and no one to blame.

Answer 4

The Metamorphosis by Frank Kafka is a novella that begins with a traveling salesman named Gregor Semsa's who wakes up as an insect. It is never revealed in the story why he was transformed.

Answer 5

The story was written in the year of 1912

True Fact!