Who Is Gregor Samsa's Irony In The Metamorphosis

Why Gregor Samsa Had to Die
Irony as a literary element is present in just about every work of fiction, however, one is hard pressed to find a work of literature where the irony is as profound as it is in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis. The irony in The Metamorphosis runs rampant from the first sentence and doesn’t cease until the very end. Kafka crafts a sadistic tale about a man who although had an unconditionally loving heart, never learned to love himself. The most morose aspect of the story was that Gregor Samsa undoubtedly had to die. The most significant portrayals of irony that led to Gregor Samsa’s death in The Metamorphosis are shown in Gregor’s transformation, his father’s awakening and subsequent assumption of the patriarchic role in the family, Gregor’s own messiah complex, and his sister’s blossoming into womanhood.
The novella starts early morning when Gregor wakes up only to find
himself transformed into a cockroach. “When Gregor woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin” (Kafka 3). In that rebirth, his life was given a whole new meaning; death. Kafka knew what he was doing when he had Gregor awake as a roach – they are the only living creature on this earth that serve no purpose. Has anyone ever been near a roach and not attempted killing it? Cockroaches are born to die and so in waking up as one, Gregor’s fate had been sealed. Whether or not Gregor had truly physically transformed into a roach doesn’t matter, Gregor’s mind had accepted it. One of the more ironic instances in the novella occurred when Gregor realized he was no longer able to care for his family. Throughout Gregor’s adult life he was led to believe that his parents were too old to work and that his paycheck was the only source of income. For those reasons, Gregor’s transformation into a cockroach should have caused the Samsa family’s demise, right? Wrong. Instead, the exact opposite happened. Gregor’s inabilities to preform served as a fire-starter. His family, unable to rely on Gregor were forced out of their old, dependent habits which were coddled and enabled by Gregor for as long as he had been working for them. The most irony in the whole situation was that as Gregor further receded into his helpless state, his father was able to become powerful once again, as if he were eating off of the hope that Gregor was losing. His father revealed a small fortune and began working again. Through that, he became the patriarch of the family once more in that he was no longer dependent on his son to provide for the family. Gregor needed to die so that his father would snap out of his ways. In order for his father to regain that power Gregor had to become as weak as possible. Franz Kafka would likely label Gregor a martyr. Gregor’s entire life had been dedicated to his family. Every action that he made was done with the intention of receiving a positive reaction from his father, mother, and Grete. When Gregor lost the ability to please them, he did the only thing he could do. Gregor realized that if he was unable to provide, he was a bigger burden on his family than he had ever been before. Once he was locked away in his room, an apple rotting in his flesh, hungry, lonely, his family not even checking up on him to feed him, he said that he still loved them. Gregor accepted his suicide in hopes that it would bring his family peace, because even in his dying state, he still cared about his family more than himself (Kafka 51). Gregor sacrificed himself thinking that he had the power to end the suffering of his family by dying for them. He decided that if he could not provide for his family financially, his only option was to be a savior though death. Grete, Gregor’s sister, briefly took on the role as Gregor’s caretaker in the novella.
When Gregor is rendered helpless, it is Grete who begins cleaning after him, feeding him, and interacting with him when the rest of the family seems to want nothing to do with him. It didn’t take too long however for Grete to start resenting her brother for requiring so much of her attention. She once enjoyed aiding her brother but she found to view the task as a chore. As Gregor regressed further into his delusional mental state, he began having incestual feelings towards Grete. Gregor had been deprived of women nearly his entire life and in his deranged mind near his suicide he imagined letting those feeling out by kissing his sister on the neck (Kafka 47). He proclaimed his love for her yet she never came to him. As Grete grew older and matured she became repulsed by Gregor and in the end, his love for his sister and her obvious disgust for him caused him to commit suicide. Gregor died so that she would be able to move on from her sickening home life and blossom into
womanhood. Franz Kafka’s, The Metamorphosis depicts the last days of Gregor Samsa, a man with a heart full of love and no one to accept it. As hard as Gregor tried to make things right within his family, support them, and keep them happy, his wounded mind eventually got the better of him and pushed him into such a mental paralysis that he was unable to perform the only duties that mattered. When Gregor awoke as a cockroach he was as good as dead. Kafka took three chapters to guide us through The Metamorphosis, not which of Gregor’s into a cockroach, but of his family’s into human beings.

Work Cited

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. New York: Bantam Books, 2004. Print