Franz Kafka’s struggling relationship with his father, Hermann, left him so emotionally scarred that Kafka coped with this mental agony by expressing this pain through his dreamy, fantasied works. Born as the oldest child and only son, he lived under his father’s dominating, oppressive, and ill-tempered shadow. Kafka’s father often expressed his disapproval of Kafka’s passion for writing, and pressured his son to take over the family business. Labeling Kafka as a failure, Herrman was known to verbally and physically abuse his son.
Kafka’s personal relationship with his father leaks into The Metamorphosis via Gregor and Mr. Samsa’s relationship. As soon as we meet Gregor Samsa’s father, we realize how short tempered and violent he is. When Gregor comes out of the room fully transformed into a beetle, his father first “clenches his fist with a pugnacious expression,” (217) then “seizes” a cane and began “stamping his feet, and brandishing stick and newspaper” (219). He starts “emitting hissing sounds like a savage”(219) and kicks Gregor in the back, without any feelings of sympathetic devastation. Using vicious words such as seize, stamp, hissing, and savage, Kafka is, in a way, describing Mr. Samsa as a terrifying animal. Although ironic (since Mr. Samsa is the human, and Gregor is the beetle), it accurately portrays cruel and dishonorable qualities of the character.
Another moment when Mr. Samsa is violent with Gregor is when he throws apples at his beetle son, and manages to hit Gregor in the back. After this encounter, Gregor’s physical and mental condition significantly decreases until he ultimately dies a sad death. Gregor’s health gradually decreases throughout the book but his condition gets overlooked by other members of his family. This may correlate to Kafka’s emotional fitness—a slow and secluded mental deterioration that was such a personal and lonely battle.
Throughout this whole life, Kafka struggled to have a healthy relationship with his tyrannical father. Using literature as a coping mechanism, Kafka often leaked his inner fears from his miserable childhood into his imaginary characters. He attempted to lessen the pain of his terrifying relationship with his father by writing himself in characters who lived in dream-like worlds or states.
