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Mitchell Fraye

Professor Beadle

English 115

October 28, 2018

The Physical Body and the Human Experience

Change is inevitable. It is tied hand in hand to the human experience. As our bodies age, we

adapt and gain new experiences and environments. Our environments are what help shape us as

human beings, and what we see, consume, and interact with are all important to our character

and how it develops. Physical appearance and body types take an important role in that. Just as a

hormonal teenager is different than an elderly man, our physical bodies can have a lasting toll on

our personality and character. As each organism has a fundamental set of needs for its survival,

ranging from physical needs like food or temperature, to emotional ones like a sense of

belonging and success. The physical body and its interaction with others and your lifestyle has a

huge impact on those needs and our sense of morality, motivation, and character. In The

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, we see a young man named Gregor undergo a large physical

change. He wakes up one morning turned into a large and verminous insect. This creates many

changes on his lifestyle and his interactions with his family. As Gregor transforms, the tension

between his human emotions/desires and the limitations of his new body allowed him to lose

more of his human personality, and use more primal instincts and zoological behavior. This

“metamorphosis”also allowed his family to react and change in many ways as a response to his

new condition and his new limitations. These mainly develop through his physical restriction,

lack of communication, and isolation/alienation of the things that made him human. Overall,
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with his new inhibitions, physicality and our interaction with our environment has a lasting effect

on character, change, and our lifestyle for not just ourselves, but those around us.

Gregor, newly transformed into a large insect, started off affected by the everyday norms

involved with his human life. Waking up with this transformation, his first worry was his

tardiness involved with his work and occupation. Unable to move from his back and respond to

his manager, he ended up being unable to keep up with his expectation of going to work that

morning. This ended up with his manager showing up to his house, and his lack of response or

reaction to him and his horrifying new appearance scared the manager and ended his job as a

salesman. Immediately, we see his physicality and his inability to move restrict him from the

original lifestyle given to him by his human body. Before the transformation, his job took up up

most of his time and identity as a person. From the first few hours as an insect, losing his job

changed his life drastically. As the story progresses, we see his new anatomy change his patterns

of behavior. His new abilities, like crawling on the walls and ceilings, are used much more as he

is finding some conveniences and adapting to his new form. This also pertains to human

mannerisms, like sleeping in a bed and eating with utensils. This even comes across in his

reaction to his room and his human connections. Kafka describes in part two his transformation

of his physical desires.“ Did he really want the warm room, so cozily appointed with heirlooms,

transformed into a lair, where he might, of course, be able to creep, unimpeded, in any direction,

though forgetting his human past swiftly and totally?” These all relates to his deviation from

many aspects of human lifestyle as an insect, and his abandonment of comforts and ideals that

once was a large part of his daily existence. His physical limitations affected his family as well.

His new insect body is very hideous and scary compared to his original regular human body, and

the unfamiliarity of his transformation and his new body created a sense of horror, confusion,
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distrust, and distance from his family. His father reacted with hostility toward him, trying to keep

him from leaving, and his mother looked at him with fear and anguish. Throughout the story, you

see Gregor’s family start to distrust and grow apart from him with his new body. Seen as an

animal, the family starts to distrust his new body and how much of Gregor is truly inside of it.

This was one of the many factors that lead to his death at the end of the story. The physical

biology of his new body was one of the many limitations involved with Gregor and his family’s

change throughout the story.

One of the most important traits and tools that we have available to us as human beings is our

ability to communicate. We use it to express different ideas, and to negotiate and reach a higher

level of complexity in human culture. When Gregor transforms into a vermin, he loses his ability

to talk as his vocal cords does not support the syllables of modern language. This physical

problem has overlying effects and creates a large strain on his human characteristics. If he could

still talk to his family, or his manager, he could explain his situation and help negotiate his new

wants and needs to them. The sense of skepticism of Gregor's new form that the family develops

throughout the story could be helped with a better communication network between Gregor and

his family. He would be seen as less animalistic and more human to his family, and could help

regulate and control the reactions and repercussions involved with his transformation to his

family. His lack of verbal communication due to his physical change allowed Gregor’s change

from his human characteristics to a more primal animalism.

Gregor’s changing behavior, mixed with his lack of communication created a separation

between him and his family. This growing isolation became an important factor for the change of

Gregor and his personality. L. J. N. Brent, a professor at the school of Exeter in the UK, explains

the connection between isolation and natural causes. He states that “social isolation results from
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a combination of intrinsic and environmental factors.” (Brent, 2) Both the natural causes from his

new biology and the environment created from his family's reaction to his change allowed his

isolation to drive deeper into alienation. Another faction involved in his alienation is the

responsibility shift involved within the family as a result of his transformation. Throughout the

story, Grete, his sister, became his primary caretaker and his connection to his family and his

human side. As his absence at work created financial stresses within his home, she was forced to

work and take over the role as provider for the family. This shift further separated Grete from her

transformed brother, and she started to resent him and view him as a burden. These many factors

allowed the isolation of him from his family to dehumanize him in the eyes of the family. The

pure difference in physicality between Gregor and his family and the isolation created as a result

further motivated the parties to evolve and change in many ways.

One viewpoint is that Gregor never fully changed due to any physical transformation,

because his overlying motivations were consistent from the beginning to the end of the story.

Before his transformation. Gregor was very dissatisfied with his life; his work and the struggles

of the harsh industrial society took up most of his personal life. “Oh, God”, he thought, “what a

strenuous career it is that I’ve chosen! Travelling day in and day out. It can all go to Hell!”

(Samsa 2). Although Gregor might of lost his job due to his new body, his overlying opinion of

not liking his job stayed consistent throughout his story. “This and subsequent passages make it

clear that while Gregor loathes his job, he feels a deep sense of obligation and commitment to it

on account of his responsibilities to his family.” (Rhodes 241) Although many changes occur in

the story, his headspace and his overlying opinions do not change. Gregor has always felt some

sort of alienation and separation from his family. His active schedule from his work allowed

himself to be almost separate, and his parents and him never really had a close connection.
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Through his metamorphosis, those weak links to his family just got stressed and eventually

showed the true nature of their relationship. Even towards the end of the story, Gregor holds onto

specific feelings and parts of his humanity ven throughout the long transformation. For example,

his relationship with his sister grete is the strongest connection he has to his family. All of his

actions leading to his death were involved with maintaining a relationship with her, and these

ending feelings towards grete were consistent with his strong feelings he's had from the

beginning of the story. Although he physically changed, the actions of the characters throughout

the story could be seen as an amplification of feelings that they already contained. The first

person narrative of the story allows us to understand gregor with his thoughts and feelings

throughout the story. If his physical body changed back the next day, you could still see glimpses

of his old personality. Overall, although his outward actions change, his headspace,

consciousness, and feelings generally stay the consistent throughout the story.

According to Thane S. Pittman of Colby College, our basic wants and needs as organisms

have an everlasting effect on psychological behavior and motivations. Gregor’s physical

transformation changed his needs and wants drastically, from things like his eating habits to his

fundamental environment for survival. Although his conscious thought seemed relatively similar,

his actions and behavior seemed to change drastically throughout the story. Actions have a

lasting effect, and are more important towards society and relationships than intentions and

thoughts. Even if Gregor had good feelings towards his Grete, his inability to express himself

properly allowed for many changes to occur the family. Regardless of how Gregor felt

throughout the story, his physical change ended up creating many differences and changes that

have larger effects than the consistency of his consciousness.

The importance of understanding the relationship between your physical body and your

character is very trivial and important. As we can see within The Metamorphosis, changes to

your physical self can create drastic changes to your personality and your relationships to others.

Although Gregor's situation is one of fantasy, his themes and understanding are one based even

in his own life. In Kafka own life, he felt that same alienation and disconnection to his family

that Gregor feels throughout the entire story. In a letter to his father, Kafka said “I was, after all,

weighed down by your mere physical presence.” His Behavior, which is ultimately impacted by

our physical nature, is an important part of your life and experience living on our planet. Just as a

man could lose his job or injure himself, the ramifications involved could potentially affect the

entire family and living situation, just as gregor's inability to work did. Overall, our physical

relationship with our own bodies and our physical nature can both affect our own actions, as well

as how we affect other people.

Work Cited

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. New York :Chelsea House Publishers, 1988. Print

Kafka, Franz, et al. Letter to the Father = Brief an Den Vater. Schocken Books, 2015.
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Rhodes, C. & Westwood, R. J Bus Ethics (2016) 133: 235. https://doi-

O'Connor, Ciaran. “A Consideration of Kafka's Metamorphosis as a Metaphor for Existential

Hung, Ruyu. “Caring About Strangers: A Lingisian Reading of Kafka’s Metamorphosis.”

Brent, L. J. N., et al. “Persistent Social Isolation Reflects Identity and Social Context but Not
Maternal Effects or Early Environment.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 19 Dec. 2017,
www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-18104-4#rightslink.

Pittman, T. S., & Zeigler, K. R. (2007). Basic human needs. Social Psychology:
Handbook of Basic Principles,2, 473–489. Ployhart, R. E., & Vandenber