Gregor's Ungrateful Family

  The story “The Metamorphosis” has made me think of success in having relationships with others. In the story, Gregor’s life before his transformation could be broken down into his relationship with his family and other business people, and both sets of these relationships seem very transactional. Gregor did not seem to be shown much appreciation by anyone. Though his family did care for his basic necessities, they did so reluctantly and disgusted by him. At the beginning of section three, we are told of Gregor’s injury with the apple. The narrator says, “Gregor, despite his current lamentable, repulsive form, was a member of the family who should not be treated like an enemy, for family duty dictated that the others swallow down the disgust he aroused and treated him and show him tolerance, only tolerance” (210). At the beginning of the story, his family, specifically his sister, treats Gregor with tolerance, but as the story unfolds, Gregor is treated worse and worse until his death. Though the metamorphosis was a unique and difficult situation for the family, this was a time when Gregor needed support, the same support he had been giving to his family for years.  In my own experience with my own family, this general lack of gratitude would not happen. Growing up and still to this day, my parents support my siblings and I in what we want to do, whether it is financially or in others ways.  Same goes the other way, when my mom needs help, any of her kids wouldn’t think twice about helping her or doing her a favor. In my experience in my own family and other families in my life, people do not go about life with a self-centered attitude, they show kindness and support for the people around them out of love, which is not the same outlook as the one reflected in ‘The Metamorphosis’.

In the public sphere, for Gregor, outside of his home, he only seemed to spend time with the people he worked with. It is important to have friends you spend time with, simply for the sake of spending time with them, not for alterior motives such as money. In the private sphere, I think the lack of success in Gregor’s family stems from his parents and sister, not Gregor. When Gregor’s family needed ways to help financially support the family, they could do so. Therefore they likely would have been able to help take some of the financial burden off of Gregor. Perhaps his parents could have been paying off their own debt, or at least some of it. The lesson from the family dynamics in this story is that no one person should be the sole provider for the family; it is a group effort to uplift the people around you, and everyone should be expected to contribute in some way.