Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka Essay

As an art, creating works of literature allows authors, as well as readers, to promote and experience self-expression. Authors use their works to explain life-changing events that occur during their lifetime without directly stating them to the public. For example, Franz Kafka, author of universally renowned existentialist works, wrote many of his stories with autobiographical themes. One of his most well-known works, The Metamorphosis, contains numerous ideas that hint to an autobiographical theme throughout. Along with having a striking resemblance to some of Kafka’s diary entries, the story also depicts what exactly his life was like and how he viewed the world around him. In the novella The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka uses symbolism and
It is how Gregor came to feel by the end of the story because his family did not seem to accept his new way of living. Kafka also felt alienated because he had to suppress his creative needs to do his job working with insurance, his father’s abuse, and his mother’s lack of helping with the situation, doing nothing to stop the beatings or proving Kafka with any sort of comfort; Kafka took an office job that he did not want and still managed to write until he was physically unable to because of his tuberculosis. He was “...passionately committed to literature throughout his career, often at the expense of sleep and health” (Hutchinson & Minden 2). Both Gregor and Kafka seemed to work until the breaking point. Gregor is so physically exhausted that it was difficult every morning for him to crawl out of bed and begin his work day. Their families suppressed their creative needs; they did not understand that what they wanted them to do was not what Gregor and Kafka truly wanted for their lives. According to Simon Ryan in the article “Franz Kafka's Die Verwandlung: Transformation, Metaphor, And The Perils Of Assimilation,” “Gregor’s alienation is essentially an expression of the estrangement from the family, which Kafka himself endured because he desired to live for literature
Gregor is the only member of the family that is working, and by the end of the novella, the readers see that his father was actually capable of working the whole time, especially when he appears wearing “...a smart blue uniform with gold buttons, the sort worn by the employees at the banking institute” (Kafka 29). Before Gregor is completely unable to provide for his family because of his transformation, the father, mother, and sister all stay at home waiting for Gregor to return from working long and hard hours everyday. Franz Kafka seemingly detailed this story as a sort of “what if” reflection about the possibility that he had gone along with his father’s plan to run the family business. This is what Kafka pictured would have happened if he had not made the decision to go to college to study