Metamorphosis Response Essay, Research Paper

Metamorphosis Response

Gregor had alienated himself long before his metamorphosis into a

beetle. His obsession with his job had dehumanized him, made him

less 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.

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