Conflict And Alienation In Kafka's Metamorphosis

In Franz Kafka's novella, The Metamorphosis, the protagonist (Gregor Samsa), is engaged in a struggle against his oppressors, while at the same time he tries to accommodate

the very social structure that is ruining his life. Gregor's family is abusive, yet he constantly forgives them. He is truly altruistic-he works like an animal in order to maintain his family's material comfort. His only dream is to send his beloved sister to the music Conservatory. Gregor is constantly hungry, but "not for these things" (Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis, hereafter known as KM). He longs "for nourishment other than food, for an emotional sustenance derived from an active involvement with his family" (Sweeney 152). Simultaneously, he rebels against the role of the "sacrificial son" (Santner 198). It turns out that Gregor is not completely passive in the face of authority. He actively despises his boss, to whom he longs to "[speak] my piece from the bottom of my heart" (KM 4). Toward the end of his life, when he has become so visually revolting others cannot bear the sight of him, he creeps across the living room in front of the boarders. At this moment he briefly relinquishes his concern for others, and thinks "It hardly surprised [me] that lately [I] was showing so little consideration for the others; once such a consideration had been [my] greatest pride" (KM 35). Internally, Gregor seeks to rebel; his innermost thoughts reflect Kafka's ideals. Externally, though, he feels forced to submit to the expectations of his family, his boss, and society.

The Metamorphosis is a representation of people's alienation from society and their inability to have autonomous power over their lives. Kafka, like other writers of his time, was going through an existential crisis. He questions the meaning of life, and the futility of being just a cog in a wheel. In 1963, activist Roger Garaudy said at a convention:

[Kafka] awakens in people the consciousness of their alienation; his work, in making it conscious, makes repression all the more intolerable... With all his might he hates the apparatus of repression and the deception that says its power is God-given. (Dodd 132)

Kafka, through his representation of Gregor, reveals the human struggle against bureaucracy and oppression. Gregor's abuse by and disconnectedness from his family parallels the way he is treated at work. While Gregor struggles to fit into the "system", he finds himself becoming more isolated from it.

Gregor is bound by rules that crush his spirit. One morning, he wakes up changed into a "monstrous vermin," and realizes that he possesses a completely nonhuman body. Just as bad (in his mind), he has overslept and will be late for work. Gregor considers saying that he was sick (although he had not been sick in all the five years he had worked for the firm), but knows that it would not make matters any better, because:"[t]he boss would be sure to come with the health insurance doctor, blame his parents for their lazy son, and cut off all excuses by quoting the health-insurance doctor, for whom the world consisted of people who were completely healthy but afraid to work" (KM 5).

Gregor's livelihood relies completely on this bureaucratic insurance doctor who holds no sympathy for his patients. Although this doctor is a completely negative force, Gregor almost sides with him. He thinks (of the doctor) "And, besides, in this case would he be so very wrong? In fact, Gregor felt fine..." (KM 5). He then attempts to get out of bed and go to work, despite his bug-like state.

Gregor is so enslaved by his job that he hardly considers having changed into a bug to be an issue. As critic Nina Pelikan Strauss writes, "Gregor is so conditioned to an identity in which he must be sold and must sell that despite the discovery of his new insect body, he continues to agonize about missing a day of work, being 'fired on the spot,' and about the debt he owes his boss" (129). He hates his mundane job, and thinks "if I didn't hold back for my parent's sake, I would have quit long ago, I would have marched up to the boss and spoken my piece from the bottom of my heart" (KM 4). His sense of duty to his parents is the cause of his banal existence. He works not for himself, but so his family can maintain their comfortable existence. Gregor never seeks to rebel against this familial order. Before his metamorphosis, his everyday animalistic routine barely distinguished him from vermin. When he is home, he "sits... at the table.... studying train schedules" (KM 8). Rules and systems dominate his life-and he is profoundly unhappy and isolated. Gregor's alienation corresponds with Marx's definition of the "externalization" of the worker under capitalism:

'his work is external to the workers, i.e., it does not form part of his essential being so that instead of feeling well in his work, he feels unhappy, instead of developing his free physical and mental energy, he abuses his body and ruins his mind' (Sokel 149).

Gregor does not work for himself, he works to pay off his father's debt. In turn, his father exploits him. When Gregor finds out that his father actually had money hidden away, he "[nods] emphatically, delighted at this unexpected foresight and thrift" (KM 21). He, however does realize that "[o]f course he actually could have paid off more of his father's debt to the boss with this extra money, and the day on which he could have gotten rid of his job would have been much closer, but now things were undoubtedly better the way his father had arranged them" (KM 21). He is blind to his gross abuse because he longs to be a part of his family. He longs to have access to them, as he longs to be rid of his job and take control of his life. The two things Gregor wants for himself (a place in his family and autonomous power in his life) conflict with each other. Inevitably he spends his energy on the former and only dreams of the latter. This is a theme Kafka has explored before.

In Kafka's short story Before the Law, the protagonist "spends everything, no matter how valuable, to win over the gatekeeper" (Franz Kafka, Before the Law, 1). Gregor does everything he can to win over his family. The character in Before the Law also longs to have access to The Law, but no matter how long he waits in front of the gatekeeper, he cannot reach it. Gregor, similarly, wants control over his life and access to his parent's love. He remembers his happiest times as when he made "hard cash that could be plunked down on the table at home in front of his astonished and delighted family"