Short Essay
Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”: pg.1411 beginning with “His father, however,” ending at the end of Part 2.

In Kafkas “The Metamorphosis”, the question of how much of Gregor’s humanity remains makes up most of the second section of the story. As the members of the Samsa family adapt to the situation they’ve been put in now with Gregor, each one seems to form a different belief of how much humanity indeed does or can remain in him. At the beginning for instance, Grete leaves milk for Gregor, which means she is assuming that his preference for milk when he was still human continues now that he’s a bug. So maybe Grete believes initially that some part of Gregor might still be there. But then she begins to notice that Gregor’s tastes in food have changed and now likes to crawl about the walls of his room, which makes her begin to realize he is now just an insect. Grete suggests taking all Gregor’s things out of his room to eliminate obstacles to his crawling and to make more space and better for an insect. The mother, on the other hand, argues that Gregor will want his things when he returns to his former human self, and she even refers to Gregor as her “unfortunate son” at one point, saying that she still believes Gregor to be the same despite his appearance. But the father show no sympathy towards Gregor or that he is the same, and attacks him as though he were a wild animal when he escapes his room. During all the commotion Gregor hides as usual, but he becomes anxious when he hears his mother worry that she and Grete might be doing him a disservice by stripping the room of his possessions, but Grete considers herself the expert on Gregor and overrules the mother’s objections. While Grete and the mother talk in the living room, Gregor, panicked at the thought of losing all the remnants of his human life, climbs the wall and covers the picture of the