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Roee Palmon

Professor Beadle

ESW 113A

7/11/19

Disabled Doesn’t Always Mean Worthless

In the middle of most people’s lives, they can support themselves for their needs.

Eventually problems can start to affect one’s daily life and prevent them from doing their best. If

that person can’t get better because of extreme conditions, they will at some point have to be

hospitalized. People can’t always be in the hospital forever, so they will eventually have to pass

away due to being unable to recover. In the short novel The Metamorphosis, Gregor’s life is like

that cycle. Gregor’s transformation throughout The Metamorphosis is an example of a larger

issue showing how society view disabled people as un-self-supportive for a long period of time

as the people supporting them realize that it can’t at some point even communicate well with

them and just sometimes even abandon them.

The short book The Metamorphosis shows its way of how people with disabilities can’t

be supported by others by telling a story of Gregor’s transformation and how his family weren’t

able to keep him for too long. Towards the end of the novella, Gregor’s sister tells her parents to

realize that he cannot be kept anymore. Her sister yells, ‘“It’s got to go”, shouted his sister,

“that’s the only way, Father. You’ve got to get rid of the idea that that’s Gregor. We’ve only

harmed ourselves by believing it for so long. How can that be Gregor?’ (Kafka 39). This part of

the story is what really makes it show the problem that Gregor’s family can’t help him with

living or to make him better. This is also similar to how there are some parents who can’t support
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their child due to low income. Just because someone is disabled, that doesn’t mean they

shouldn’t bother trying to help them. In the end, they should support them the best they can.

Another example on how the disabilities impacted Gregor’s life and his family’s will to

support him is demonstrated by an article written by Hamid Farahmandian and Pang Haonong.

As the author is explaining the issues related with long term disabilities, he writes about how

Gregor’s family couldn’t even handle his transformation. The author writes, “His unusual death

cannot simply be attributed to one fatal causation, but is left ambiguous. Possibly, the neglect

and abuse from his family killed Gregor's insect self. Maybe Gregor selfishly gave up on life,

finding things too painful to continue” (Farahmandian and Haonong). This part of the article well

explains how his family couldn’t support him anymore and just let him die due to not being able

to keep him at his conditions. Parents shouldn’t feel like they must give up on their child because

of disabilities. Doing so will only bring more harm to their child and possibly themselves with

the decisions they would have to make. What we should do is just find ways to make a disabled

one’s life better.

Although there are issues with disabled people, but that doesn’t mean we should abandon

them for their failure in life. At some point relatives of the patient may not be nearer to them

while disabled, causing another issue as stated by Antony in his article, “Mental health

professionals must persuade the family to put in extra efforts to continue having their love and

concern toward their schizophrenic dear one” (Antony). When people become disabled, it isn’t

the end of their life. We can still figure out ways with diagnostics and therapy to help find out

solutions to improve the patient’s life. There are famous people who have been disabled too who

have discovered big things with modern technology. For example, Stephen Hawking is one of

those people who was wasn’t limited by his disability. Technology can really be a part of what
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helps the disabled, making them less useless and potentially even recover them from what their

disabilities are.

Overall, the main issue is that people with long term disabilities can’t be supported by

their family forever. Instead people should figure out solutions for the patients instead of letting

them sit and die. Gregor’s demonstration as a human who transformed into an insect is as similar

as developing a disability. Eventually they will have to be let off and pass away. Disabled people

shouldn’t get abandoned, instead they should get more help to hopefully recover the best they

can. Hopefully people will be able to get more support and hopefully recover from disabilities,

so they won’t have to experience it again.

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Works Cited

Antony, James. "Metamorphosis: A reason why many chronic schizophrenics get abandoned by

their dear ones." Indian Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 59, no. 1, 2017, p. 10. Gale Group.

Health Reference Center Academic,

http://link.galegroup.com.libproxy.csun.edu/apps/doc/A490605766/HRCA?u=csunorthri

dge&sid=HRCA&xid=c8c61f02. Accessed 10 July 2019.

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

Metamorphosis." Forum for World Literature Studies, vol. 10, no. 2, 2018, p. 334+. Gale

Group. Literature Resource Center,

http://link.galegroup.com.libproxy.csun.edu/apps/doc/A555076531/LitRC?u=csunorthrid

ge&sid=LitRC&xid=2df9e5a6. Accessed 9 July 2019.

Kafka, Franz. METAMORPHOSIS (Wisehouse Classics Edition) (p. 39). Wisehouse. Kindle

Edition.