The metamorphosis by Kafka is not your average story. A man turns into a roach for no reason. But what really surprised me was how nonchalant Gregor was about it. He sees his squirming legs and was all “Oh I’m late for work” when he should be:
When he lived under the couch as an insect, I felt really bad for him. To me his transformation into an insect was a way of conveying how minuscule his importance is in life and his simple worker mentality. Despite the horrific circumstance he is in, he thought only of work, not his own well-being. This made me think of him being a cog in the machine.
He seemed to have no real significance because his existence was taken for granted by his family and employer.
When looking at Gregor’s life as an insect, this image came to mind
This is a patient living on life support. When Gregor became an insect, he was biologically alive. But because he could no longer express himself and was shunned by his family, Gregor was dead to them. He had no personality or uniqueness to his family He had become a burden, a memory of the past, living like a vegetable.
Gregor’s transformation seemed to complete a metaphor that Kafka intended to use to compare an unremarkable person’s life to an insect.
