The family responds to Gregor’s transformation with remorse, rejecting his identity as a bug. Taking action, the father coerces Gregor away from human contact, for he is nothing but a vermin that should be cut off from the family—an outcast. Though he is completely isolated, he becomes more accustomed to his physical conversion, finding comfort under the sofa and amusement walking upside down on the ceiling (Rowe); he also subconsciously wishes to have his room cleared out to have more room to crawl about at the “price of forgetting his human past” (Kafka 31). The gradual and unusual mutation provoked by Gregor is solely an emotional transition away from him and a “growing denial of his humanity” (Rowe). Evident in his works, constant cage-like isolation is exactly what Kafka subjects his characters into: “extraordinary torture and transformations,” and ironically, these characters reflect the dehumanizing isolation during his forsaken lifetime ("Kafka”). According to Horwitz, Kafka lacked the essential needs of communication and trust, blocking any form of intimate relations between loved ones, further damaging his mental and emotional ability to function in the modern world—a place where he is dangerously exposed to
The family responds to Gregor’s transformation with remorse, rejecting his identity as a bug. Taking action, the father coerces Gregor away from human contact, for he is nothing but a vermin that should be cut off from the family—an outcast. Though he is completely isolated, he becomes more accustomed to his physical conversion, finding comfort under the sofa and amusement walking upside down on the ceiling (Rowe); he also subconsciously wishes to have his room cleared out to have more room to crawl about at the “price of forgetting his human past” (Kafka 31). The gradual and unusual mutation provoked by Gregor is solely an emotional transition away from him and a “growing denial of his humanity” (Rowe). Evident in his works, constant cage-like isolation is exactly what Kafka subjects his characters into: “extraordinary torture and transformations,” and ironically, these characters reflect the dehumanizing isolation during his forsaken lifetime ("Kafka”). According to Horwitz, Kafka lacked the essential needs of communication and trust, blocking any form of intimate relations between loved ones, further damaging his mental and emotional ability to function in the modern world—a place where he is dangerously exposed to