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In 1916, Franz Kafka expressed in his diaries a persistent nagging feeling in regards to his newly completed novella, The Metamorphosis. He wrote: "I could in more favorable circumstances of life have achieved a purer, more compelling work" (Kafka, Letters to Felice 160). Despite Kafka's misgivings regarding its merit and artistic soundness, The Metamorphosis has been acclaimed by critics as his most poetic and enduring work. 'The story begins with its climax. Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning only to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin" (Kafka, Metamorphosis 3). In this form, Gregor becomes isolated from his family. Disgusted with his appearance, they lock him in his room and because of Gregor's inability to speak, they do not communicate with him. Gregor cultivates a sense of guilt after his metamorphosis as he increasingly becomes a financial and emotional burden on the rest of his family. Little by little, the story loses the momentum from its opening lines and Gregor dies. Gregor's death typifies the fate of the bourgeois class as Kafka saw it in 1916, where the anxieties a person feels within society are a direct result of unfulfilled anticipation of emotional gratification. However tragic this may seem, Gregor does not die unhappily; on the contrary, his death is peaceful and resolves the issues he has with his family. By this metamorphosis, Kafka means to show the reader that family, being the basic unit of society, robs the individual of personality and in order to achieve self-actualization, one must first be removed from this source of angst.

The art of Kafka's writing lies in its simplicity. He guides the reader through Gregor's world with incredible ease but all the while hints at what is to come. The first paragraph is the climax of the novella, where Gregor's metamorphosis is both comic and tragic in its depiction. On the surface, it describes the somatic consequences of Gregor's metamorphosis; but Kafka's intent is to show Gregor's psychological state through this physical representation.

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous vermin. He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arched-shaped ribs, to whose dome the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely hang. His many legs, pitifully thin compared to the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes. (Kafka, Metamorphosis 3)

The reader immediately gets a sense of Gregor's situation. Subconsciously, there's something troubling him, as is evident by his unsettling dreams, such that he does not want to deal with it on a conscious level. The language-of the passage, "he found himself changed," holds key insight to Gregor's demeanor. It creates an element of surprise in Gregor's realization of the metamorphosis and shows that he has not chosen his own situation. Thus passivity is inherent in Gregor's personality.

As a passive person, Gregor represses issues that cause great discomfort to those around him; and for whatever reason, his present concerns are pressing enough to cause his metamorphosis. Though one might begin to feel sympathy for Gregor in this passage, one cannot help but laugh at the absurdity of the image it depicts. "No matter how hard [Gregor] threw himself onto his right side, he always rocked onto his back again. He must have tried it a hundred times" (Kafka, Metamorphosis 3). He is so awkward in his position that his actions are rendered futile. The weight of his body is precariously placed on his back in the form of a dome cover about to slide off completely. His legs are dangling in the air, waving around helplessly as if he has no control over his own body. He cannot even succeed in getting out of bed and onto his feet, which are so pitiful compared with the rest of his body that it is doubtful they will even support his weight, much less act in a coherent fashion so that he can move about directly. This also resonates metaphorically if the reader infers that Gregor has somehow lost control of his life, which is a possible explanation for the anxieties acted out in his "unsettling dreams."

Further in the story, Gregor's burden, as depicted by the domed shell, materializes in a more direct fashion. Five years before the metamorphosis, his father's business collapsed, leaving the family in financial ruin. Gregor subsequently took over as head of household. The domed shell is a physical representation of the burden on Gregor placed on him by his family, who demands relief from the psychological trauma accompanying their debt. "In those days, Gregor's sole concern had been to do everything in his power to make the family forget as quickly as possible the business disaster which had plunged everyone into a state of total despair" (Kafka, Metamorphosis 26). Gregor is not allowed to pursue his own ambitions; his ambitions are those of the family as a whole. Gregor's free will has been sacrificed for the good of the family and thus he loses control of his life. Here, the reader's above assumptions make sense: Gregor, after his father's business failure, assumes head of the house. As a traveling salesman, he earns enough money to sustain the family's way of life as well as pay off their debt gradually. But this new way of life is troubling for Gregor. He enjoys what he can provide for his family--"he felt very proud that he had been able to provide such a life in so nice an apartment for his parents and his sister" (Kafka, Metamorphosis 22)--but something is lacking in him. The family has become so used to Gregor's help that they expect it rather than appreciate it. The narrator explains:

Those had been wonderful times, and they had never returned, at least not with the same glory, although later on Gregor earned enough money to meet the expenses of the entire family and actually did so. They had just gotten used to it, the family as well as Gregor, the money was received with thanks and given with pleasure, but no special feeling of warmth went with it any more. (Kafka, Metamorphosis 27)

At first, Gregor receives a tender response to his altruistic deeds. However, when this tenderness is soon lost in their appreciation of him, Gregor too becomes as emotionally, inert as his family as he learns not to expect much out of them. Part of this lies in Gregor's passivity and profession in which an indefinite deferment of his feelings is almost certain; beyond that, the reader notes that neither the family nor Gregor can be blamed for the events leading to his metamorphosis.

Gregor's metamorphosis renders him isolated from his family. The family, disgusted with his odious appearance, locks Gregor in his room and, as he gradually loses his human voice, they terminate communication with him altogether. Gregor's sister brings his food out on an "old newspaper: old, half-rotten vegetables; bones left over from the evening meal, caked with congealed white sauce; some raisins and almonds; a piece of cheese, which two days before Gregor had declared inedible... In addition to all this she put down some water in the bowl permanently earmarked for Gregor's use" (Kafka, Metamorphosis 24). Gregor eats food that has been discarded by the family, which, in some respects, mirrors his own predicament. Having the water-bowl permanently earmarked creates a sense of disjunction in their family, where his things are separated from theirs. Slightly more subtle than that is the significance of the newspaper. Kimberly Sparks suggests that family language in The Metamorphosis has a precise symbolic correlative: "The person in power at any moment reads or manipulates the newspaper" (78). Stanley Corngold extends Sparks's discussion to say: "It is a sorry comment on his loss of power and identity within the family that it is on a newspaper that his first meal of garbage is served. It represents an efficient language from which Gregor is excluded" (55). In contrast to these subtleties, his family eventually locks him into his room where he is physically separated from his family. When his sister, Grete, urges his mother to move the furniture out of his room, Gregor shows signs of discomfort.

He had been so used to his furniture for so long [that he] would feel abandoned in the empty room. When he heard his mother's words [to his sister suggesting that they not move the furniture], Gregor realized that the monotony of family life, combined with the fact that not a soul had addressed a word directly to him, must have addled his brain in the course of the past two months, for he could not explain to himself in any other way how in all seriousness he could have been anxious to have his room cleared out. (Kafka, Metamorphosis 33)

Gregor does not see an empty room as aiding his mobility or free will, but rather these items are his last ties to his human life, and to give them up would be to forget his human past. Gregor's metamorphosis continues as an increasingly psychological one and is not of his own doing; Grete precipitates the situation by convincing her mother to move the furniture out, and with it everything Gregor had grown to love. Gregor's isolation is therefore one from humanity.

Gregor's isolation from humanity allows him to reflect on his life and resolve the anxieties he has kept repressed.

The rotten apple in his side and the inflamed area around it, which were completely covered with fluffy dust, already hardly bothered him. He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside everything was beginning to grow light- Then, without his consent, his head sank to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath. (Kafka, Metamorphosis 58)

Gregor dies in a Christ-like manner: he has a side-wound from the rotten apple his father threw at him; his sense of duty to his family supersedes his own desires to live; and he has been betrayed by his sister when she removes the furniture from his room and also when she convinces her parents that Gregor is not human anymore and that they must get rid of him rather than endure him. His situation worsens as the maid, upon advice from Grete, moves discarded furniture in to his room. The room closes in on Gregor; he is trapped in this prison, suffocating from further loss of free will. Gregor knows that he should die so as not to inconvenience those around him. This contrasts sharply with Kafka's portrayal of Gregor's parents, and to a certain extent Grete, who feed off of Gregor's productivity for their own benefit. Though not consenting to die, he does so happily, reflecting back on his life with much joy. A new day begins at his death, which implies not only Gregor's ascension into the heavens, but also a rebirth for the family who can now begin their life anew.

Thus, The Metamorphosis refers not only to Gregor's metamorphosis, but also his family's. The power shifts from parent to child and eldest child to youngest child are cyclical, like any other metamorphosis one would expect to find in nature; Kafka's work depicts the metamorphosis of human nature. In writing this novella, Kafka drew from his own experiences. In fact, upon its completion, he wrote a letter to his father that addresses issues similar to those raised in The Metamorphosis:

You have in fact gotten it into your head to live completely off me. I admit that we are fighting with each other, but there are two kinds of fighting. The chivalrous fight, where the powers of independent opponents compete with each other: each is his own man, loses on his own, wins on his own. And the fight of the vermin, which not only stings but also sucks the blood for its self-preservation. That is after all what the real professional soldier is, and that's what you are. You are unfit for life; but in order to be able to settle down in it comfortably, without worries and without self-reproaches, you prove that I took all your fitness for life out of you and put it into my pocket. What does it matter to you if you're unfit for life: it's my responsibility. But you calmly stretch yourself out and let yourself to be dragged body and soul through life by me. (Kafka, Hochzeitsvorbereitungen 221-277)

There are striking similarities between The Metamorphosis and Kafka's life, but that is not the main issue here. More relevant to the present topic is the question of identity within the family unit of society. Kafka reveals, both through Gregor's life and his own, that the excessive burdens placed on an individual by a parasitic family is enough to render that individual devoid of any personality of his own apart from the life the family expects of him. Gregor is never allowed to follow his own dreams. This was also the case with many bourgeois members of society during the time Kafka in which wrote.

Their effort is desperate because there does not appear to be for them any life forms other than the bourgeois, because they do not recognize that these forms must necessarily collide with the claims of a truly human way of life. (Richter 118)

By treating Gregor as representative of modern man, Kafka describes the plight of the bourgeois class. Society is structured in family units which, in the bourgeois class, fail to support adequately the needs of the individual. He describes the family unit as an inherent source of angst for the individual. In order for the individual to have a discrete identity outside of this parasitic family unit, he must be removed from it as Gregor is by his metamorphosis. The individual attains self-actualization when his motivations are pure--when his ambition remains apart from the expectations of others.