Metamorphosis

One of the most striking qualities of Kafka's writing is the unforgettable first lines of his prose. From his novels to his short stories, the economy of the first line is remarkable. And this, of course, includes perhaps his most famous piece of prose, "The Metamorphosis": "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect" (Kafka 1948, 67). With this line we are immediately thrown into the world of Kafka. The absurd or "Kafkaesque" aspect of Gregor Samsa's situation is made even more eerie by Samsa's reaction. He acts rather calmly and his thoughts are concerned with his normal daily routines. Gregor is worried more about his job and his family than he is about his condition after the metamorphosis. Eventually, Gregor's family will become increasingly repulsed by him and he will feel nothing so much as being a burden to them and the world. As one critic maintains, "The novella is one of the supreme embodiments of early 20th century anxieties over the powerlessness and alienation of the individual in an irrational universe" (Metamorphosis 2004, 1). The story can be seen as the slow, inevitable death of one who has become alienated from his fellow human beings.

Samsa is treated like the insect he appears to be on the outside. But the bug that he has been transformed into contains a human being. He is cut off, unable to communicate and kept in the back room o

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b. Thus Gregor is alienated from his ability to work in the world with other human beings. On the heels of Gregor's physical transformation is the transformation that his life must undergo. He is now locked into his room and it has become his cell. He is locked in a solitude that will last until death. He is unable to communicate: "The words he uttered were no longer understandable, apparently, although they seemed clear enough to him" (Kafka 1948, 79-80). He is also cut off from the outside world by his failing vision: "�day by day things that were even a little way off were growing dimmer to his sight; the hospital across the street, which he used to execrate for being all too often before his eyes, was now quite beyond his range of vision, and if he had not known that he lived in Charlotte Street�he might have believed that his window gave on a desert waste where gray sky and gray land blended indistinguishably into each other" (Kafka 1948, 97). Sentenced to solitude unto death and unable to provide for his family which had previously given his life meaning, Gregor finds himself more and more cut off from his family and this is represented best by his relationship with his sister, Grete. Before his metamorphosis, G

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