Kafka in the Modern Era

      Throughout life, we are constantly trying to get the acceptance from someone we know won't get it from. Acceptance is the action or process of being received as adequate or suitable, typically to be admitted into a group. Franz Kafka's life was constantly a game of trying to win his fathers acceptance. Kafka was an educated, German-speaking Czech Jew, it's not hard to see echoes of Enlightenment philosophy in his works. Kafka puts a twist on the whole ethical tradition by making the subject of ethical debate in The Metamorphosis, a bug. And not just any bug, a vermin, a pest. Gregor isn't a cute little ladybug or even a motherly spider named Charlotte, but the kind of disgusting bug that makes your skin crawl and stinks when you squish it. In Kafka's father's eyes, Franz was a failure. Although Gregor was ugly on the outside, on the inside he was pure. Everyone else saw him as a vermin. They only saw what he had unwillingly transformed into. In the beginning of The Metamorphosis, when Gregor's body is turned, his parents haven't seen him and want him to come outside his room and to meet with them. In Kafka's real life, this is just before he became an other. His parents still love him, yet they are distant. Even before and in the beginning of his writing career, his sister was always there. But when he becomes a writer he knows that she would end up siding with her father because of acceptance and the fear of being rejected. When Gregor first doesn't open the door, his sister, Grete, begins to cry. "Why did his sister not go to the others? She had probably just got up out of bed now and had not even started to get dressed yet. Then why was she crying? Because he was not getting up and letting the manager in, because he was in danger of losing his position, and because then his boss would badger his parents once again with the old demands?" ( Kafka, 4). In the end of the story, Grete is on her father's side of things and is working because Gregor can't. In this passage, She is crying because she is fearful of what is to come, that Gregor will get hired and she might have to work to support the family. So out of love and selfishness, she takes care of Gregor, thinking that if he gets better, he can work and she won't have to.
       When Gregor was working, slowly, the life was being sucked from him. He worked so much so that his parents did not have to want for a thing. Little did they know, the parents were using vampirism In Gregor's work. They loved their son but they let him work so much that he got worn out and more tired each passing day. So that one day he wakes up late, his parents are worried but in a rush to get him out of the house and off working. They were excited from the delicious blood they can suck from him today, making him weaker by the second. Throughout the times when Grete brings Gregor food, each time she brings in and leaves quickly so she doesn't have to see his face. "To test his taste, she brought him an entire selection, all spread out on an old newspaper. There were old half-rotten vegetables, bones from the evening meal, covered with a white sauce which had almost solidified, some raisins and almonds, cheese which Gregor had declared inedible two days earlier, a slice of dry bread, a slice with butter, and a slice of salted bread smeared with butter." (Kafka, 10). Gregor's communion is now with himself. When people eat together is a bond of friendship and excepting each other.  "...breaking bread together is a sign of sharing and peace, since if your're breaking bread you're not breaking heads." (Foster, 8). Grete and the rest of Gregor's family did not want to eat with him. He had no friends and no one who wanted to love him. "I'm with you, I like you, we form a community together." (Foster 8). Gregor' family did no want anything to do with such a pest, so they left him to eat by himself, a lonely communion.
        The Metamorphosis, is comical. Gregor takes it with a sense of irony, pretending that noting is wrong. He’s well aware of how people perceive him. But the funny thing is, aside from how he scares everyone, it is that he’s more troubled by how his transformation has thoroughly screwed up his routing than by the transformation itself. He spends almost the entire first chapter trying to figure out how to get out of bed, while constantly worrying about train schedules and how his tardiness might affect his job. And when he does get out of bed and opens his bedroom door, the results are comic genius. While his boss and his parents are on the verge of panic, Gregor just wants to go to work, and even gives a little speech on how he feels, stating that he’s perfectly fine, though he might have a tiny cold. Then, Gregor reminds his boss to report on his employee’s condition truthfully.
        In the original piece, Kafka writes the word vermin in German as Ungeziefer, which means and unclean animal not suited for sacrifice. In the second picture below, is showing the relationship between Kafka and Gregor. Although Gregor is the bug, Kafka is the writer. The illustrator of the cover, was very deep with how the image was going to turn out. Every cover of every book has a meaning that relates to the book. This cover shows the book, and explains the author. Kafka felt like a Ungeziefer in his father's eyes. And in Mr. Samsa's eyes, Gregor was a bug, but for a different reason. Because of Kafka's unwillingness to become a accountant, Kafka was dead to his father. In the first image, is a picture passed off Kafka's life. Kafka was a child with no fatherly figure. His father was always gone, off at work and his mother was distance too. In The Metamorphosis, his parents were close to Gregor before the transformation, almost like that's how Kafka wished his parents were.
     Gregor and Kafka were very much alike. It started off as opposites, Gregor having a loving father and Kafka not. But, then as the story of The Metamorphosis progresses, things begin to even out and their stories become one. When Gregor's father sees Gregor as the bug, he no longer cares for him. Just as Kafka's father sees Kafka after he told his father he did not want to be a business man, but a writer. Once Gregor dies, his father seems to feel at peace. Kafka felt as though he was dead in his father's eyes and thought that he would feel peace is Gregor was dead, and not alive.