some sympathy for a bug.

In Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, I believe that Kafka wants us to sympathize with Gregor. Gregor is being portrayed as a bug of some sort and is, for the most part, despised by his family by the end of the story. By knowing that his family is increasingly neglecting him and their disgust for him is ever growing, we sympathize with Gregor. Also, there are times in which certain members of Gregor’s family will show him compassion and we are forced to see him more as a human and less as an insect. The first example of this would be when Grete, his sister, brings him food. At first she brings him milk, which was his favorite when he was not a bug and he does not eat it for his new bug taste buds cannot stand it. So she returns with a plethora of things that a cockroach-type bug would enjoy and Gregor is thankful. In this instance, we see compassion and love from Grete toward her brother. She is taking care of him in his time of need as Gregor took care of her and their parents when he was not an insect. Another example would be when Grete thinks that they should move Shis furniture to give him more space to crawl around. Grete has now become more disenchanted with her brother and is in a state in which she believes that she knows what is best for him, while not really wanting to have to be in the position in which she is in. Their mother, however, feels as if they should leave his room as it has always been. She says that she wants to keep it the same “so that when he comes back…he will find everything unchanged and be able all the more easily to forget what has happened in between (Kafka).” Gregor’s mother is hopeful that one day he will return to his normal self and be able to function in a normal manner as he once did. This glimmer of hope that we see in the mother allows us to have a bit of hope as well. At least for me, it made me think that maybe this was foreshadowing and that he was going to return to his normal state at the end of the story. With this piece of hope, comes sympathy; sympathy with the mother that her son might return to her and sympathy with Gregor that he may be able to become a functioning part of society again. Throughout the rest of the novella there are instances of Gregor’s mistreatment and my heart felt for him. Yes, I am aware that he is a giant bug and I will the first to admit how gross that is, but I still saw him as having a human-like quality. This made me think of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The Frankenstein monster was just that, a monster, however, you feel for him and you sympathize with him by the end of the book. Gregor was a son and a brother that became a bug, and by the end he was a bug first, son and brother last.