Metamorphosis Response
Uploaded by Admin on Jan 22, 1999
Gregor had alienated himself long before his metamorphosis into a beetle. His obsession with his job had dehumanized him, made him less personal and more mechanical. While on business trips, he began to lock his doors at night in the hotels. He carried this action back to his homelife. His family did not know him anymore partially because they took him for granted for making their money for them and partially because that was simply how he wanted in to be. Gregor's metamorphosis into a beetle only allowed his family and himself to consciously alienate him from society and the world.
As someone said to meI can't remember who it was-it is really remarkable that when you wake up in the morning you nearly always find everything in exactly the same place as the night before. For when asleep and dreaming you are, apparently at least, in as essentially different state from that of wakefulness; and therefore, as that man truly said, it requires enormous, presence of mind or rather quickness of wit, when opening your eyes to seize hold as it were of everything in the room at exactly the same place where you had let it go on the previous evening. That was why, he said, the moment of waking up was the riskiest moment of the say. Once that was well over without deflecting you from your orbit, you could take heart of grace for the rest of your day.
Gregor woke up one morning to find himself turned from a human being to a beetle. People found that to be extremely hard to grasp. Many felt as though Gregor should have been more shocked at this change, or at least less understanding towards it. But really, why should he? The only part about being a beetle that seemed to truly negatively shock Gregor was that he could no longer attend to his job at the office. Gregor's family life did not change drastically. His loss of relation with his family was nothing very new, there was a lacking of personal connection with his parents for quite awhile before hand. His parents treated him as a form of hired help since he had taken the job to pay for his father's debts. Grete, Gregor's sister, seemed to be the only family member to change her perception of Gregor. She went from being the overemotional, little seventeen-year-old girl to a...