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Japhet Mondragon

Professor Beadle

English 115

04/1/2019

Fighting for Power

Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is a significant piece of literature because its

characters are allegories to themes such as isolation, power struggle, and dehumanization. These

elements show us the deeper meanings that this book has to offer. Each character shows us how

we dehumanize, isolate, as well as take power from people. Gregor Samsa is placed in such a

position where he allows life and himself to throw him under the bus, and this can be seen as a

form of dehumanization by both the other characters and himself included. He is also in a state of

isolation that his family places him in but not only that he allows himself to be placed into such a

position. Viewing the book from a realistic viewpoint his transformation from human to vermin

may be because he allowed himself to adapt into such a position. He allowed himself to be a

pawn of others power. In fact critics Hamid Farahmandian and Pang Haonong consider that

“Gregor fails to take himself out of absurdity and nothingness because [he] lets himself to be

alienated from the family and the world around him. This alienation makes him not to think for

any hope”(Farahmandian and Haonong). This just proves that Gregor's transformation is an

allegory to isolation, dehumanization, as well as an indirect reference to power struggle. Power is

also being taken from Gregor, however there is the sense that he never truly clung or even

wanted this power, or in other words responsibility of being the breadwinner of the family.
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Gregor’s sister Grete and his father take this power that Gregor previously had and begin

to transform from dependant roles into the breadwinners of the family. Gaining this power they

realize the position Gregor is in now and how he can not provide any longer and so they forget

about Gregor and contemplate his existence. Farahmandian and Haonong give us an example

“Take the father and the sister… There is no castigation of guilt put upon them by the narrator

for neglecting and even turning against Gregor. They, as far as the text supplies, act in a way to

better their own lots in life. They break away from dependence and become free-moving,

self-sufficient entities.”(Farahmandian and Haonong). Gregor is no longer something of

importance, and now they dehumanize Gregor although he is literally a bug, but in a

metaphorically realistic sense they cast him out like the sick and homeless. Their minds are now

set on to simply to better their own lots in life. Gregor has been thrown out and his demise is

imminent. He is a cockroach not only because of his literal transformation but because of how a

cockroach is they do nothing but grovel for food. He was never in command from the beginning

he allowed himself to be used. He did nothing to better his own lot he did everything his family

wanted and now his father may join him in the near future. We dehumanize those who work for

us once they are deemed useless and we do nothing to combat this so in conclusion we are just

roaches.

Once he became a bug he was slowly cast out and dehumanized. This can be presented as

a real life situation where a powerful man becomes sick and unable to work so now he must

change roles with another group and become dependent. This is how The Metamorphosis starts

and as we continue Gregor and a sick man are both being taken care of but slowly their

caregivers start to realize the burden that this person is placing on them and slowly they resent
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them. Kafka exaggerates this idea and presents Gregor as a literal bug and it can be seen as

though we perceive the useless as bugs or not human at all. Such as how nazis perceived the jews

as stated by Smith and Livingstone “When the Nazis describe Jews as Untermenschen, or

subhumans, they didn't mean it metaphorically, says Smith. "They didn't mean they were like

subhumans. They meant they were literally subhuman”(Smith and Livingstone). Gregor in their

eyes is literally a bug, allowing Grete, his father, and his mother to dehumanize him and throw

him as some broken tool even though he was once the provider. We can see even how before

Gregor’s transformation began he was already in a state of isolation, it just wasn’t to the

extremes that his new found body brought to him. Farahmandian and Haonong provide us with

insight on how “Gregor's change makes him literally and emotionally separate from his family

members--indeed, from humanity in general--and he even refers to it as his "imprisonment."

After his transformation he stays almost exclusively in his room with his door closed and has

almost no contact with other people. At most, Grete spends a few minutes in the room with him,

and during this time Gregor always hides under the couch and has no interaction with her.

Essentially he has become totally isolated from everyone around him, including those people he

cares for like Grete and his mother”(Farahmandian and Haonong). He lost the power that was

being granted to him, now he feels empty due to no one caring anymore and because there is no

use for him anymore. Resentment may also be coming from both ways, from Gregor’s self and

family. Once we lose our power as people, breadwinners, or even political/societal power we

believe ourselves and by others to be useless and empty. Kafka wants to show us through his

novella that we are all continuous pawns in life and we are brainwashed into this sort of thinking

that you need to be a pawn to survive.

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People continually struggle for power and we sacrifice our lives to attain power only to

become cockroaches in the end. We are trapped in this power cycle that inevitably leads us into

isolation, dehumanization, and war against one another. Power is constantly exchanged from one

person or group to another leaving trails of ruin as its tracks. Gregor is a victim of this power

struggle due to his transformation and his family banishing him from being human. Straus states

that “As a gigantic insect, Gregor exchanges responsibility for dependency while Grete

exchanges dependency for burdensome efficiency and independence that Gregor previously

displayed”(Straus 655). Gregor is now useless and slowly his sister is eating away at the power

that he does not having anymore. Grete is now cumbersome with a bug and she does not see

Gregor as a human because of how burdensome he has become. We can apply this to many

different things like how government officials throw its citizens away as if they are a burden

even though the citizens maintain the country. If Gregor was not a cockroach metaphorically and

had true power he never would have lost it even if his responsibilities as a breadwinner were

gone. He turned into a cockroach once he adapted into his new so-called powerless role and did

nothing about it. Kafka is providing us with reality of how we are true vermin once we allow

ourselves to be subjects of these powerless roles.

There a many different views on what Kafka may want to tell the readers as to what the

transformations in these characters may signify, such as they may not pertain to isolation,

dehumanization, or power struggle. It may be that Kafka is demonstrating how we must use

others to gain way or to get ahead. That Gregory should be dehumanized because he is truly

useless and that we cannot linger with useless people or else they will consume us turning us into

one of them. Maybe Kafka is trying to give us an answer to our problems by dehumanizing the
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useless, isolating the weak, and devouring the hopeless.There are many views as to what Kafka

wants to tell us. However, while this view certainly is applicable to the story it does not relate as

to why Kafka is so focused on the two most important characters, Gregor and Grete. Gregor

turns into a bug and this symbolises uselessness not in the sense that we must avoid this bug that

is Gregor but that we should avoid in entirety the process of becoming a bug. We should avoid

letting ourselves be controlled by outside sources we must take control of our own lives and that

is true power. Kafka shows us Gregor's isolation so that we see why he became a bug in the first

place. How he was constantly controlled and once he was not able to meet the demands of his

owners he became a roach to society. Grete has a play in this because Kafka wants to show the

reader that we dehumanize people because we want power constantly even if we will in the near

future become what we ate in the beginning.

To Conclude Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is a novella with no equal that

introduces characters in various transformed states. The Metamorphosis can be used to describe

how people in the world dehumanize, isolate, and struggle for power only to be met with a never

ending cycle that always leads us into becoming cockroaches because we allow ourselves to be

judged, harassed, or hated instead of taking the true power that we have for ourselves and using

it to better ourselves. Instead of devouring each other we must help one another only in that way

we can avoid the mistakes that the characters in the novella made. Kafka brings us a story that

ultimately results in death but I consider that we should learn from Gregor and avoid allowing

ourselves to become outcasts just because we are not entirely the same as we once were or just

because we have been labeled as something. We are all part of the same cycle so why devour

each one another when it is better to aid one another.

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Works Cited

Farahmandian Hamid, and Haonong Pang. “Existential Failure in Franz Kafka's The

Metamorphosis.” ​Forum for World Literature Studies,​ vol. 10, no. 2, 2018, pp. 334–341.

Kafka, Franz. Metamorphosis. Arcturus Publishing LTD, 2018.

Smith, Livingstone David. “'Less Than Human': The Psychology Of Cruelty.” NPR, NPR, 29

Mar. 2011, www.npr.org/2011/03/29/134956180/criminals-see-their-victims-as-

less-than-human. Heard on Talk of the Nation

Straus, Nina Pelikan. “Transforming Franz Kafka's ‘Metamorphosis.’” Signs, vol. 14, no. 3,

1989, pp. 651–667.