Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Lessons of Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis could be seen as allegorical. There are many ideas that the book could be a metaphor for. One metaphor that I thought was important was not taking anything in life for granted. At the start of the story Gregor is so involved in his work that he doesn’t enjoy having other activities in his life. When he can’t work anymore, Gregor doesn’t have much of anything to do and hides under the couch most of the day. His family also kind of took having Gregor for granted. They grew accustomed to having his money available. When this wasn’t available anymore, they had to all go out and get jobs. They could no longer just sit at home and do whatever they wanted, such as reading the paper. Gregor also became useless to them, so they lost interest in interacting with him.
There are also many other texts that could be connected to this story. I saw a connection between this story and the book the Hatchet. In the Hatchet, Brian is left all alone on an island after a plane crash. He doesn’t have many supplies, anything to do, or people to talk to. This kind of reminded me of Metamorphosis because Gregor is left all by himself in his room. He tries to reach out to other members of his family but they don’t want anything to do with him. One difference between the two stories is that Brian is eventually found in the end while Gregor ends up dying.

1 comment:

  1. I agree, I thought the story was a lesson to never take anything for granted as the family had taken Gregor for granted all of the years that he had worked to support them. I also thought it spoke to the fact that the only reason why the family loved him was for the food that he put on the table.

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