In the settings room William brought up a very interesting point of philosophy existentialism, and after a quick trip to Google to see what it is it made me see the book in a bit of a different way. Gregor may or my not have been an actual bug but what he was doing was slipping away from his old lifestyle and family for an unknown reason, some evidence being the building outside his window becoming fuzzy and the removal of his furniture from his room showing how he cant relate to the life he used to have before the metamorphosis.
Another topic that was brought up was why he didn't just leave or why his family kept him around. They relied on him heavily for financial security and to repay their debts to Gregor's boss but after he became a bug and was unable to work anymore they just left him to rot in his room unable to look at him. I know he is family and you don't throw family out but it reminds me of Frankenstein where he cant even stand to look at the monster and all it is doing is worsening his condition making him feel more and more like a bug.
I enjoyed this book a lot but it left so many unanswered questions for me like why were the new tenants and maids so cool with having a giant bug living there or how come nothing was done to try and reverse the effect of him being a giant bug, it seemed like they just let everything slide hoping one day it would work itself out.
Hi Jim! :)
ReplyDeleteI’m right there with you in questioning the actions (or lack thereof) of Gregor’s family to his transformation. They never once tried to help him, understand him, or attempt to find out if he understood them. Granted, he was a giant, crawling, oozing bug, but I would think that after he consistently showed no signs of aggression, violence, or desire to kill and eat the family, that they would at least have realized that he wasn’t a threat and did not need to be locked in a room. I still wonder what would have happened if his sister hadn’t tried to at least provide him with some food, because it was clear that the mother and father would not have tried to take care of him at all. For me, one of the saddest realizations was knowing that inside his bug body, Gregor was actually still fully aware and able to comprehend the way he was being treated, and wasn’t even able to speak up about it. He had to silently endure letting his family down financially, being treated by those very same people with disgust and hatred, being violently abused, watching his cherished belongings being taken from him, and his body slowly shutting down from starvation and injuries—not to mention the horror he must have felt from waking up one day as a bug—in complete isolation, filth, and darkness.
I like your connection to *Frankenstein* here and your observations about family. I think the family (in both Shelley's novel and here) had a harder time with Gregor because they knew him best, and, of course, he was their meal ticket--his work enabled them to survive. This was not the case (in the same way) with the maid, the charwoman, and the tenants. Since they were not his family, they didn't have the same emotional or financial investment in his being.
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