Blog Post #32

For this week's blog post, we were asked to foster the idea of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis. That is no simple task. The idea and the representation made of the young selfless man named Gregor into a hideous bug is hard to dissect. On one level you could look at it through a Modernist lens. Gregor is a young, selfless man of a hard life. He is too good for his own body. Even when he is about to die, about to lose his own sad example of a life, all Gregor can do is try and help his family. He is a bug, but a caring one. He is doing the best he can in his awful state. He is giving up on himself, and his family is too selfish to even notice. They only care who will put food on the table. Gregor's outlook becomes bleaker and bleaker. "For, in fact, from day to day he perceived things with less and less clarity,even those only a short distance away." (Kafka, 13) Gregor is on his last limb. His bug form has given up on him. Even with a broken leg, an apple flung from his father's hand lodged in his back, and waste all over his cramped confinement of a room, Gregor wishes he could return to his human form and send his sister to The Conservatory, to show his love somehow. "she frightened Gregor twice every day. The entire time he trembled under the couch, and yet he knew very well that she would certainly have spared him gladly if it had only been possible to remain with the window closed in a room where Gregor lived." (Kafka, 13) Every time his sister came into his room to feed him or clean up a little, he hid to honor her being there. He wishes he could show his appreciation somehow. Gregor has practically single-highhandedly preserved his family's state of well being, and he is still trying to do more. Gregor is the representation of a perfect soul. He is completely selfless, something that is not allowed to exist in a Modernist world.  
Another way to look at the representation of Gregor's Metamorphosis is through a &&& standpoint.