History Literature / TheMetamorphosis

---> "He must go," cried Gregor's sister, "that's the only solution, Father. You must try to get rid of this idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we believe it for so long is the root of all of our trouble. But how can it be Gregor? If this were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that humans cannot live with such a creature, and he'd have gone away on his own accord. Then we wouldn't have any brother, but we'd be able to go on living and keep his memory in honor. As it is, this creature persecutes us, drives away our lodgers, obviously wants to keep the whole apartment to itself, and would have us all sleep in the gutter."

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Gregor dies, Greta will not become a musician, and their parents don't really care. Worse, literary critics note that Greta has become pregnant, implying the cycle of abuse will start anew for a different victim.]]
* DrivenToSuicide: Downplayed. [[spoiler:Gregor welcomes death because his pain and misery finally end, and his family can move on.]]

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: [[spoiler: Gregor dies while both of his parents are still alive. They aren't very broken up about it]]

** After Gregor's transformation, Grete is the one who took on the burden of taking care of him despite her fear, bringing him food, cleaning his room, and moving furniture out of his room so that he would have an easier time crawling around. [[spoiler: Eventually the stress of trying to look after him and providing for the rest of the household weighs on her and she turns on and begins to neglect him, however]].

* YoungestChildWins: Grete, the little sister who works as a salesgirl, moves on to a better life in the end. Although the final lines indicate that the parents are seeing how they can use her in the same way they did Gregor.

** The mother is initially less so than the father, as she at first sympathizes with his transformation and tries to protect him from his father despite being terrified of his post-transformation appearance. She also tries to clean up Gregor's room after his sister begins neglecting him, and is reprimanded by his father for doing so. Despite all this, she turns on Gregor all the same and agrees with Grete that they should try to get rid of him once they no longer begin to see or treat him as a living being.

* BadBedroomBadLife: Gregor's bedroom, where he spends most of the story, gradually becomes filthy to reflect just how bad his situation is becoming. It starts out as a normal bedroom with a writing desk, chest, and other old trinkets that Gregor was initially fond of but grew apathetic to after his transformation and descent into behaving more like a bug. Halfway through the story, Grete and his mother begin to move things out so that he can crawl more freely, and Gregor, who remembers his attachment to these things, is on the fence about it but is incapable of communicating this to them. Eventually, Grete begins to grow increasingly neglectful of caring for his room, leaving dust everywhere, and when Gregor's mother makes a better attempt at cleaning it, the father forbides ''both'' of them from taking care of his room, allowing it to fall into further decay. When the family brings in lodgers, the charwoman begins to carelessly use the room to discard unwanted items, leaving piles of junk around.

* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: The charwoman, who isn't the slightest bit afraid to see a transformed Gregor, unlike everyone else in the story, and occasionally opens his door just to watch him and beckon him over to her, as if he were a dog. However, she does appear to be taken aback when he approaches her threateningly, and in turn, threatens him with a nearby chair. [[spoiler: In the end, it's implied she does ''something'' to Gregor's dead body while performing her morning duties and is all too eager to share what happened to it with the disinterested Samsa family, but she leaves in a hurry before she can]].

* NoNameGiven: Gregor's mother and father are never named. Subverted with his sister who's named Grete halfway though the story.

* PetTheDog: Gregor's family has a few moments that show they aren't ''all'' bad.
** All of Grete's interactions with Gregor initially, as she was the most sympathetic toward his situation despite being terrified of him after his transformation. She was the one bringing him food and cleaning up his room, and even decides to move his furniture from his room so that he would have an easier time crawling around. [[spoiler: Of course, when she begins to neglect him and is ultimately the one to suggest they get rid of him, it makes her betrayal all the more bitter]].

** Gregor's mother is initially reluctant to move Gregor's things out of his bedroom, as she doesn't want the transformed Gregor to get the impression that the family has completely given up on him getting better. It's Grete's insistence that it's what Gregor wants that changes her mind.
** Gregor's mother makes an effort to clean Gregor's room properly after noticing how filthy Grete had begun to leave it after she had begun to neglect to look after him. This attempt to help ends up backfiring on Gregor, however, as Grete's fit of hysterics at someone taking care of Gregor's room instead of her makes the father forbide both of them from looking after Gregor's room.
** When discussing what to do with him, Gregor's father is the one to suggest that they could come to an agreement with the transformed Gregor, if only it were able to understand human speech. Grete dismisses the possibility, insisting that they get rid of him.

** One of countless interpretations of the story is that Gregor turned into a bug because he'd been treated like a lowly, verminous insect by his family and employers for so long that his body eventually reflected his self-image.

* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: The charwoman, who isn't the slightest bit afraid to see a transformed Gregor, unlike everyone else in the story, and occasionally opens his door just to watch him and beckon him over to her, as if he were a dog. However, she does appear to be taken aback when he approaches her threateningly, and in turn threatens him with a nearby chair.

* ButtMonkey: Gregor. Poor Gregor. And he was this even ''before'' the aforementioned transformation with a job he hated and was forced to work himself bloody at, a family that never showed him even the slightest bit of concern and an overall miserable existence.

---> ''"He must go," cried Gregor's sister, "that's the only solution, Father. You must try to get rid of this idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we believe it for so long is the root of all of our trouble. But how can it be Gregor? If this were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that humans cannot live with such a creature, and he'd have gone away on his own accord. Then we wouldn't have any brother, but we'd be able to go on living and keep his memory in honor. As it is, this creature persecutes us, drives away our lodgers, obviously wants to keep the whole apartment to itself, and would have us all sleep in the gutter."''

** Gregor's mother makes an effort to clean Gregor's room properly after noticing how filthy Grete had begun to leave it after she had begun to neglect to look after him.

** The father especially, given how he beats up Gregor twice, bellows at his son for not going to work without looking to see if he is ill, claims everyone is tired despite sleeping in every day, and keeps money from his collapsed company (Gregor is working to pay off the debts) as well as some of Gregor's income. When called out on the last point, he claims that he did the right thing, despite one of the main reasons for Gregor's state being the extreme pressure and working conditions.

* AuthorAvatar: Literary critics note that "Samsa" and "Kafka" share strong phonetic similarities, with identical vowel sounds and identical placement of consonant sounds, and Kafka wrote the story out of his fears that his insomnia was a massive burden to his family. There's also the critics who believe the metamorphosis into the vermin is him becoming a writer, instead of the more profitable and normal job he had.

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Gregor's transformation is similar to aging / disability, coupled with regretting not taking a chance in your life as well as the horrifically callous way people with mental illness are treated.

* ElegantClassicalMusician: Grete playes a violin and is rather attractive.

* LackOfEmpathy: Gregor's parents are ''staggeringly'' cold-hearted and callous towards him, never showing him even the slightest bit of genuine affection or concern and never treating him as anything but a workhorse and then a burden, who exists only for their benefit. [[spoiler: They don't even seem upset when he dies, acting relieved at no longer being burdened by him and about to repeat the cycle with Grete]].

* NoSympathy: Gregor's father never shows concern or compassion to his son and sees taking care of him as a horrible burden, even after all he's done for the family. Only Grete and Gregor's mother give him any sympathy as a bug, but never in his presence. Gradually, they, too, grow tired of him. At the end, [[spoiler:when Gregor finally dies and they're no longer burdened by him, his father is annoyed with his wife and daughter grieving over Gregor.]]

''The Metamorphosis'' (German: ''Die Verwandlung'') is a 1915 novelette by Creator/FranzKafka, about the salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes up one day to find he has been [[InvoluntaryTransformation inexplicably transformed]] into a gigantic cockroach-insect... thing, focusing primarily on his attempts to cope with this situation and his family's attempts to continue their life, of which Gregor was the breadwinner.

%%* ButtMonkey: Gregor. Poor Gregor. And he was this even ''before'' the aforementioned transformation.

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: [[spoiler: Gregor dies while both of his parents are still alive.]]