Gregor Samsa Reflection

In chapter one, I really felt for Gregor Samsa because you can just tell how much he hates his job as a traveling salesmen. As he lies in bed, unable to get himself up, his only concern is that he will lose his job which he only continues so he can pay of his parents debt. If it wasn’t because that Gregor would have quit a long time ago. In fact, on page four of the book he even stated, “if I didn’t hold back for my parents’ sake, I would have quit long ago, I would have marched up to the boss and spoken my piece from the bottom of my heart…once I’ve gotten the money together to pay off my parent’s debt to him- which will probably date another five or six year- I’m going to do it without fail.” It’s really sad that he’s in this situation but since he’s the only one working in his family, he’s kind
of forced to just deal with it. He feels likes he’s responsible for paying these debts (even though he shouldn’t feel that way because the debts are his parents responsibility) which in some ways makes it even worse, because now he’s trapped in this job that he completely hates. It has me wondering, “what did Gregor do to deserve this? Is there a point to this metamorphosis?”
In chapter two, the family battles with how much of Gregor’s humanity remain and as they try to adapt to his metamorphosis, each one holds a different opinion of that.
For instance, Grete is convinced not much humanity remains because seeing as she’s the only one who interacts with Gregor she notices his new habits more and more. Such as his new taste in food and how he likes to crawl on the walls and ceiling in his room. Which is why she suggested taking all his furniture out of his room, so he can roam more freely. But the mother, whose convinced Gregor will return his former self, doesn’t like the idea. On page thirty one she said to Grete, “I think the best thing would be to try to keep the room exactly the way it was before, so that when Gregor comes back to us again, he’ll find everything unchanged and forget all the more easily what’s happened in the meantime.” I don’t know which side to choose because although it’s true that Gregor physically becomes more insect-like, crawling on the walls and ceiling, he still show signs of humanity, like how he hates that he can’t help his family financially anymore and how the thought his graying father working is
unpleasant. Chapter three convinced me more than ever that the only one who somewhat, kind of, a little bit, still cared about Gregor is his mother. Gregor becomes more isolated as the family lose interest in caring for him. They lose interest in his comfort as well when they start to treat his room as a storage space, at this point the only connection Gregor has with his family is that they live in the same apartment. You can just tell that the family can no longer tolerate his presence especially when he accidentally drives the roomers away. His sister, who is the most fed up with the situation said, “it has to go. That’s the only answer, Father. You just have to try to get rid of the idea that it’s Gregor. Believing it for so long, that is our real misfortune.” Which means that she doesn’t even think of him as Gregor anymore and she doesn’t think of him as her brother. So when Gregor passed away they were all excited about the news and that shifted the tone of the story. They went from being really sad, annoyed and angry to deliberated, happy, kind of like a sigh of relief. With Gregor dead, they can move on to better things and makes me upset because it’s like they forgot all that he did for them. As well, I’m upset at the fact that the ending still did not answer my question of, “what did Gregor do to deserve this?”