Kafka's The Metamorphosis: Gregor Samsa as a Symbol of Marxist Alienation

According to Karl Marx, the laborer's "work is external to the worker, i.e., it does not form part of his essential being so that instead of feeling well in his work, he feels unhappy, instead of developing his free physical and mental energy, he abuses his body and ruins his mind" (Bloom 107). Gregor is the ideal symbol for what Marx is complaining about; he is alienated from the product he works to create because he doesn't own it. In addition, he really isn't even working for a wage for himself; his wages are directed toward taking care of his father's debts. Once Gregor changes bodily into the bug he was philosophically all along, his isolation and alienation becomes complete. "Gregor Samsa's transformation into vermin presents self-alienation in a literal way, not merely a customary metaphor become fictional fact...No manner more drastic could illustrate the alienation of a consciousness from its own being than Gregor Samsa's startled and startling awakening" (Bloom 105). Finally, Gregor's alienation from his humanity is totally physicalized and realized: "That is to say, Samsa, having been a successful salesman, was once the pillar of his family, but now, being helpless, his sister assumes in the eyes of his parents the role of leadership and reassuring strength that he had once occupied" (Scott 37). Just as an insect is only a small player in the grander scheme of nature and not expected to experience such things as content or ambition, so does Gregor eventually give over entirely to a system intent on destroying those key components of humanity.

Works Cited

Bloom, Harold, ed. Franz Kafka's the Metamorphosis. New York: Chelsea House, 1988.

Bouson, J. Brooks. A Study of the Narcissistic Character and the Drama of the Self A Study of the Narcissistic Character and the Drama of the Self. Amherst : University of Massachusetts Press, 1989.

Scott, Nathan A. Rehearsals of Discomposure: Alienation and Reconciliation in Modern Literature: Franz Kafka, Ignazio Silone, D. H. Lawrence . New York: King's Crown Press, 1952.

Kafka, Franz. "The Metamorphosis." The Norton Anthology of World Literature, Vol. F: The Twentieth Century. 2^nd Edition. Ed. Sarah Lawall. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2003.