The overall feeling I got from Kafka’s Metamorphosis was that of impatient indifference. Once Gregor outlived his usefulness to the family he was ostracized and seen as a burden as he could no longer support his family. However, when his fathers’ business failed and he chose to stay at home instead of looking for work the family accepted this without complaint. Sure, the shock, exhaustion and brokenness of losing something you put so much effort into should be taken into consideration but for how long? The next 5 or 6 years? However long it took for the massive debt to be paid off and some more? I felt it was unfair to Gregor that after working so hard to provide for his family and giving up so much of his own life for them that his family would be so unsympathetic of his condition-regardless of whether or not he was a bug. Perhaps Gregor’s transformation had more to do with the family’s coldness towards him rather than his uselessness but the lack of anything resembling empathy doesn’t sit well with me. His family has no qualms in leaving the home that Gregor bought them behind and starting anew. They didn’t look back and reminisce about him and all that he had done for them, instead they look forward expectantly towards the future. And if you bring up Grete; just a reminder that the extent of her pity towards him turns to resentment to the point that it’d be better for the entire family to just get rid of him.

Ever since Gregor’s fathers’ business failed he has been doing absolutely nothing as Gregor goes to work at a job he hates so that he can pay off his debt. The father is so consumed by his failure that  rather than pick himself up and help to clean up the mess he has created, he chooses instead to wallow in self-pity. This song seems quite fitting in relation to the father with the exception of these lines which describe Gregor’s predicament;
I pay money for an object
sight unseen,
how is it that it speaks for me,
borrowed never earned,
in debt from birth

Whenever I envision the state of Gregor’s room towards the end I always picture some variation of a room in this state:

It always make me a bit upset to think that Gregor thinks the filthy state of his room will go noticed by his sister whose increasing indifference leads her to neglect him more and more.

His isolation always reminds me of a rusted lock and bolt. Obviously his room isn’t equipped with such mechanisms, just a simple key lock, but the fact that he can’t really leave without them leaving the door open for him lead me to think of such images. The rust comes from his family’s hesitance to let him out of his room.