Kafka's Metamorphosis

Humans can lack compassion. Today, it can be observed how people make vane promises and compromise their own soul to avoid helping others through good deeds. Every day, it can be seen how individuals lie to each other just to acquire a specific purpose or beneficial aspect to a situation. Emotions have a limit; however, it is within human nature to feel the need to show that they are in fact humans and that they have the sense of emotions a “human” should have. At various times, people have shown kindness towards others just for appearances rather than for themselves or the feeling of fulfillment that one gets after being generous towards another human being. There are situations where people just do good things because they feel it is an obligation. …show more content…
This is because as an existentialist, Kafka believes that choices define a person, not external circumstances that are out of a person’s control. While Gregor could not control his transformation, he did have the free will to get out of his bed, climb the walls, and other things he did after his transformation. Existentialism focuses on the self and encourage people to live in a profound and meaning way. However, in the story we can see how Gregor have been living a meaningless life all this time and how after his transformation that changes. After his transformation, Gregor executes his free will. An example of this is when “… in order to distract himself, he adopted the habit of crawling across the walls and ceilings” (Kafka 132). With existentialism comes the self and the idea and the idea of worrying about being individual rather than follow others lead and that is what Gregor had been doing all his …show more content…
Tom Hartman wrote a literary criticism about The Metamorphosis where he mentioned that “Such failure of awareness fits the higher theme, which I would couch in terms of Sartrean bad faith: bad faith involves a more or less unconscious denial of one’s freedom and humanity -- being- for- itself -- in favor of one’s thinghood -- being – in – itself. Gregor has already become rather numb to his humanity long before the fateful morning” (33). As the previous sentence mentioned Gregor was feeling as an insect even before his transformation. Gregor was always trying to be an excellent worker, but at the smallest mistake he was about to lose his job without being taken into consideration the many years he had work hard. For his family he was insignificant, they just cared about the fact that he was of some use for them since after he became an insect he became a burden to them. In other words, Kafka turned him into an insect to show how insignificant he was for the people he cared about and the metamorphosis was just a way to show how Gregor had been living and feeling during a long time. To summarize the idea, we should say that Gregor could not have done anything different because of his love and responsibility with his family. As the story

Show More