The Theme of Freedom in Kafka's Metamorphosis

The Theme of Freedom in Kafka's Metamorphosis

One of Franz Kafka's most well-known and most often criticized works is the short story, "Die Verwandlung," or "The Metamorphosis." "The Metamorphosis" is most unusual in that the first sentence is the climax; the rest of the story is mainly falling action (Greenburg 273). The reader learns that Gregor Samsa, the story's main character, has been turned into an enormous insect. Despite this fact, Gregor continues to act and think like any normal human would, which makes the beginning of the story both tragic and comical at the same time. However, one cannot help but wonder why Gregor has undergone this hideous transformation, and what purpose it could possibly serve in the story. Upon examination, it seems that Gregor's metamorphosis represents both his freedom from maintaining his entire financial stability and his family's freedom from their dependence upon Gregor.

Long before the story takes place, Gregor Samsa's father had a business failure that left him deep in debt. His son, Gregor, works as a commercial traveler for the company to whom he owes money; in effect, Gregor is slowly working off his father's debt. Gregor is not happy with his job, which Greenburg calls "degrading" and "soul-destroying," but believes that his family's existence depends upon him "sacrificing himself by working at this meaningless... job," and so he continues (274). Heinz Politzer goes far enough to say that Gregor is a slave to his boss (276), which would imply that there is no escape for Gregor- at least, no conventional escape.

However, Gregor does escape from his life of indentured servancy- by becoming a giant insect. Walter H. Sokel explains the effect of the metamorphosis on his occupat...

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...om House, 1963

Greenberg, Martin . The Terror of Art: Kafka and Modern Literature. New York: Basic Books, 1968.

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis and Other Stories. 1st ed. Translated by Stanley Appelbaum. New York: Dover Publications, 1996.

Parry, Idris, 'The Talk of Guilty Men' (1981), in: Parry, Speak Silence. Essays, Manchester 1988.

Politzer, Heinz, Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox, Ithaca N.Y. 1962

Sokel, Walter H. The Writer in Extremis, Expressionism in Twentieth-Century German Literature. 1st ed. California: Stanford University Press, 1969.

Works Consulted

Pawel, Ernst. A Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. 2nd ed. New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1984.

Suchoff, David. Critical Theory and the Novel: Mass Society and Cultural Criticism in Dickens, Melville and Kafka. 5th ed. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994.