The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka, Analysis

The Notion of Alienation in Kafka's the Metamorphosis

     The Metamorphosis, written by Franz Kafka, tried to convey the theme of "alienation", which is the personal problem of individuals in modern times, in a metaphorical language. In addition to this, this article is presented to the reader for the purpose of analyzing and understanding the concept of "alienation" in the work called "transformation". The work belongs to German literature and was written under the influence of the modernism movement, and therefore, the individual-society relationship, which is a typical feature of the modernism movement, is included both in the work and in the article. At the same time, another important point for the readers is that thanks to Kafka's transcendent expression in the article, it is a proof that today's people can learn a lesson from the work and how alone we are in society in life. At the same time, another important point for the readers is that thanks to Kafka's transcendent expression in the article, it is a proof that today's people can learn a lesson from the work and how alone we are in society in life. As a result, when the work is examined in detail, it is actually a work that can help the people around us who are imprisoned in itself to save them from loneliness and reintegrate them into society.
 

Introduction

     When we stop from the age we live in and examine the fictional characters with a retrospective look, the dominant type we encounter is individuals who are alienated from themselves, society and nature. Although alienation takes its source from ancient narratives, myths and religious narratives, it finds its main identity in twentieth century novel characters.

     “The German sociologist and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm claimed that during industrialization in the 19th century, God was declared dead, “inhumanity” meant cruelty, and the inherent danger was that people would become slaves. However, in the 20th century, the problem changed: alienated from a sense of self, people had lost the ability to love and reason for themselves. “Man” effectively died. “Inhumanity” came to mean lacking humanity. People, Fromm advised, were in danger of becoming like robots. He attributed this sense of alienation to the emergence of Western capitalist societies and believed that a state’s social, economic, and political factors intersect to produce a “social character” common to all its citizens. In the industrial age, as capitalism increased its global dominance, states encouraged people to become competitive, exploitative, authoritarian, aggressive, and individualist. In the 20th century, by contrast, individuals were repositioned by capitalist states to become cooperative consumers, with standardized tastes, who could be manipulated by the anonymous authority of public opinion and the market. Technology ensured that work became more routine and boring. Fromm advised that unless people “get out of the rut” they are in and reclaim their humanity, they will go mad trying to live a meaningless, robotic life.” (Kafka, 2015:188)

    In line with this definition, explored in Kafka's The Metamorphosis, is the most appropriate. While Gregor Samsa was living a life of his own within his own life, he disappeared unaware of everyone. Franz Kafka, who is the child of a Jewish family, actually mentioned the loneliness he lived in society. He dealt with his problems with his father in his work and presented minuscule particulars about his life to the readers through his works. Franz Kafka's presentation of the theme of alienation, especially in western literature, by providing instances from his own life, can be described as presenting the autobiography in a metaphorical language.

     Franz Kafka was a German-speaking bohemian novelist and a well-recognized short story writer as one of the leading figures in 20th century literature. His work combines elements of realism and fantastic. The despair and absurdity prevalent in Kafka's work are seen as symbols of existentialism. While the majority of Kafka's literary works are associated with the experimental modernist genre, some of his books have been influenced by the expressionist movement. Kafka also impressed upon the theme of human conflict with bureaucracy. Using the effects of the modernist era, Kafka deals with conflicts, loneliness and alienation within the human being in his work of The Metamorphosis. It generally emphasizes isolated protagonists facing an unusual or surrealistic dilemma and meaningless socio-bureaucratic powers. Franz Kafka's work called "The Metamorphosis" is a work written in the form of a short story that describes the concept of alienation of individuals and can be considered a masterpiece in German literature. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, the meaninglessness of life, the disconnection between body and mind however, the most important theme in the work called The Metamorphosis is the concept of alienation. The Metamorphosis, the main character, the physical form of Gregor Samsa’s, is literally changing from human to insect. This is the misfortune of Gregor in the story. This essay will clarify how our main character, Gregor Samsa, is estranged from his job, his family, his body, and even his personal identity.

Alienation from Job 

     Before anything else, intense work tempo that suffocates one to do nothing; alienates a person to such an extent that he turns them into an insect. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor lives solely on work. His work and work tempo determine the direction of his life. His circle of friends is the people he meets in business life. The only thing that determines his social life is his job, and he does not complain about this situation. For him, the thought of not being able to go to work is a more frightening thought than the situation he is in (turning into an insect). Since not being able to go to work means abandoning the family that he is responsible for. Despite the slow pace and unbearable nature of his work, Gregor expresses his acceptance of his fate by saying: 

“If I didn't hold back for my parents' sake, I'd have quit ages ago. I would've gone to the boss and told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart. He would've fallen right off his desk! How weird it is to sit up at that desk and talk down to the employee from way up there. The boss has trouble hearing, so the employee has to step up quite close to him. Anyway, I haven't completely given up that hope yet. Once I've got together the money to pay off my parents' debt to him—that should take another five or six years—I'll do it for sure. Then I'll make the big break. In any case, right now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o'clock.” (Kafka, 1942: 4)

     Gregor Samsa has sacrificed himself for the debt of his family, but after his return, he is not wanted by his manager, which is an instance of his alienation from his job. For this situation, it must have been an extremely shameful and sad situation for Gregor that the disappearance of Samsa in his own loneliness and depression, firstly by his manager and then by his family, pushed him to end his life. The fact that his family's livelihood is entirely on Gregor will push his family into great financial difficulties. The conflict here is the character itself and we can describe it as man vs. man because the event here is about the relationship between Gregor Samsa and his manager. When examined in this way, our character suffers from problems with his surroundings.
 

Alienation from Body

     Another situation is that, protagonist does not feel physically belonging to himself and is alienated even from his own body. In the chapter part of the work, the differentiation in his own body, together with the main character's burning in his attack, disturbs him and shows his transformation as an insect in the following section:

“At first he wanted to get out of bed with the lower part of his body, but this lower part—which, by the way, he had not yet looked at and which he also couldn't picture clearly—proved itself too difficult to move. The attempt went so slowly. When, having become almost frantic, he finally hurled himself forward with all his force and without thinking, he chose his direction incorrectly, and he hit the lower bedpost hard. The violent pain he felt revealed to him that the lower part of his body was at the moment probably the most sensitive.” (Kafka, 1942:6)

     The family seems to be proceeding without him, and this perception leads to Gregor's self-estrangement. His sister's attitude towards him changes from an overly emotional girl to a bitter, mature stranger who first declared in the family that Gregor needed to be eradicated. The fact that his family wants to kill him does not shock him, but it seems that his sister hurt him and brought alienation from himself in the full of time that caused his death. I have it. Gregor finds that his family is isolating him because he can no longer communicate with him. That face wasn't his face, not just his face, but their hands, their feet, their arms, none of it was him, and nothing on his body was him. Then, in the second half of the work, he becomes estranged from both his body and his family.
 

Alienation from Family

     The other important point is that although Gregor Samsa worked for his family and made an effort for them, his family did nothing for him and they could not acknowledge him. Gregor is an issue for his family. Nobody cares about him since Gregor Samsa is a ghost which is not only scary but a gap for family manner. Moreover, the relationship between Gregor and his father is not the same as they used to be. (Conradi, 1983:12) Gregor has conscious of his father’s anger because of the failure of the father’s business and the debts that resulted, money is a chief concern for the Samsa family. Thus he copies every action his father does in every encounter. This attitude ends up with Gregor being hurt by his father. That father figure is rooted in the real father of Franz Kafka. Franz Kafka always uses that model in his other stories. Alienation challenges Gregor to stay in his room and hide under the sofa with unbearable aches. Being alienated from is turning into a breakpoint for Gregor’s fate.

     When the useless insect Gregor comes instead of Gregor who is struggling for his family and he seen as unnecessary and useless redundancy. He is pushed out of the family by being locked in a room. Not being able to go to work and not work is reason enough for Gregor the insect to be removed from being a member of the family. The modification of Gregor's sister Grete at a notable point in the story. It is related to Gregor's transformation begins with the first sentence of the work; Grete becomes increasingly estranged from Gregor after he becomes an insect. Grete is the first to complain about Gregor's situation and to say that they need to get rid of him. His modification becomes more prominent in the work, and it is expressed in the conversations between his parents that he has grown up and that the family should take responsibility. Towards the end of the work, she is shown by the parents as the person to whom the family hopes. In the work, the dislike of Gregor, especially by his sister, is clearly mentioned and expressed with the following words:

“"We must try to get rid of it," the sister now said decisively to the father, for the mother, in her coughing fit, was not listening to anything. "It is killing you both. I see it coming. When people have to work as hard as we all do, they cannot also tolerate this endless torment at home. I just can't go on any more." And she broke out into such a crying fit that her tears flowed out down onto her mother's face. She wiped them off her mother with mechanical motions of her hands.” (Kafka, 1942:43)

    Grete stands out as a new victim of alienation. This is an example of a system that selects new victims by eliminating individuals who are unable to perform their function in modern life. It is very sad for Gregor to be seen as a threat by his family. Even in such a state, not being wanted and excluded by his family has made him live in prison and your age has somehow disappeared within himself.

     Human alienation, which separates every moment from others, exhibits the effect of alienation from the individual side to the social facet, which amplifies the effect of social pressure and draws the individual into unresolvable alienation. After Gregor's transformation, his family moved away from him and regarded him as an unwanted extra. This work focuses on portraying family relationships and families as elements of alienation from each other. The work tells the impact of family life on alienation in a striking way. The negativities that the individual encounters in the family, whose social life is known for the first time, will continue to be a negative situation in the whole of the social processes that will be experienced in the continuation.

Alienation from Personal Identity

     Finally, the last crucial section is that Gregor Samsa is alienated from his identity throughout the story by trying to put himself in an acceptable shape. After transformation, Gregor Samsa cannot recognize his attitudes because he does not have control over himself as a human does. Gregor sacrifices his youth to ensure the financial well-being of his family. However when he turned into an ugly insect overnight, his family continued to isolate him from their lives and communities. Not only is he useless now, but his life as an insect is not affordable. Dealing with Gregor in this way creates alienation from himself. Therefore, Gregor Samsa is to hide from society in this story. His existence does not mean anything to himself. He is always in conflict with his identity. Every chance he got turned into a painful act for himself. This turmoil between Gregor Samsa and his insect form creates a memoir that attributes his former lifestyle. Day by day, he is alienated by his identity even he tries to hide from anything and situation. He slowly starts to forget what is being human in this society. This psychological effect limits Gregor’s mind and draws him up a paradox. From a psychological point of view, it is quite devastating for a person to suddenly wake up as an insect. The main character, Gregor Samsa, who gave up many things for the people around him and sacrificed himself for his family, above all, lost his own identity and self. This situation must have been quite striking, that at the end of the work, Gregor Samsa almost became another creature and disappeared.

Conclusion

“Once, we lived in silence; we now live with noise. Once, we were isolated, and now we are lost in the crowd. Once, we received too few messages, and we are now bombarded with them. Modernity has uprooted us from the narrow limits of the local cultures in which we once lived; it has cast us in to a mass society and a mass culture as well as, giving us individual freedom. For a long time, we fought the regimes and their heritage; in the twentieth century, the most dramatic calls for liberation are directed against the new regimes, the new society and the new man that so many authoritarian regimes are tried to create. Revolutions are directed against revolutions and regimes that were born of them. Modernity's great strength was its ability to open up a world which was once closed and fragmented. It becomes exhausted as trade intensifies, as the population rises and the density of capital, consumer goods, instruments of social control and arms increases.” (Touraine,1995:91)

     In his critique, Alain Touraine explains that individuals are stuck in society and are alienated by being isolated from the society in that crisis. In Kafka's work, this event is mostly conveyed through metaphors. although he used a surrealistic concept as "insect", he actually conveyed this to the readers that the individual reflects himself.

     The modern world also prepares the space of the alienated individual; the universe he founded/inhabited almost resembles a tin can. It is a bendable reality when it lives. The alienated individual is not even aware of the fact that the nature he lives in is occupied by modernism, and those who are aware are unfortunately aware that it is not possible to escape from modernism, that is, alienation. In the 1984 novel of a modernist writer, George Orwell, the feeling of boredom and inability to get rid of the people who are constantly watched, instills in people the conditions of the age in which they live, and people perceive alienation as a natural element and take it for granted. So much so that there is no escape from modernism, and unfortunately, it is impossible to go back to the past: When viewed from this window, it seems impossible that the work of art will not be affected by this crushing harsh attitude of modernism. but there is a difference between Kafka and Orwell. While Kafka used a more metaphorical universe in his work, Orwell tried to create a utopian world, and Orwell focused more on the concepts of society-individual.

     Kafka, in his book The Metamorphosis, emphasized alienation and handled the sociological and mental systems of humans in an absurd language. The alteration skilled with the aid of using current people may be discovered in maximum of his works. Kafka`s heroes are all at once confronted with a scenario this is absolutely contrary to the existence they stay in. Contrary to their standard existence, they all at once come across a brand-new scenario. Kafka opposes the persevering with existence to an alien international, absolutely contrary to it. In this new international, the person studies alienation to the fullest extent. Kafka describes alienation in those new worlds; diagnose the shape of alienation in current society. He cuts off his heroes from their accustomed lives and brings them to the bounds of alienation in a brand new surroundings and a brand new order. Constantly confronting their heroes are opposing forces with the intention to alienate them. Kafka's maximum crucial success on the factor of alienation is that he confirmed that alienation can arise in each revel in that person existence encounters, and that this can have an effect on people a lot that they distance them from their personalities and from the international. Kafka found out the remaining factor of alienation, the current international theater with all its screens. In this theater, the person drowns with inside the lifeless ends; it leads to complete renunciation. At the end of the screen, the individual realizes that the end has come. Kafka saw the fate of the modern individual from the beginning. The theme of alienation stands out prominently in Kafka's The Metamorphosis. Maybe there are many Gregor Samsa around us, even if they are not insects, in this work of Kafka, he wanted us to pay attention to Gregor Samsa by revealing people who were left to alienation.

REFERENCES

-Alkhafaji, W. M. (2020). A STUDY OF ALIENATION IN KAFKA'S THE METAMORPHOSIS AS A MORAL GUIDE FOR THE NEW GENERATION. Palarch’s Journal of Archaeology of Egypt/Egyptology.17 (06), 1673-1691.

-European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe, Winter 1983/84, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Winter 1983/84), pp. 8-16

-Gerald. E. (1992). Lynch. G. and Rampton. D. Short Fiction: An Introductory Anthology. Ottawa: Nelson Publishing. 494-532.

-Kafka, Franz. (1912). (Tr. Ian Johnston). The Metamorphosis. Feedbooks.

-Spindler, W. (1993). Magical Realism: A Typology. Forum for Modern Language Studies. XXIX (1): 90–93.

-Tomley, S. and Hobbs M. (2015). Sociology Book. New York. DK Publishing.

-Touraine, A. (1995). Critique of Modernity. (p. 91). Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

-Zainab, M. and Moinuddin, K. (2017). Alienation, Bureaucracy and Self Identity in the Best Known Works of Franz Kafka. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science. Volume 22, Issue 7, Ver. 4 PP. 22-28.

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