Metamorphosis-Imprisonment Essay, Research Paper

Imprisonment comes in many forms and is frequently experienced by many people. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a story with a theme about imprisonment, it symbolically shows many imagery and objects that represent imprisonment and implies that physical, financial, and obligation imprisonments all exist in life. Using the characters of the Samsa family, Kafka creates situations that resemble imprisonment. These imprisonments are what confine people and their freedom. They create boundaries, borders, and walls that keep a person from outside intervention.

The Metamorphosis begins out with Gregor in the process of turning into an insect. Insects are despised; they are looked upon as God’s disgusting creatures. The fact that Gregor is turning into one is like him becoming unwanted. This foreshadows the story by portraying an outcast disapproved by the family. As an insect, Gregor brings horror to his family, since they do not recognize him as a member of the family anymore. He is blocked off from the human world because he’s different. Lying in bed, Gregor looks out the window at the overcast sky and “hears rain drops beating on the window gutter”. The rain symbolizes obstacles that limit Gregor’s freedom. His is stuck in the apartment like a caged animal, and is late for work. He tries to get up, and is unsuccessful a number of times. His human senses are still with him but he doesn’t realize that he is trapped inside a vermin’s body. He finally gets up and soon realizes that his door is locked. Gregor has no ability in him to open it. He tries to use his mouth, but it’s very difficult to open the locks with no teeth. His room is like a prison, Gregor cannot go anywhere. He is stuck inside an insect body, which is held confined by the locked door and is covered up by the rainy weather. The locked door and the gloomy gray atmosphere help symbolize and make notice that Gregor is physically imprisoned.

Furthermore, the sofa in Gregor’s room symbolizes restrictions and confinements. The sofa and the sheets that took Gregor four hours to assemble help barricade him from his mother and sister. They are there so his sister and mother will not be appalled at Gregor’s conditions. They are there to hide the insect side of Gregor from the human world. This is why the setting of the story never leaves the Samsa’s apartment. As for the other furniture, they represent the human side of Gregor. While he’s an insect form the outside, Gregor is still human on the inside. He wants the furniture to be for they define him as human. He wants the old chest where he’d kept all his tools not to be moved. He wants his writing desk, where he did all his homework, to stay there, as a memory of the human childhood that still exists in him. Though the furniture prevents Gregor’s insect body from moving freely, he still wants them there to represent the humanness inside him, Mentally Gregor is human, and physically he is just an insect. Thus, the furniture acts as barriers in both senses: barriers to prevent insect part of Gregor from spreading. As a twist acts as the barriers to hold in the humanness used by Kafka, when the furniture of Gregor, it can be said that it is protecting Gregor from the insects that his family members are slowly turning into. This twist shows that imprisonment is not always bad. It can be applied to protect good things.

In addition to the weather and the furniture, the food that Grete brings to Gregor exemplifies Gregor s imprisonment. As Gregor lives in his constrained room, his sister Grete would often bring him food. Even though it’s Grete good intention and Gregor likes the food, the spoiled food resembles something that is not wanted by the human society. Half-decayed vegetables and rotten cheese that Grete gives Gregor is undesired thing that people throw away. They’re meals people serve to outcasts and prisoners, and Gregor is a prisoner who’s dying. Hurt by the pain of the apple that’s stuck under one of his wings, Gregor breaks down slowly in his room. The apple is something, which portrays the pain that Gregor is suffering. In his own room, Gregor lives in loneliness. He is enslaved, and the only way for him to be free is to die in “vacant and peaceful meditation” As a Round character in the story, Gregor’s character develops from being enslaved into being freed. At first sight of Gregor’s condition, everyone treats him like a stranger and avoids him. Grete treats Gregor like he’s a disease. She carries the glass of milk, which Gregor has drank, “not will infect with her bare hands… but with a cloth” Many times, the sight of Gregor frightens Grete and she slams the door on him. The numerous door slams, symbolize that ser Gregor apart from the other family members. It brings forth the isolation that Gregor has with the human world. Trapped by the insect shell, Gregor’s voice cannot break free. The loss of his voice and vision also symbolize Gregor’s imprisonment. Inside the insect shell, Gregor lives alone where no one can hear him. His vision slowly deteriorates in the prison that he sits. From his room, even “the hospital across the street, which he used to execrate for being all too often before his eyes, was now quite beyond his rage of vision”. Gregor no longer can look out the window and see fine details like he used to see.

Imprisonment no longer exists. The world is full of misfits that people endure each and everyday. Kafka shows many ways for one to be isolated from the world. Time, money, and duties all can be viewed as a form of imprisonment or enslavement. It is not until a tragic death that one can fully escape this horrible captivity.

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