Summary Of The Metamorphosis By Kafka And Zaabalawi

Religion, or a belief in a higher power, is a tradition and custom that has existed for an inordinate amount of time, existing in many different forms and each form coming with its own practices and beliefs. Religion is meant to bring the practicer peace, however, not all religions have coexisted peacefully throughout time. People have been persecuted, beaten and even killed for simply practicing their religion and believing in their form of a higher being, or beings. In the works The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka and Zaabalawi by Naguib Mahfouz, both authors examine their own religions and how their people were persecuted. Kafka, a German-Jew, despite living in a pre-Holocaust Germany, was highly aware of the religious persecution that had …show more content…
Apart from this aspect of the story, the rest of the narrative is wholly realistic. Before Gregor transformed, he was a normal human man, living and working as a traveling salesman, simply trying to support his family. However, after the transformation, Gregor’s life dramatically, and quickly, changes forever. When he first wakes up to find himself in his new state, he is oddly placid about his condition, opting to try and sleep off this strange new affliction. It isn’t until he is seen by others that he realizes the true severity of what was going on. He simply tried to continue on with his day, attempting to chase after the chief clerk who had bounded away after seeing Gregor in his current state, but was stopped by the violent attempts to put him back in his room by his own father. This is just the first example of isolation that Gregor faces in the story and as the story progresses, the isolation from both his family and the outside world simply gets worse and worse. At first, Gregor’s family is somewhat sympathetic to his plight, with his sister and mother hesitantly trying to help him in his day to day goings on until he is returned to his human state. As time goes on, Gregor feels more and more neglected, until finally, he dies from his lack of care. Gregor’s story greatly parallels the plight of …show more content…
While vermin is an apt description for a cockroach, an animal unworthy of sacrifice is quite an extreme way of describing Gregor. This absurd word choice is deliberate on Kafka’s part and comparable to the the equally absurd treatment of the Jews in Europe during Kafka’s lifetime. Despite have the appearance of an animal, Gregor is still on the most basic levels human. He still has cognition, he still has all his memories and thoughts, the only thing he lacks is the proper means of expressing them. He is practically mute to his family and thus mute, and helpless, to their treatment of him. The hardships faced by the Jews had much of the same procedure; there was originally unity, then a shift happened that caused tension and once the shift happened there was no turning back, despite protests. For Gregor, the end result of his treatment was death. For the Jews, it was the Holocaust. Although the Holocaust did not happen in Kafka’s lifetime, there were signs and Kafka was intelligent enough to have the foresight of something terrible happening in the future. Much like the foreshadowing of the demise of Gregor, the events of nineteenth and twentieth centuries led Kafka to predict some sort of cataclysm in the Jews’