No proper reactions from family in 'Metamorphosis.'

I started reading Franz Kakfa's reportedly seminal work 'Metamorphosis.' But what I found surprising was that when Gregor opens the door and shows himself metamorphed into a monstrous insect, the family's reactions were not at all realistic and the events that follows seemed shallow, his father throwing him back into the room and later his sister bringing him food. This made me feel that he was being treated more as a family pet, like a dog. They seemed like they weren't properly concerned about their son transforming into something non-human.. I mean, c'mon they didn't even cry and stop eating their food, rather they fed him the left overs of their meals.

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Originally Posted by krishna_lit

I started reading Franz Kakfa's reportedly seminal work 'Metamorphosis.' But what I found surprising was that when Gregor opens the door and shows himself metamorphed into a monstrous insect, the family's reactions were not at all realistic and the events that follows seemed shallow, his father throwing him back into the room and later his sister bringing him food. This made me feel that he was being treated more as a family pet, like a dog. They seemed like they weren't properly concerned about their son transforming into something non-human.. I mean, c'mon they didn't even cry and stop eating their food, rather they fed him the left overs of their meals.

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Yes, the people do not behave consistently with the event of the insect. But that's precisely Kafka's point. The insect is not actual and so the people are not actual. If they had taken the insect completely seriously, the comedy would be completely lost. Kafka was not a writer of horror.

it's very much a modernist piece in that he is living the nightmare of modernism being isolated and alienated from his self, including his family as part of what constitutes the self, and his own reaction to his change leads to the varied reactions of his family, upon whom he becomes dependent the way they were dependent on him to work all the time, being the cog in the wheel that is just a robot worker in the aftermath of modern industrialization, where workers are seen as mindless and only there to serve a purpose for the employer to produce and profit by, which is very Marxist in thought as well.

Very nice points you made there.. Thnkx... Now i can read further with more clarity of the writer's view point.

Even Gregor Samsa himself does not show much of a reaction, nor does the narrator explain why or how it all happened. It just happened. This is Kafka's irony. Things happen, we don't know how and why and even the most absurd things can happen in this manner. This is the concrete, sharp-edged beauty of his writing. This is what Adorno famously called Kafka's wheels. This is the metamorphoses that takes place in the story: not that a human changed into an insect but this huge changed took place and nothing changed except the slow, usual progress towards disease, death and decay... "He over whom Kafka's wheels have passed, has lost for ever both any peace with the world and any chance of consoling himself with the judgement that the way of the world is bad"- Theodore Adorno

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Originally Posted by Diar624

...varied reactions of his family, upon whom he becomes dependent the way they were dependent on him to work ...

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This is correct, & the core of Kafka is his characters' mundane reactions to the bizarre. Samsa keeps hoping he'll be able to get up & go to work & so does the family. They drag his boss in to give him a pep talk.

Most families back in those days had the single breadwinner; & like Gregor's family, the rest developed this almost parasitic relation to the one that brought home the bacon. They resist his being dependent on them.

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Originally Posted by krishna_lit

I started reading Franz Kakfa's reportedly seminal work 'Metamorphosis.' But what I found surprising was that when Gregor opens the door and shows himself metamorphed into a monstrous insect, the family's reactions were not at all realistic and the events that follows seemed shallow, his father throwing him back into the room and later his sister bringing him food. This made me feel that he was being treated more as a family pet, like a dog. They seemed like they weren't properly concerned about their son transforming into something non-human.. I mean, c'mon they didn't even cry and stop eating their food, rather they fed him the left overs of their meals.

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I'd recommend reading Gogol's The Nose, without which Metamorphosis would likely not exist. The Nose is seminal, Metamorphosis its offspring.