Gretes Transformation in The Metamorphosis by Kafka...

Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis in 1912, taking three weeks to compose the story. While he had expressed earlier satisfaction with the work, he later found it to be flawed, even calling the ending unreadable. Whatever his own opinion may have been, the short story has become one of the most popularly read and analyzed works of twentieth-century literature. Isolation and alienation are at the heart of this surreal story of a man transformed overnight into a kind of beetle. In contrast to much of Kafkas fiction, The Metamorphosis has not a sense of incompleteness. It is formally structured into three Roman-numbered parts, with each section having its own climax. A number of themes run through the story, but at the center are†¦show more content†¦Grete, in an act of goodwill and love toward Gregor, brought him a wide assortment of things, all spread out on old newspaper: old, half-rotten vegetables, bones left over from the evening meal, caked with congealed white sauce, som e raisins and almonds, a piece of cheese, which two days before Gregor had declared inedible, a plain slice of bread, a slice of bread and butter, and one with butter and salt (Kafka 24). Besides being the only member of the family still willing to face Gregor daily, she is also the family representative of Gregor, in a sense, to a mother who does not understand and a father who is hostile and opposing. The father is physically violent toward his metamorphosed Gregor, pushing him through a door in Part I: ...when from behind his father gave him a strong push which was literally a deliverance and he flew far into the room, bleeding freely (20). Grete appears to concentrate on protecting Gregor from this antagonistic father and an indecisive mother. In Part II, when Grete leads her mother into Gregors room for the first time, we see the strange way in which Grete has become both the expert and the caretaker of Gregors affairs (Nabokov 271). She convinces her mother that it is bes t to remove all of the furniture from his room. Kafka attributes her actions partly to an adolescent zest: Another factor which might have been also the enthusiastic temperament of an adolescent girl, which seeks to indulgeShow MoreRelatedGregor and Grete’s Transformation in The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka988 Words   |  4 PagesFranz Kafka wrote the short story Metamorphosis in 1912. No one can truly know what he aimed to accomplish with the story, but it is thought he wrote it to demonstrate the absurdity of life. 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