Kafka And His Characters

In ‘The Metamorphosis’, the author uses the way individuals transport themselves in order to reveal their personality. In particular four characters are analyzed from this viewpoint in this paper: firstly, the main character’s lack of grief for his lost leg reveals his acceptances and ease in his new body, enhanced by him becoming skilled at using his new body fairly quickly. Secondly, the chief clerk’s firm confident, assertive, authoritative steps, and the father’s stamping as he drives Gregory back into his room reveals aggressive persons prone to inflicting negative feelings on others, and finally the mother’s carrying herself to the window and her instability to stand on her feet in the view of her son’s appearance reflecting her lack of security and self-containment.

‘The Metamorphosis’ is based on Kafka personal experiences, as he quoted in ‘Letter to My Father’: “All my life you have treated me like some loathsome vermin which you saw as an annoyance and tried to shoe out of your way”. These two lines give all the essence of ‘The Metamorphosis’, it is a self examining story thinking out not only the father-son relation but then contradiction in the feelings these characters carry for one another; Gregory’s father views him as a burden while Gregory bears nothing but love for his father and is deprived of the affection he longs for. On the other hand, yet one more important character is analysed; that would be the Mother for which Kafka quoted: “Whatever you many say, a mother can do wonders. She puts together whatever everyone else has wrecked”. Even though in ‘The Metamorphosis’ Gregor addresses his mother, she never addresses him but rather avoids him when he comes closer to her. When her transformed son is in danger nonetheless, she tries to hinder her husband from hurting her son.