Family in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis Essay Example

Relationships with family have a large impact on Gregor and his ability to take on transforming into a bug. Before the change, Gregor and his family were “close”, considering they live together and Gregor makes all of the income for their household. After the change, Gregor's family has to begin to care for him along with creating income for themselves. 

To the family, other than Gregor's sister, they treat him unlike family and more as just someone who creates income for them. At the beginning, after Gregor wakes up and realizes he is not human anymore, the mother says, “He is not well, believe me..nothing in his head except business” (paragraph 19). The mother acts as if she knows how Gregor feels about his work life, but really his thoughts are much different from hers. Gregor says, “If I didn't hold back for my parents’ sake, I would’ve quit ages ago”. Gregor's family misunderstands him time after time. 

As the story goes along Gregor's family becomes tired of their own daily work and tired of having to take care of Gregor. The family finally gives up on him and neglects him, as if he is not there. (Paragraph 89) says, “But even when the sister, exhausted from her daily work, had grown tired of caring for Gregor as she had before, even then the mother did not come in on her behalf”, which goes to show the family had given up on taking the responsibility of Gregor. 

The relationship between Gregor and his family quickly became nonexistent as he created more and more of a burden on them. They did not even bother to think of him as a being and began referring to Gregor as “it”. Gregor became such a large burden on the family and they could not go on caring for him any longer. In (paragraph 103) the sister says, “We must get rid of it..It is killing you both..When people have to work as hard as we all do, they cannot also tolerate this endless torment at home” The family realizes the pain Gregor is causing and agrees they are better off without him. Right after they discover Gregor has passed the father says, “now we can give thanks to God” (paragraph 115), and the family goes on with their own lives, as if Gregor had no impact on them or their lives. 

Gregor may have been able to be saved if his family were to try harder for him. If they never gave up on him maybe he would have kept eating. If they were to treat him more as a human being maybe his mental health would not have gone down into a dark hole as far as it did. If Gregor were to know he was cared for and loved would he have let go as easily as he did? The relationships Gregor had with his family  played a large role in his fate in the end.