Kafka-esque Citations

The hero of "The Metamorphosis" is Gregor Samsa (pronounced Zamza), who is the son of middle-class parents in Prague, Flaubertian philistines, people interested only in the material side of life and vulgarians in their tastes. Some five years before, old Samsa lost most of his money, whereupon his son Gregor took a job with one of his father's creditors and became a traveling salesman in cloth. His father then stopped working altogether, his sister Grete was too young to work, his mother was ill with asthma; thus young Gregor not only supported the whole family but also found for them the apartment they are now living in. One morning he wakes up to discover that during the night he has been transformed into a "monstrous vermin" or insect. At first he is preoccupied with practical, everyday concerns: How to get out of bed and walk with his numerous legs? Can he still make it to the office on time? Gregor’s bizarre new state is not the central transformation in the novel. Instead, Kafka uses Gregor’s surreal change as a catalyst for an almost more shocking metamorphosis: that of Gregor’s family, as they move from helplessness and sympathetic fear to emancipation and hostile rejection.Gregor's family see his predicament as an affront to them (after all, they expect Gregor to support the family). They withdraw from him, try to contain the damage, but in the process begin to change their own life stories as well--Gregor's father, who had been disabled, mobilizes and goes back to work; he changes from being an "old man" to a bank official "holding himself very erect." Gregor's sister also gets a job and seems on the verge of a new life.
Gregor’s change is superficial, since he resists adapting to his new physical identity. Kafka’s choice to portray Gregor as a “vermin” (in some editions, this is translated as “cockroach”) implies a useless and parasitic nature that clashes with his personality. On the other hand, Gregor’s “disappearance” forces his parents and sister out of their own parasitic existence, leading them to a much deeper transformation at the end. Even the dying Gregor recognizes this, as he realizes that “[h]is conviction that he had to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’sIn a psychoanalytic interpretation, The Metamorphosis prevents the imminent rebellion of the son against the father. Gregor had become strong as a result of his father's failure. He crippled his father's self-esteem and took over the father's position in the family. After the catastrophe, the same sequence takes place in reverse: son becomes weak, and father kills him.












http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/metamorphosis/