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Japhet Mondragon

Professor Beadle

English 115

05/9/2019

Fighting for Power

Franz Kafka’s The​ Metamorphosis​ is a significant piece of literature because its

characters are allegories to themes such as isolation, power struggle, and dehumanization. These

elements show us the deeper meanings that this book has to offer. Each character shows us how

we dehumanize, isolate, as well as take power from people. ​This is a very significant novella

because its takes us into the journey that we wish not see but we in fact are in. The very book

shows us a portion of humanity and how we are all these characters in certain points in our lives.

Gregor Samsa is placed in such a position where he allows life and himself to throw him under

the bus, and this can be seen as a form of dehumanization by both the other characters and

himself included.

Viewing the book from a realistic viewpoint Gregor’s transformation from human to

vermin may be because he allowed himself to adapt into such a position. He is in a state of

isolation that his family placed him in but not only that he allows himself to be placed into such a

position. He allowed himself to be a pawn of others power. In fact critics Hamid Farahmandian

and Pang Haonong consider that “Gregor fails to take himself out of absurdity and nothingness

because [he] lets himself to be alienated from the family and the world around him. This

alienation makes him not to think for any hope”(Farahmandian and Haonong). This just proves

that Gregor's transformation is an allegory to isolation, dehumanization, as well as an indirect

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reference to power struggle. Power is also being taken from Gregor, however there is the sense

that he never truly clung or even wanted this power, or in other words responsibility of being the

breadwinner of the family.

Gregor’s sister Grete and his father take this power that Gregor previously had and begin

to transform from dependant roles into the breadwinners of the family. Gaining this power they

realize the position Gregor is in now and how he can not provide any longer and so they forget

about Gregor and contemplate his existence. Farahmandian and Haonong give us an example

“Take the father and the sister… There is no castigation of guilt put upon them by the narrator

for neglecting and even turning against Gregor. They, as far as the text supplies, act in a way to

better their own lots in life. They break away from dependence and become free-moving,

self-sufficient entities.”(Farahmandian and Haonong). Gregor is no longer something of

importance, and now they dehumanize Gregor although he is literally a bug, but in a

metaphorically realistic sense they cast him out like the sick and homeless. Their minds are now

set on to simply to better their own lots in life. ​You can see in the scene where Grete moves

Gregor’s furniture their disgust for Gregor. “She did not dare to ask her father to help, and the

servant girl would certainly not have assisted her… Come on; he is not visible,’ said his sister,

and evidently led his mother by the hand”(Kafka 42). Grete dares not to ask her father and that

shows us where the father stands in the picture now, and even the mother starts to see how

Gregor is worthless now. He​ has been thrown out and his demise is imminent. He is a cockroach

not only because of his literal transformation but because of how a cockroach is they do nothing

but grovel for food. He was never in command from the beginning he allowed himself to be

used. He did nothing to better his own lot he did everything his family wanted and now his father
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may join him in the near future. We dehumanize those who work for us once they are deemed

useless and we do nothing to combat this so in conclusion we are just roaches.

Once he became a bug he was slowly cast out and dehumanized. This can be presented as

a real life situation where a powerful man becomes sick and unable to work so now he must

change roles with another group and become dependent. ​ The novella shows this when Gregor’s

father comes back and sees how he made his mother react from the sight of him. “The father had

arrived. ‘What’s happened,’ were his first words. Grete’s appearance had told him everything.

Grete replied with a dull voice; evidently she was pressing her face into her father’s chest:

‘Mother fainted, but she’s getting better now. Gregor has broken loose.’ ‘Yes, I have expected

that,’ said his father, ‘I always told you that, but you women don’t want to listen”(Kafka 48-49).

Gregor is now being seen as a burden. ​This is how The Metamorphosis starts and as we continue

Gregor and a sick man are both being taken care of but slowly their caregivers start to realize the

burden that this person is placing on them and slowly they resent them.

Kafka exaggerates ​the apathy found in humans toward the disabled or useless​ and

presents Gregor as a literal bug and it can be seen as though we perceive the useless as bugs or

not human at all. Such as how nazis perceived the jews as stated by Smith and Livingstone

“When the Nazis describe Jews as Untermenschen, or subhumans, they didn't mean it

metaphorically, says Smith. "They didn't mean they were like subhumans. They meant they were

literally subhuman”(Smith and Livingstone). Gregor in their eyes is literally a bug, allowing

Grete, his father, and his mother to dehumanize him and throw him as some broken tool even

though he was once the provider.​ Just as his father proves in the final scene. “But his father was

not in the mood to observe such niceties. ‘Ah,’ he yelled as soon as he entered, with a tone as if
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he were all at once angry and pleased”(Kafka 49). Gregor’s father is now fed up with Gregor’s

uselessness and wished to finish it all. This also because of the fact that Gregor isolates himself

completely.​ We can even see how before Gregor’s transformation began he was already in a state

of isolation, it just wasn’t to the extremes that his new found body brought to him. Farahmandian

and Haonong provide us with insight on how “Gregor's change makes him literally and

emotionally separate from his family members--indeed, from humanity in general--and he even

refers to it as his "imprisonment." After his transformation he stays almost exclusively in his

room with his door closed and has almost no contact with other people. At most, Grete spends a

few minutes in the room with him, and during this time Gregor always hides under the couch and

has no interaction with her. Essentially he has become totally isolated from everyone around

him, including those people he cares for like Grete and his mother”(Farahmandian and

Haonong). He lost the power that was being granted to him, now he feels empty due to no one

caring anymore and because there is no use for him anymore. Resentment may also be coming

from both ways, from Gregor’s self and family. Once we lose our power as people,

breadwinners, or even political/societal power we believe ourselves and by others to be useless

and empty. Kafka wants to show us through his novella that we are all continuous pawns in life

and we are brainwashed into this sort of thinking that you need to be a pawn to survive.

People continually struggle for power and we sacrifice our lives to attain power only to

become cockroaches in the end. We are trapped in this power cycle that inevitably leads us into

isolation, dehumanization, and war against one another. Power is constantly exchanged from one

person or group to another leaving trails of ruin as its tracks. Gregor is a victim of this power

struggle due to his transformation and his family banishing him from being human. Straus states
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that “As a gigantic insect, Gregor exchanges responsibility for dependency while Grete

exchanges dependency for burdensome efficiency and independence that Gregor previously

displayed”(Straus 655). Gregor is now useless and slowly his sister is eating away at the power

that he does not having anymore. ​Proof can be found in this quote straight from the novella; “Of

course, it was not only childish defiance and her recent very unexpected and hard won

self-confidence which led her to this demand”(Kafka 42). Grete was eating away at all the power

that was left over from Gregor and this allowed her to become a new person just as many people

do after attaining power. However, ​Grete is now cumbersome with a bug and she does not see

Gregor as a human because of how burdensome he has become. We can apply this to many

different things like how government officials throw its citizens away as if they are a burden

even though the citizens maintain the country. If Gregor was not a cockroach metaphorically and

had true power he never would have lost it even if his responsibilities as a breadwinner were

gone. He turned into a cockroach once he adapted into his new so-called powerless role and did

nothing about it. Kafka is providing us with reality of how we are true vermin once we allow

ourselves to be subjects of these powerless roles.

There a many different views on what Kafka may want to tell the readers as to what the

transformations in these characters may signify, such as they may not pertain to isolation,

dehumanization, or power struggle. It may be that Kafka is demonstrating how we must use

others to gain way or to get ahead. That Gregory should be dehumanized because he is truly

useless and that we cannot linger with useless people or else they will consume us turning us into

one of them. Maybe Kafka is trying to give us an answer to our problems by dehumanizing the

useless, isolating the weak, and devouring the hopeless.There are many views as to what Kafka
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wants to tell us. However, while this view certainly is applicable to the story it does not relate as

to why Kafka is so focused on the two most important characters, Gregor and Grete. Gregor

turns into a bug and this symbolises uselessness not in the sense that we must avoid this bug that

is Gregor but that we should avoid in entirety the process of becoming a bug. We should avoid

letting ourselves be controlled by outside sources we must take control of our own lives and that

is true power. Kafka shows us Gregor's isolation so that we see why he became a bug in the first

place. How he was constantly controlled and once he was not able to meet the demands of his

owners he became a roach to society. Grete has a play in this because Kafka wants to show the

reader that we dehumanize people because we want power constantly even if we will in the near

future become what we ate in the beginning.

To Conclude Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is a novella with no equal that

introduces characters in various transformed states. The Metamorphosis can be used to describe

how people in the world dehumanize, isolate, and struggle for power only to be met with a never

ending cycle that always leads us into becoming cockroaches because we allow ourselves to be

judged, harassed, or hated instead of taking the true power that we have for ourselves and using

it to better ourselves. Instead of devouring each other we must help one another only in that way

we can avoid the mistakes that the characters in the novella made. Kafka brings us a story that

ultimately results in death but I consider that we should learn from Gregor and avoid allowing

ourselves to become outcasts just because we are not entirely the same as we once were or just

because we have been labeled as something. We are all part of the same cycle so why devour

each one another when it is better to aid one another.

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Works Cited

Farahmandian Hamid, and Haonong Pang. “Existential Failure in Franz Kafka's The

Metamorphosis.” ​Forum for World Literature Studies,​ vol. 10, no. 2, 2018, pp. 334–341.

Kafka, Franz. Metamorphosis. Arcturus Publishing LTD, 2018.

Smith, Livingstone David. “'Less Than Human': The Psychology Of Cruelty.” NPR, NPR, 29

Mar. 2011, www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-

less-than-human. Heard on Talk of the Nation

Straus, Nina Pelikan. “Transforming Franz Kafka's ‘Metamorphosis.’” Signs, vol. 14, no. 3,

1989, pp. 651–667.