Is Gregor still Gregor?

At the beginning of Metamorphosis Gregor is a giant insect physically but he still has very human thoughts. He’s worried about work at first and then a little later he’s worried about how his family will live without him as economic provider. In fact, he is extremely glad to hear that his new condition won’t hurt his family that much because of his father’s “unexpected thrift and foresight” of keeping some of Gregor’s money each month (Kafka 85). These are all still very human thoughts and concerns. As the book progresses he starts to enjoy more bug-like aspects of life. He starts to enjoy scurrying around the room and eating trash rather than his favorite human foods.
Yet, all his thoughts and descriptions still sound like Gregor. He thinks in a very optimistic way about himself and his family at the beginning, but later when he’s thinking about things that only an insect might care about he continues to have his human personality. For example, when his sister is bringing him his food, the whole scene is interpreted by Gregor as his sister being very kind and considerate. He says, “out of a sense of delicacy, since she knew that Gregor would not eat in her presence, she withdrew at top speed” (Kafka 81). From an outside perspective this scene has a very different tone, it feels like Grete is just trying to get out as quickly as possible, out of disgust towards Gregor.

So does Gregor stay Gregor throughout the story? I think that his actual thoughts might become bug-like, for instance when he takes time to appreciate the cool glass when he crawls up to protect his picture. Yet, the way he thinks still has the same general themes as how he thought before (or right after) he was changed into an insect. He continues to be influenced strongly by what his family thinks and is kind of deluded, thinking that his family appreciated all the work he did so much. So I think overall Gregor stays himself mentally, but some of his priorities switch from how they were before the transformation.

Comments

  1. UnknownOctober 13, 2017 at 11:25 AM

    I think that Gregor does stay Gregor throughout the story. Gregor transformed from being a normal human being into a bug in a matter of a night. Gregor is still Gregor just in a new body. Most of his thoughts stay human and his more insect-like thoughts are just responses to his new body. If you were an insect for a day I think you would respond in a lot of the same ways. Until his last breath Gregor was always thinking and analyzing things about his family, and a lot of his values stay the same so I agree that Gregor stays himself mentally! Thanks for a thought provoking post!

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    1. Matthew JinOctober 14, 2017 at 5:27 PM

      I agree with Ethan. He still has Gregor thoughts. He cares for his family and he feels sorry that he can't be there to support them. However, Gregor's humanity is taken away. At the end of the day, he's still an insect and that's reasonable. But even with that humanity taken away, Gregor is still Gregor.

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  2. WillOctober 13, 2017 at 7:30 PM

    I would say that Gregor is a different person by the end of the story. Certainly, your main point about him becoming more and more bug-like in his thoughts throughout the story suggests this. On the other hand, there are some changes in the way Gregor acts and thinks throughout the story. For instance, he criticizes his sister at points. But by the end, he loves his family once more. In the last few paragraphs before his death, many of his thoughts were also very human-like, suggesting that his change wasn't terribly drastic.
    However, there is the possibility that Gregor's praise of his family members is actually sarcastic, which would change things entirely.

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  3. Dante FreundOctober 13, 2017 at 9:55 PM

    I would say that Gregor stays human throughout the narrative but that humanity is slowly eaten away by the gnawing insect instincts. If Gregor wasn't Gregor at the end of the novella then there would be no sympathy for Grete deciding to end him. However, because Gregor's humanity still exists, the reader is filled with even more horror at the end of the story.

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    Replies
    1. DJOctober 14, 2017 at 1:44 PM

      Dante, I agree with your point. However, I do want to make an important distinction. I agree that his humanity is slowly eaten away by the gnawing "insect instincts". However, I believe the family plays a crucial role in perpetuating the transformation. By treating him like a bug and not a human (eg. taking all Gregor's human furniture out of the house and going long periods of time without direct communication) they contribute in "taking the human out of him" .

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  4. MitchellOctober 14, 2017 at 11:17 AM

    This question is especially interesting with regard to the very end of the story--after Gregor has died, his still ostensibly "human" consciousness extinguished (with thoughts of "love and tenderness" for his family the last thing on his mind), do we *still* see evidence of his sensibility shading the story? I would argue--as some in class pointed out--that we do, that the "happy ending" is still a projection of Gregor's self-negating view of himself and his role within the family. Just as he'd earlier thought of himself as a "provider," now he's seeing himself as a burden, totally taking to heart Grete's passive-aggressive comment about how "the real Gregor" would just crawl away and die (which he promptly does). So at the end, when the family is ecstatic to be "free" of him, it's entirely possible to read this as a further reflection of his own self-negating view of family dynamics. They're "better off without him," just as Grete so sensibly has said.

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