Metamorphosis Reading Questions

1.     The defining characteristic to Gregor’s life prior to his metamorphosis is his job. He has no friends, and his family mooches off his money he gets from his job. The sole purpose of his life is to make money while doing his boring job he hates while being an outsider. After the metamorphosis, his defining characteristic is the annoyance and inconvenience he is to his family. Gregor loses his identity way before he changes. I would argue that right before he dies he actually regains an identity for loving his family.

2.     Yes, Gregor’s transformation into an insect is merely an extension of his life before. Before his transformation, he was an outsider. He did not socialize with any one and had no social skills. When he transformed into an insect, he physically became what he was before he transformed. Now he couldn’t socialize and talk to anyone.

3.     In Metamorphosis, the climax is in the first sentence when Gregor wakes up as an insect. The significance of this structure is to make us accustomed to the weirdness of the story. By starting off with Gregor turning into a bug, the other events in the story do not seem to be as odd and unnatural.

6. The ending of the story when the parents and daughter are going to the country is so odd because they suddenly forget about Gregor and focus right away on how the daughter should get married soon. It is strange how quickly they move on from the whole incident of living with a huge bug that was once Gregor. They are free from Gregor’s burden, which is why the text is written so lyrically compared to the rest of the text.

9. I think that Gregor transforms into a bug because it makes his realize the importance of his life. In the end of his life, right before he dies, he realizes that he does love his family and that his job was important to helping them. He understands that the importance of his life was to provide for his loved ones even though he did not realize that he loved them before.

10.  In my opinion, I agree with the statement that Gregor’s alienation is an extension of the rage Kafka felt towards his own father. Kafka, like Gregor, felt alienated from his family and especially his father whom he disliked very much. Kafka was very isolated because he was an intellectual and a Jew, so it was hard for him to find friends. Like Gregor, Kafka was alienated from much of society. In the novel, the narrator explains that “admittedly no one pay[s] attention to him” (46). At this point in the novel, Gregor is climbing over to his sister while she is playing the violin, and no one in the room notices him. This represents how Kafka feels around his one family. He especially feels this from his overbearing father who forced him to get a degree in law and to have a boring job at a government workers’ financial office. His overbearing father is much like Gregor’s overbearing father who only focuses on the debt Gregor is fixing for them. Gregor is stuck in the job because of the debt much like Kafka is stuck in his boring job because of his father’s pressure.