Gregor Samsa as the Existentialist Hero

A detailed Summary of Gregor Samsa as the Existentialist Hero

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin" (The Metamorphosis, 3).

So begins Franz Kafka's masterpiece, "The Metamorphosis," written in 1912. This work can be viewed as an exploration of the outcast in European society. It was written in German, rather than Czech, by a Jew in a chiefly Catholic country with an extensive history of anti-Semitism. Therefore, since Kafka's fiction is set in an alternate reality that is threatening, one always has the sense of an individual unfairly trapped in an absurd world, as he was. The weirdness of this transformation or "change" makes us evaluate Gregor's role as the symbolic prototype of the Existential hero because the story was written from an existentialist viewpoint, proven by its emphasis on loneliness, isolation, and the autonomy of one's existence.

Gregor lived in an absurd world full of suffering and peculiarity. After Gregor

As the only human bug, Gregor was alone and alienated in his world. Even before his metamorphosis, Gregor was a traveling salesman who was "constantly seeing new faces" and could have "no relationships that last or get more intimate" (The Metamorphosis, 4). The situation grew more pronounced when he was a beetle as he rejected and turned against his family "whose existence... he had almost forgotten" (35). Thus, even as a regular human, he fulfilled the existentialist idea that one's "actions are only his, his responsibility is to himself, his being is his own" by truly relating to no one (Philosophy of Existentialism). Another example of this alienation comes from Gregor's final realization about others reactions to his dilemma. Ultimately, seeing his family's disgust, he understood that even the best relations are founded on false impressions. Gregor, in his insect form, suffered just the same fate and couldn't find a reason to continue living.

Grego

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Approximate Word count = 646
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: Novels

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