Metamorphosis by Franz Kafla | Teen Ink

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafla

April 1, 2008
By Bapalapa2 ELITE, Brooklyn, New York
Bapalapa2 ELITE, Brooklyn, New York
1044 articles 0 photos 1 comment

In Metamorphosis, there is a man named Gregor Samsa who is a business man who is the sole income for his family. He goes out every day and makes his money so his family can live somewhat happily. This all goes wrong when one day he awakes as a large bug which is made out to be some sort of cockroach or similar creature. Gregor first starts out the story with his moans and groans of him just trying to get out of bed. He mumbles to himself “what's happened to me?”(2) He has a lot of trouble getting up; his method was to “rock back and forth” (5). As he finally waddled out of bed, he was met with the trouble to balance, without the practice of walking on his little legs; he was met with himself falling to the carpet in turn hitting his head causing a lot of pain. The first person to realize who he was, was his sister Grete, she was first afraid of him and shrieked in fear but then became more adapting to the situation. She was the one who fed him and took care of him. But some things that differed were the fact that he no longer liked normal human foods. Even though his sister would leave out foods that he loved, he didn't seem to care for them anymore. She left him milk with cereal in it but it no longer “tickled his fancy”. He was more interested in the trash that was left over in his house from the meal before. But later on in the story, Gregor gets in a fight with his father, where they were throwing fruit at each other. They exchange throwing apples when another apple “immediately following it, hit squarely and lodged in his back.”(22) “He felt as if nailed to the spot and spread himself out, all his senses in confusion.”(22) Soon after all of this happens, he stops eating and eventually starves to death. When his body starts to turn to a skeleton, the maid of the household sweeps his body away and the family is somewhat happy but also mourning his loss. And in the end it ends up bringing the family closer together.
In this story, it is about a business man who is responsible for his whole family. He is the sole income for the whole family and everyone is basically feeding off of him. When Gregor is awakened as a bug the whole situation of the family has changed. They can no longer rely on him because he is no longer able to work. So the family is going to have to untie so they may live. That is what this story is basically about, the family coming together. The early signs of this are when Gregor's sister starts helping feed Gregor. She gets out food for him but he didn't like it so she got other stuff out for him that he liked. Also she would leave the room so he could eat in privacy so no one would be starring at him. Also throughout the novel the family starts paying less attention to him because they have to start fending for themselves. Then towards the end of the book, when Gregor dies, the family is almost happy with everything that has happened because they all came closer together and they can now live for themselves instead of feeding off of him.


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on Mar. 25 2011 at 4:09 pm
callie15 BRONZE, North Plains, Oregon
3 articles 21 photos 424 comments

Favorite Quote:
"I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?"
-Chuang Tzu

"No man with a good car needs to be justified!"
-Wise Blood

good review. it has a lot of detail, but do you personally like the book? you didn't really say.... i like this book. it's a nice, quick read.