Gregor’s personality analysis.

Gregor Samsa experienced a lot of stress and psychological strain in his entire human-life
before the transformation. He feels trapped in his monotonous and oppressive life by working
day in and day out, he is encumbranced by the claims of his job and by his family’s expectations.
The weight of these strain pressures heavily on Gregor’s mental health that causes alienation,
isolation and hopelessness. To prove my words I will provide a piece of the text “I have to cope
with the problems of travelling, the worries about train connections, irregular bad food,
temporary and constantly changing human relationships which 3 never come from the heart.”

Also Gregor Samsa was a victim of his own mind. He was blaming others for his problems that
he can’t solve “Why was Gregor the only one condemned to work in a firm where, at the
slightest lapse, someone immediately attracted the greatest suspicion? ...”, he was only a toy in
the hands of his family that brings money and comfort. He wasn’t able to assert his own
priorities and desires “If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I'd have quit ages ago. I
would've gone to the boss and told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart …”, instead
he pay attention to others comfort life, sacrificing his own happiness. In other words Gregor
becomes a passive viewer of his life, letting others dictate their rules and manipulate his
personality. His internal and endless struggles ate him from the inside. As Friedrich Neizsche
said that “...ressentiment is like a worm that gnaws at the roots of life, and thus does not stop
until the whole is destroyed”. He was repressing his internal war for too long that it killed him
inside.

Gregor always tried to show himself as an exemplary employee who has no problems in his
life, but in fact he was exhausted of his job. Also he always sought to be useful, because he was
afraid to be a burden for his family, I guess he had a “lifeguard syndrome”. To prove it I can
provide you a piece of the text “"Good God!" he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were
going quietly on. It was past the half hour, already nearly quarter to.” Even though he
transformed into a vermin, he thought about his job, he thought about his boss and imagined how
the boss gets angry on him. Gregor had a sense of guilt and big responsibility for his family’s
well-being, by believing that any failure would result in punishing him. But in the end Gregor
ended up like his father in a failure, being useless and doing nothing.
 Gregor’s father is a man that had a business failure that ended up with bankruptcy. He is very
concerned with money, even though he doesn’t do anything in order to earn money. He always
blames Gregor for not earning a lot of money, even though Gregor earned enough money before
the transformation. Based on this I can say that Gregor inherited his father’s path of being
useless.

Gregor’s boss establishes a totalitarianism by controlling Gregor’s life in the office and outside
of it. Gregor has no freedom and he must be submissive in order to save his workplace, so that
Gregor finds himself deprived of personal space and trapped in a suffocating environment where
every movement is carefully and strictly evaluated. For example, when the manager comes to
Gregor’s home in order to reprimand him, the manager’s voice seems really totalitarian “…I am
speaking here in the name of your parents and your employer, and I am requesting you in all
seriousness for an immediate and clear explanation… ” After reading this part we can say that the
boss is like Kim Jong Un that dictates and establishes new rules, every citizen is a marionette in
the hands of president, so does Gregor. This tremendous amount of stress affects on Gregor’s
mental health, intensifying Gregor’s sense of alienation and hopelessness that ends up with the
transformation.

Gregor Samsa’s persona described as a “The young man has nothing in his head except
business.”, in other words Gregor tries to conform to the social norms and expectations and
representing himself as a exemplary and hard-working employee thereby slowly burying his
inner self. His increasing exhaust wasn’t the reason to change his mask, conversely he tries to
remain expectations placed upon him. In his interactions with other people, Gregor tries to be
compliant and submissive in order to avoid the conflicts, preferring to bend to the expectations of
his family and please their wishes. As Carl Jung said the persona “…is a complicated system of
relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask,
designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others…”. After reading these
quotation I can say that Gregor’s behavior absolutely fits to Carl’s quotation. Gregor’s persona at
a result ruined his life and destroyed his personality.

Throughout the whole book Gregor struggles with the feelings of alienation and feelings of
being trapped by getting free from his “demanding job”, trying to break free from the familial
limits. But he always suppresses these desires in order to live up to family’s expectations. This
suppressed desires manifests in his transformation into a “monstrous vermin”, that symbolizes
the fulfillment of his repressed desires in a horrifying and intimidating form. Additionally,
Gregor’s shadow embraces the feeling of resentment and anger towards his family and society.
Even though Gregor was submissive and compliant, he holds a grudge against his family
members for their insensitivity. He is unhappy that he sacrifices his life for the expectations that
placed on him. These suppressed feelings of resentment contributed to Gregor’s psychological
distress and alienation. "The shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and
guilt-laden …" , Gregor’s shadow took over his body and transformed him totally that Gregor’s
nightmares come true.

Gregor Samsa’s inability to integrate and acknowledge the repressed aspects of his personality,
led to his transformation into a “monstrous vermin”. As Carl Jung said “The shadow personifies
everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself...If these projections remain
unconscious, the subject is possessed by his shadow”, Gregor’s experience proves Carl’s words,
that unconscious aspects of his psyche took over his conscious, revealing itself in his behavior
and emotional state. All his hoarded grievances and repressed desires makes him vulnerable to
being controlled by his shadow. "The shadow can be the source of creative energy, as well as
destructive energy. It is only by facing our own darkness that we can become whole." Gregor
could avoid his transformation if he accepted everything, maybe he could use his shadow for
more creative things rather than becoming a vermin.

While reading Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” I made a conclusion that our main character is a
personification of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is portrayed as a compassionate and empathetic
towards others, so does Gregor when he worried about his sister’s crying “Then why was she
crying?” and also when the manager starts to lecture his parents, Gregor instead of sitting in
silence, starts standing up for his parents “…Take it easy on my parents! …” Also Jesus’s main
personality trait is the way of loving and forgiving everything, even though he got killed by the
people for doing only good things, so does Gregor. Despite the fact that his family didn’t support
and didn’t take care of him in the hardest times, he died with the sense of love “…He
remembered his family with deep feelings of love…” After the death his family went away
without any sense of guilt.