One of the most important values such as empathy is not inherent in our life any more, as Kafka shows. Hence the main character impersonates traditional values which are lost by his family and society, in general. His sincere genuine feelings towards his family contradict their cruelty and careless behavior towards him, a suffering insect. Indeed, showing the main character Gregor Samsa, who has found himself transformed “into a gigantic insect” physically (Kafka, 29), however, stayed human mentally, Kafka outlines his ability to preserve and keep humane values despite the fact of being an insect and having ugly appearance which is not accepted by his family, or society (in broader understanding). “The story presents the reader with the metaphor for a human existence in which spiritual reflection and interpersonal communication have been sacrificed for the sake of materialistic efficiency” (Die Verwandlung 1915: 1). Such loss of traditional humane values like empathy, love, respect, loyalty, and honesty has affected Franz Kafka who illustrated the metamorphosis or transformation of customary values on the example of the family of the Samsas. However, the present society has quite perverse understanding of values, and today a reverse process can be traced – society influences family and dictates its own values to it.
Within several thousand years each generation have been creating and passing down their assumptions, moral and values considered to be conventional and humane, which were held both by families and by societies.įamily values have been transferred into common values of community and society, but still their essence stayed and still stays the same as it was at the very beginning. Having described an outcast in his family, the writer shows alienation of a person with his or her traditional values and views in the cruel today’s society which is, day by day, losing its important human values, caring only of material values, oppressing distinctive and extraordinary individualities and spreading gregarious way of behavior.
This is one of the key issues fairly depicted by Franz Kafka in his story “The Metamorphosis”, the bright example of modernism story highlighting realistic problems concerning traditional values perverted by the surrounding society. Maybe this factor allowed the author learn from the childhood that the relationships between people, together with the moral values, are often neglected, while the materialistic views have always been topical. Franz Kafka, a world famous writer, was brought up in a family, where the dictatorship of the father prevented the family from having natural warm relationships.
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