Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka Identity Essay

The protagonist’s supernatural physical transformation into a vermin can also be identified as a crisis of identity. After his initial perplexity, Gregor imagines that everything can continue as usual; in a comical fashion, his concerns with quotidian obligations (of getting to work punctually and providing for his family) remain his main concerns, through which Gregor is manifested as honourable. He contemplates: “Once I’ve got together the money to pay off the parents’ debt … Then I’ll make the big break. In any case, right now I have to get up.” (Kafka 5). Gregor’s precision and meticulous approach to his obligations is indicative of an individual trapped by his inability to exercise change. We are made aware of Gregor’s reliability when he considers
This revels the author’s sense of humor – an irony which does not escape the protagonist either, when, despite his concerns and fear of being exposed in his new state, he imagines his family’s reaction: “In spite of all his distress, he was unable to suppress a smile at this idea” (12). Moments later, “Gregor tried to imagine to himself whether anything similar … could have also happened at some point to the manager” (14). By questioning whether someone other than himself could have deserved such a bizarre fate, Gregor confronts the Kafkaesque world he suddenly inhabits - a world in which the individual becomes a victim of unexplained, impersonal forces, whereby he is also made to feel guilty and somehow deserving of his fate. Just as the book contains the elements of dream-like surrealism, horror and humour characteristic of Kafka’s prose, Gregor’s own qualities as a Kafkaesque hero/antihero are highlighted by his belief that he deserves the humiliation and physical degradation – suggesting he is anything but an honourable