Transformation and the Apple

             A family is a loving place where you are nurtured. Each family member has a role to fill and when the balance is upset the family unit collapses and the family becomes dysfunctional. In Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, the family undergoes change. In this story the "family" unit consists of a mother, father, son, daughter, servant girl, cleaning woman and three boarders. The family was living a simple life where the son, Gregor held the role as breadwinner, the mother suffered from asthma the father was retired and the daughter lived a carefree life as a young adult. As the story unfolds the Metamorphosis takes place, the dysfunctional Samsa family is transformed into "normal" functioning family.
             In a typical family the father is the breadwinner, he is head of the household and he provides the home and the guidance a family needs. The mother is the heart of the family and yes, back in Kafka's days young girls stayed home.
             Was the Samsa family dysfunctional? Yes, the normal roles of father and son were reversed. The father would lay around the house, while the son worked and supported the family.
             Gregor's role before his "change" was to go to work and provide for his family. He had limited contact with the outside world, merely traveling from city to city as traveling salesman. He thought about the "problems of traveling: the worries about train connections, the irregular bad food, temporary and constantly changing human relationships which never come from the heart" (Kafka 2) and is saddened by his life. Gregor lived a dreary existence he was forced to work to pay off the family debt incurred when the father's business failed. The family lives a solitary life; Gregor it seems has no friends while alone in his room he reminisces about a "cashier in a hat shop, whom he had pursued earnestly but too slowly" (Kafka 28). One missed opportunity for Grego...

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Transformation and the Apple. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 08:18, March 29, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/26493.html