The Metamorphosis: Existentialism Plans, The Feminism Lens, And The Critical Lens In A Novel

In the story written by Frank Kafka, called The Metamorphosis. Kafka tells the story of a man named Gregor whom one day wakes up and physically transforms into a bug. The man before the transformation of a bug is a salesman who works nonstop to pay off his family’s debt. The story doesn’t specify which lens it uses, but we can have many different lenses that we may interpret or see the story as. The reader can use a different lens as to why Gregor transformed into a bug, such as existentialism, feminism, and critical race lens could provide many different meanings to the reader.

Have you at any point inspected your life and thought about how you wound up where you are? In Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa, the main character, distinguishes himself regarding his support of other individuals. Accordingly, he forfeits his very own joy and never truly shapes any nearby, common connections. At the point when he gets up one morning and finds he has changed into a bug, his unordinary condition of being powers Gregor into an existential emergency. Existentialism is the way of thinking encompassing how every individual’s decisions have formed them and molded their life. How about we look at existentialism from this story.

The story starts with, ”When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”(pg 1.). Although from a very strict point of view, we see that in this story, it is not a dream about a monster bug, it is an illustration of how the creator felt about his very own life. Samsa was an individual of Jewish plunge living in an enemy of the Semitic world in the Czech Republic in the mid-1900s. He additionally had a hostile association with his dad, who wanted for Kafka to emulate his example as an agent. Gregor’s change into a vile, disturbing bug that nobody needs to around mirror Kafka’s conviction that he is undesirable and strange. Later on in the story, the family begins to ignore Gregor but they do end up finding jobs. They complain about how hard and tiring it is but they never thought of how hard Gregor works just to satisfy them. His family even begins to almost forget about him. The family no longer sees Gregor in the bug, but rather see a bug that was once their son. Gregor was once the man of the house and providing everything for his family. With this, Gregor can be interpreted as losing his purpose in life. His family no longer needed him to provide for them and they all just left him.

Feminism is where the male is showing his dominance leaving the other person defenseless. Now, we see this in Kafka’s story that it does have a lot to say about the gender roles, especially when it’s being viewed through the views of a feminist lens. An example of this feminist lens being in the story is the relationship between Mr. Samsa and Gregor. “From the fruit bowl on the sideboard his father had filled his pockets. And now, without for the moment taking accurate aim, he was throwing apples after apple. These small red apples rolled around on the floor as if electrified, and collided with each other….changed his position.” (pg33). We see this quote as being related to the feminism lens as Mr. Samsa is showing his toxic masculinity and being violent towards Gregor transforming into a bug. Before we saw that Gregor was the man of the house is that he was the one working for the family, but Gregor transformed into a bug and the roles switched to Mr. Samsa being the man of the house but also being violent towards Gregor. Another example would be Mr. Samsa wanting to find their daughter, Grete, a husband. “Growing more silent and almost unconsciously understanding each other in their glances, they thought that time was now at hand to seek out a good honest man for her.” The Samas are essentially saying that their daughter Grete has to get married to a man and doesn’t have anything to say about it because she is “of age” to marry. The dad is stating that since his daughter is growing older.

Critical race theory is a theoretical framework in the social sciences that uses critical theory to examine society and culture as they relate to categorizations of race, law, and power. Critical race theory being shown by the family, assuming that they have wealth seeing by the area they live in and the servants they can hire. We see Gregor transforming into a bug, representing the lesser of a human being from the eyes of his family. With them seeing Gregor’s transformation, they end up locking him into his room. This can be an example of people who have experienced racism and people who have made them feel less of a person. With the family being disgusted by Gregor’s physical transformation into a bug. This can be related to immigration in today’s world, seeing that people nowadays see immigrants as less of a human being in the united states, so they decide to lock them up into a camp. This can also be related to people of color that deal with racism and discrimination every day.

Overall, in the story created by Frank Kafka, he created many different meanings in the story. Some of these meanings can be the Existentialism plans, the Feminism lens, and the Critical lens. In the Existentialist lens, you just lose the meaning or purpose in life. In the Feminism lens, the dominant role is the male figure showing off their toxic masculinity. In the Critical Race theory, race being shown as racism and discrimination. All of these lenses are just a few that you can figure out in the story, there are more and the reader is welcome to have the meaning of the story.