metamorphosis in human life essay

Metamorphosis - Is it Your Time for Change?

Life is an adventure into the unknown where we should welcome metamorphosis..

Posted October 14, 2014

“We have not even to risk the adventure alone for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero-path.” And where we had though to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone we shall be with all the world.” ~Joseph Campbell

Metamorphosis refers to the process of transformation, whether it’s the changing of an immature insect into an adult insect, or the changes that occur in each of us throughout our life span. Metamorphosis was the theme of the Eurotas Conference I attended in Crete last week with my fellow transpersonal psychologists. The workshop topics were poignant and powerful; including everything from whether we need crisis to evolve, Kabbalistic psychology, mythology, metaphor and healing, transpersonal research, Mother Kundalini, astrology, awakening, and the art of dying, just to name a few. Yet whatever the topic, the overarching theme was the quest for transformation.

The idea of transformation and metamorphosis reminds me of my mother’s comment whenever someone says that they are aging. Without hesitation, she stops and says, “You start aging from the day you are born.” I take those words of wisdom one step further to say; we start transforming even before birth and if you believe in the afterlife, transformation continues even after our physical body dies.

As Crete is rich in mythological stories, the discussion of the hero’s journey brings a close connection to the idea of metamorphosis, reminding us of Joseph Campbell’s classic book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Campbell shares the structure of the “monolith,” otherwise known as the hero’s journey, with the premise that whatever your life’s journey or path, various forms of metamorphosis are inevitable along the way. In the same vein, he claims that during our lives, we all experience similar yearnings, fears, joys, trials and tribulations. Along the way, the connections we make and the encounters we have, in some way increase our awareness and/or growth. This ultimately leads to a better understanding of our inner landscape which in turn helps us on our path to transformation and empowerment. According to Campbell, the hero ventures from a common life into a supernatural world where there are challenges and victories. Then the hero returns from this mystical adventure, more powerful and aware of the self and others.

In essence, life is an adventure into the unknown and mysterious. When we are born, we follow a particular path, but as time goes on, we expand our quest, perhaps undertake an adventure or try something new and different; it is about stepping out of the box to discover something outside our comfort zone, and welcoming some sort of metamorphosis or change. We might respond to a particular calling, some pull in a different direction, and we are compelled to face the challenges offered on that path.

Along the way we meet guides, mentors or role models who help us and are available with love and support. While on the path of metamorphosis, we realize that there is no turning back, we are submerged in an adventure, one where new opportunities present themselves. Mythologically, a warrior or dragon might be awaiting us, guarding the entrance to new destination. This is what might be considered the crossroad of decision, the place where we have the chance to incorporate what we learned from our guides. Unfortunately, sometimes this comes with great consequences or risks. In the mythology of the hero’s journey, the hero reaches the Mysterium, a supernatural world with unknown rules. Here, the hero continues to learn and discover new things about him or herself and the surrounding world, growing and transforming and metamorphosing in the process.

In the final stage of the hero’s journey, there is the confrontation with death, sometimes called our primal or original fear . This is an opportunity to abandon all that we have carried that no longer serves us, thus offering the opportunity to begin a new life. In other words, this is the resurrection into a completely new life. During this time, the hero conquers the grail or treasure, which symbolizes what, was lacking in the former life. The hero is then given the choice whether to return to the former or ordinary life or stay on the new path (The Mysterium), enjoying its magic. When the hero is back to daily life, he or she realizes that he or she has attained a new sense of awareness about the self and openness to others. This results in the ability to live more happily and freely.

Note: While Campbell used the term “hero” instead of “heroine,” I would like to change this to “The Human Journey.” The fact that the Minoans paid a great deal of homage to women and the power of women, is indicative of the fact that equality of power between the sexes is an idea that goes way back.

For more on this, please read the blog of my friend and colleague, Steve Taylor, also in Crete, who offers a wonderful perspective on the feminine.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201410/if-women-ruled-the-world-0

Diana Raab, MFA, Ph.D., is an author, speaker, educator, and survivor. She’s written nine books of nonfiction and poetry, including the recent Writing for Bliss and Writing for Bliss: A Companion Journal.

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The Absurdity of Existence: Franz Kafka and Albert Camus

September 16, 2015 | yalepress | Literature

Absurdist literature is notoriously difficult to read. Take, for example, Kafka’s short story, “The Metamorphosis,” in which the main character turns into a giant cockroach. Critics have produced countless different theories to explain the significance of Gregor Samsa’s transformation—and this diversity of interpretive meanings, John Sutherland proposes in A Little History of Literature , is the paradoxical result of a type of literature that takes the meaninglessness of life as its premise. In the following excerpt, Sutherland introduces Kafka’s literary mission to assert the pointlessness of literature, and discusses his influence on another writer who grappled constantly with the problems of existentialism and absurdism, Albert Camus. Check out the rest of our Little Histories here .

If you made a list of the most gripping opening lines in literature, the following would surely make it into the top ten:

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

It is from a short story, “The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka (1883–1924). It’s probable that Kafka did not much care whether we read this sentence or anything that he wrote. He instructed his friend and executor Max Brod to burn his literary remains “preferably unread” after his death—he died prematurely, aged forty, from tuberculosis. Brod, thankfully, defied the instruction. Kafka speaks to us despite Kafka.

The human condition, for Kafka, is well beyond tragic or depressed. It is “absurd.” He believed that the whole human race was the product of one of “God’s bad days.” There is no “meaning” to make sense of our lives. Paradoxically that meaninglessness allows us to read into Kafka’s novels such as The Trial (which is about a legal “process” which doesn’t process anything), or his stories like “The Metamorphosis,” whatever meanings we please. For example, critics have viewed Gregor Samsa’s transformation into a cockroach as an allegory of anti-Semitism, a grim forecast of the criminal extermination of a supposedly “verminous” race. (Kafka was Jewish, and just a little older than Adolf Hitler.) Writers often foresee such things coming before other people do. “The Metamorphosis,” published in 1915, has also been seen as foreshadowing the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, after the First World War. Kafka and his fellow citizens in Bohemia, centered in Prague, had lived under that vast empire. They woke up suddenly to find their identities had vanished. Others have read the story in terms of Kafka’s problematic relationship with his father, a coarse-grained businessman. Whenever Franz nervously gave his father one of his works, it would be returned unread. His father despised his son.

But any such “meanings” crumple because there is no larger or underlying meaning in the Kafka universe to underpin them. Yet absurdist literature still had a mission—to assert that literature is, like everything else, pointless. Kafka’s disciple, the playwright Samuel Beckett, put it well: the writer “has nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desire to express, together with the obligation to express.”

Albert Camus’s opening proposition in his best-known essay, “The Myth of Sisyphus,” is that “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.” It echoes Kafka’s bleak aphorism: “A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.” Why not, when life is pointless? Camus’s essay pictures the human condition in the mythical figure Sisyphus, doomed for eternity to roll a rock up a hill, only for it to fall down again. Pointless. Only two responses are feasible in the face of man’s Sisyphean fate: suicide or rebellion. Camus appended a long note—”Hope and the Absurd in the Works of Franz Kafka”—to his Sisyphus essay, commemorating the writer to whose influence he was indebted.

Kafka’s influence is evident in Camus’s fictional masterpiece The Outsider , written and published under Nazi occupation censorship. The action is set in Algiers, nominally part of Metropolitan France. The narrative opens bleakly: “Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday: I can’t be sure.” Nor does the French Algerian hero, Meursault, care. He cares about nothing. He has, he confides, “lost the habit of noting his feelings.” For no particular reason, he shoots an Arab. His only explanation, not that he troubles to come up with explanations, even to save his life, is that it was very hot that day. He goes to the guillotine, not even caring about that. He hopes the crowd watching the execution will jeer.

It was Camus’s comrade in philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre, who perceived, most clearly, what drastic things Kafka had done to fiction’s rule book. Generically, as Sartre wrote in a digression in his novel Nausea (1938), the novel presumes to makes sense, fully aware that life doesn’t make sense. This “bad faith” is its “secret power.” Novels, said Sartre, are “machines that secrete spurious meaning into the world.” They are necessary, but intrinsically dishonest. What else do we have in life other than the “spurious meanings” we invent?

—Excerpt from A Little History of Literature , John Sutherland

John Sutherland , Lord Northcliffe Professor Emeritus of Modern English Literature, University College London, has taught students at every level and is the author or editor of more than 20 books. He lives in London.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Experimental Novels › Analysis of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

Analysis of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on August 1, 2023

“As Gregor Samsa awoke from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect.” So begins The Metamorphosis , a sinister allegory of dehumanization and hopelessness in the modern world by Franz Kafka (1883–1924). Once rendered an insect, Gregor becomes a functionless and embarrassing eyesore in a household, whose members grow to resent and neglect him to the point of death. There is no place in domestic, social, and professional life, Kafka’s tale suggests, for the unproductive and the nonconformist.

Written in 1912, The Metamorphosis was one of the few works Kafka published in his lifetime. Owing to the author’s general reluctance to publish and editorial reservations about the story’s bizarre content, The Metamorphosis did not go to press until 1915.

Like much of Kafka’s fiction, The Metamorphosis expresses dominant themes in the author’s own life. In a letter, Kafka mentioned the similarity between Samsa’s name and his own; both writer and character, furthermore, were pressured to take on largely pointless office jobs. Kafka’s anxieties about ill health and fear of physical collapse play out in the unfortunate Gregor, who dies from a wound inflicted on him by his father. But the story resonates most profoundly with the real circumstances of Kafka’s family life. Like his creation, Gregor, Kafka was continually berated by his imposing father, who considered his only son to be an unmitigated failure. Gregor, likewise, cowers in fear of his father, who finds him repulsive and attacks him at every turn. Although Kafka had earned a law degree in part to appease his father, he would remain an object of patriarchal disdain and repudiation—particularly in light of his fictional work, which his father deemed “a waste of time.” Kafka’s mother, like her alter ego in the story, was ever-deferential to her husband and offered little solace to her son; his sister, Ottla, was normally a compassionate ally, but on one occasion she joined the parents in insisting that Kafka increase his hours at the office; shortly thereafter, Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis, in which Gregor’s sister betrays him by insisting that the family get rid of him.

In addition to these autobiographical references, The Metamorphosis alludes to a number of literary works, including the Russian Nikolay Gogol’s The Nose, in which a man wakes up to find his nose missing; preposterously, the nose goes on to attain a high-ranking position in the civil service. Kafka’s text was also inspired by a Yiddish play, Gordin’s The Savage One. Kafka wrote extensively about the play in his diaries. All of the characters in The Metamorphosis find analogues in The Savage One. Gregor Samsa’s counterpart is an idiot son, who is unable to communicate with his family, stays locked in his room, and fears the wrath of his father. The Metamorphosis, furthermore, resembles Gordin’s drama in its entirely domestic setting and episodic narrative structure. All three texts connect materialism and status consciousness with the degradation of humanity.

In alignment with Kafka’s largely cynical philosophical views, The Metamorphosis supports a decidedly pessimistic interpretation of human nature. Speaking to his friend Max Brod, Kafka once explained that he thought human beings were God’s nihilistic thoughts. Brod asked whether there was hope elsewhere in the universe. To this, Kafka replied, “plenty of hope, for God—only not for us.” This dismal prognosis, a sense of terminal confinement, is represented by Gregor, whose only alternative to the world in which he has unintentionally entered is death. There are glimmers of hope in the concluding lines of The Metamorphosis, as the Samsa family sets about reconstructing itself, but this might also be seen to indicate the unfortunate perpetuation of the worst human qualities. In any case, after the story’s publication Kafka said that he regretted this ending, insisting that it was “unreadable.”

Along with the bleak determinism of The Metamorphosis , the surrealistic scenario depicted—its particular mixture of the impossible and the real—is typically “Kafkaesque.” In several works, Kafka posits an unlikely situation and portrays its development in realistic detail, both psychologically and materially. In his novel The Trial , for example, a man is accused and found guilty of a crime without ever being informed of the charge’s precise nature; in “Before the Law,” a man passes decades waiting to enter the gates of Justice, only to have the guardian, finally, close them in his face. The realist aspect of these texts encourages the reader to probe beyond the specific circumstance—a man, for example, literally becoming an insect—to uncover its symbolic and allegorical implications.

The image of the insect is evocative on several levels. As early as 1907, Kafka described the best part of his creative self as a “beautiful beetle”; he imagined his body moving around in the world while his “true writing self”—a beetle—remained behind. In later years, when his idealism faded, this authorial image was replaced by “filth and slime,” a phrase he applied to his piece “The Judgment” (it tells of a rebellious son condemned to suicide by his father). Gregor Samsa, a giant insect who becomes progressively more and more filthy, may be interpreted as a metaphor for disillusionment.

Analysis of Franz Kafka’s Novels

Analysis of Franz Kafka’s Stories

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bridgewater, Patrick. Kafka’s Novels: An Interpretation. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003. Greenberg, Martin. The Terror of Art: Kafka and Modern Literature. New York: Basic Books, 1968. Stach, Reiner. Kafka: The Decisive Years. Translated by Shelley Frisch. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2005. Stern, J. P., ed. The World of Franz Kafka. New York: Holt, Rinehard, 1980. Weinberg, Helen. The New Novel in America: The Kafkan Mode in Contemporary Fiction. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970.

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The metamorphosis of the hero: principles, processes, and purpose.

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Commentary: The Metamorphosis of the Hero: Principles, Processes, and Purpose

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• Department of Psychology, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, United States

This article examines the phenomenon of heroic metamorphosis: what it is, how it unfolds, and why it is important. First, we describe six types of transformation of the hero: mental, moral, emotional, spiritual, physical, and motivational. We then argue that these metamorphoses serve five functions: they foster developmental growth, promote healing, cultivate social unity, advance society, and deepen cosmic understanding. Internal and external sources of transformation are discussed, with emphasis on the importance of mentorship in producing metamorphic growth. Next we describe the three arcs of heroic transformation: egocentricity to sociocentricity, dependence to autonomy, and stagnation to growth. We then discuss three activities that promote heroic metamorphosis as well as those that hinder it. Implications for research on human growth and development are discussed.

Introduction

One of the most revered deities in Hinduism is Ganesha, a god symbolizing great wisdom and enlightenment. Ganesha’s most striking attribute is his unusual appearance. In images throughout India and southeast Asia, he is shown to be a man with an ordinary human body and the head of an elephant. According to legend, when Ganesha was a boy, he behaved foolishly in preventing his father Shiva from entering his own home. Shiva realized that his son needed an entirely new way of thinking, a fresh way of seeing the world. To achieve this aim, Shiva cut off Ganesha’s human head and replaced it with that of an elephant, an animal representing unmatched wisdom, intelligence, reflection, and listening. Ganesha was transformed from a naïve boy operating with little conscious awareness into a strong, wise, and fully awakened individual.

This article is about how people undergo dramatic, positive change. We focus on heroic metamorphosis – what it is, how it comes about, and why it’s important. Unlike Ganesha, one need not undergo dramatic physical change to experience heroic transformation. One must engage in any of three types of activities that we describe in this article: (1) training regimens, (2) spiritual practices, and (3) the hero’s journey. Anyone who transforms as a result of these activities emerges a brand-new person, a much-improved version of one’s previous self. Metamorphosis and transformation are both defined as “changing form,” a process that precisely describes the massive alteration undergone by Ganesha. Having undergone the hero’s journey as the pathway to transformation, Ganesha sees the world with greater clarity and insight. The hero’s journey inevitably involves setback, suffering, and a death of some type. What dies is usually the former self, the untransformed version of oneself that sees the world “through a glass darkly” ( Bergman, 1961 ). Ganesha’s decapitation happens to us all metaphorically; the journey marks the death of a narrow, immature way of seeing the world and the birth of a wider, more enlightened way of viewing life.

Overview of Heroic Metamorphosis

Metamorphic change pervades the natural world, from the changing of the seasons to biological growth and decay ( Wade, 1998 ; Allison, 2015 ; Efthimiou, 2015 ). The universe itself is subject to immense transformation on both a microscopic scale as well as a trans -universal scale. Biological cells grow, mutate, and die, and on a much grander scale the galaxies of the universe are in a constant state of flux. Darwinian theory portrays all of life as engaged in an inescapable struggle to survive in response to ever-changing circumstances. Life presents an ultimatum to all organisms: change as all phenomena in the universe must change, or fall.

Heroic transformation appears to be a prized and universal phenomenon that is cherished and encouraged in all human societies ( Allison and Goethals, 2017 ; Efthimiou and Franco, 2017 ; Efthimiou et al., 2018a , b ). Surprisingly, until the past decade there has been almost no scholarship on the topic of heroic transformation. Two early seminal works in psychology offered hints about the processes involved in dramatic change and growth in human beings. In 1902, William James addressed the topic of spiritual conversion in his classic volume, The Varieties of Religious Experience . These conversion experiences bear a striking similarity to descriptions of the hero’s transformation as reported by famed mythologist Campbell (1949) . These experiences included feelings of peace, clarity, union with all of humanity, newness, happiness, generosity, and being part of something bigger than oneself. James emphasized the pragmatic side of religious conversion, noting that the mere belief and trust in a deity could bring about significant positive change independent of whether the deity actually exists. This pragmatic side of spirituality is emphasized today by Thich Nhat Hanh, who observes that transformation as a result of following Buddhist practices can occur in the absence of a belief in a supreme being. Millions of Buddhists have enjoyed the transformative benefits of religion described by James simply by practicing the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path ( Hanh, 1999 , p. 170).

The second early psychological treatment of human transformation was published in 1905 by Sigmund Freud. His Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality described life-altering transformative stages in childhood involving oral, anal, phallic, and latent developmental patterns. None of these changes were particularly “heroic” but they did underscore Freud’s belief in the inevitability of immense psychological change. Although Freud suggested that people tend to resist change in adulthood, several subsequent schools of psychological thought have since proposed mechanisms for transformative change throughout the human lifespan. Humanistic theories, in particular, have embraced the idea that humans are capable of a long-term transformation into self-actualized individuals (e.g., Maslow, 1943 ). Developmental psychologists have also proposed models of transformative growth throughout human life (e.g., Erikson, 1994 ). Recent theories of self-processes portray humans as open to change and growth under some conditions ( Sedikides and Hepper, 2009 ) but resistant under others ( Swann, 2012 ). In the present day, positive psychologists are uncovering key mechanisms underlying healthy transformative growth in humans ( Lopez and Snyder, 2011 ; Seligman, 2011 ).

An important source of transformation resides in tales of heroism told and re-told to countless generations throughout the ages. These mythologies reflect humanity’s longing for transformative growth, and they are packed with wisdom and inspiration ( Allison and Goethals, 2014 ). Just reading, hearing, or observing stories of heroism can stir us and transform us.

According to Campbell (2004 , p. xvi), these hero tales “provide a field in which you can locate yourself” and they “carry the individual through the stages of life” (p. 9). The resultant transformations seen in heroic stories “are infinite in their revelation” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 183). Rank (1909 , p. 153) observed that “everyone is a hero in birth, where he undergoes a tremendous psychological as well as physical transformation, from the condition of a little water creature living in a realm of amniotic fluid into an air-breathing mammal.” This transformation at birth foreshadows a lifetime of transformative journeys for human beings.

According to Allison and Goethals (2013 , 2017 ), hero stories reveal three different targets of heroic transformation: setting, self , and society . These three loci of transformations parallel Campbell’s (1949) three major stages of the hero’s journey: departure (or separation), initiation, and return. The departure from the hero’s familiar world represents a transformation of one’s normal, safe environment; the initiation stage is awash with challenge, suffering, mentoring, and transformative growth; and the final stage of return represents the hero’s opportunity to use her newfound gifts to transform the world. The sequence of these stages is critical, with each transformation essential for producing the next one.

Without a change in setting, the hero cannot change herself, and without a change in herself, the hero cannot change the world. Our focus here is on the hero’s transformation of the self, but this link in the chain necessarily requires some consideration of the links preceding and following it. The mythic hero must be cast out of her familiar world and into a different world, otherwise there can be no departure from her status quo. Once transformed, the hero must use her newly enriched state to better the world, otherwise the hero’s transformation lacks social significance.

The hero’s transformation plays a pivotal role in her ability to achieve her objectives on the journey. During the quest, “ineffable realizations are experienced” and “things that before had been mysterious are now fully understood” ( Campbell, 1972 , p. 219). The ineffability of these new insights stems from their unconscious origins. Jungian principles of the collective unconscious form the basis of Campbell’s theorizing about hero mythology. Le Grice (2013 , p. 153) notes that “myths are expressions of the imagination, shaped by the archetypal dynamics of the psyche.” As such, the many recurring elements of the mythic hero’s journey have their “inner, psychological correlates” ( Campbell, 1972 , p. 153). The hero’s journey is packed with social symbols and motifs that connect the hero to her deeper self, and these unconscious images must be encountered, and conflicts with them must be resolved, to bring about transformation ( Campbell, 2004 ). Overall, the hero’s outer journey is a representation of an inner, psychological journey that involves “leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 152).

Allison and Smith (2015) identified five types of heroic transformation: physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, and moral. A sixth type, motivational transformation, was later proposed by Allison and Goethals (2017) . These six transformation types span two broad categories: physical transformation, which we call transmutation , and psychological transformation, which we call enlightenment . Physical transmutations are endemic to ancient mythologies that featured transforming humans into stars, statues, and animals. Today, transmutation pervades superhero tales of ordinary people succumbing to industrial accidents and spider bites that physically transform them into superheroes and supervillains. These ancient and modern tales of transmutation offer symbolism of the hidden powers residing within each of us, powers that emerge only after dramatic situations coax them out of hibernation. Efthimiou (2015 , 2017 ), Franco et al. (2016) , and Efthimiou and Allison (2017) have written at length about the power and potential of biological transmutation to change the world. The phenomenon of neurogenesis refers to the development of new brain cells in the hippocampus through exercise, diet, meditation, and learning. This transmutative healing and growing can occur even after catastrophic brain trauma. Efthimiou (2017) describes many examples of transmutation occurring as a result of regeneration or restoration processes that refer to an organism’s ability to grow, heal, and re-create itself.

Epigenetic changes in DNA and the science of human limb regeneration are two examples of modern day heroic transmutations ( Efthimiou, 2015 ).

The other five types of heroic transformation – moral, mental, emotional, spiritual, and motivational – comprise the second broad category of transformation that we call enlightenment. Emotional transformations refer to “changes of the heart” ( Allison and Smith, 2015 , p. 23) involving growth in empathic concern for others; we call this transformation compassion .

Spiritual transformations refer to changes in belief systems about the spiritual world and about the workings of life, the world, and the universe; we call this change transcendence . Mental transformations refer to leaps in intellectual growth and significant increases in illuminating insights about oneself and others; we label this wisdom . Moral transformations occur when heroes undergo a dramatic shift from immorality to morality; we call this redemption . Finally, a motivational transformation refers to a complete shift in one’s purpose or perceived direction in life; we label this change a calling (see also Dik et al., 2017 ).

Purpose of the Hero’s Transformation

The purpose of the hero’s journey is to provide a context or blueprint for human metamorphosis. Why do we need such life-changing growth? Allison and Setterberg (2016) argue that people are born “incomplete” psychologically and will remain incomplete until they encounter challenges that produce suffering and require sacrifice to resolve. Transcending life’s challenges enables the hero to “undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness,” requiring them “to think a different way” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 155). This shift offers a new “map or picture of the universe and allows us to see ourselves in relationship to nature” ( Campbell, 1991 , p. 56). Buddhist traditions and twelve-step programs of recovery refer to transformation as an awakening. Using similar language, Campbell (2004 , p. 12) described the function of the journey as a necessary voyage designed to “wake you up.” The long-term survival of the human race may depend on such an awakening, as it becomes increasingly clear that the unawakened, pre-transformed state is unsustainable at the collective level. As individuals, transformation is necessary for our psychological, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being. Collectively, the survival of our planet may depend on broader, enlightened thinking from leaders who must be transformed themselves if they are to make wise decisions about human rights, climate change, peace and war, healthcare, education, and myriad other pressing issues. Nearly 50 years ago, Heschel (1973) opined that “the predicament of contemporary man is grave. We seem to be destined either for a new mutation or for destruction” (p. 176, italics added).

Allison and Goethals (2017) propose five reasons why transformation is such a key element in the hero’s journey, and why it is essential for promoting our own and others’ welfare. First, transformations foster developmental growth. Early human societies understood the usefulness of initiation rituals in promoting the transition from childhood to adulthood ( van Gennep, 1909 ). A number of scholars, including Campbell, have pointed to the failure of our postmodern society to appreciate the psychological value of rites and rituals ( Campbell, 1988 ; Rohr, 2011b ; Le Grice, 2013 ). Stories of young people “coming-of-age” are common in mythic hero tales about children “awakening to the new world that opens at adolescence” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 167). The hero’s journey “helps us pass through and deal with the various stages of life from birth to death” ( Campbell, 1991 , p. 56).

The second function of heroic transformation is that it promotes healing. Allison and Goethals (2016) argue that sharing stories about hero transformations can offer many of the same benefits as group therapy ( Yalom and Leszcz, 2005 ). These benefits include the promotion of hope; the benefit of knowing that others share one’s emotional experiences; the fostering of self-awareness; the relief of stress; and the development of a sense of meaning about life. A growing number of clinical psychologists invoke hero transformations to help their clients acquire the heroic attributes of strength, resilience, and courage ( Grace, 2016 ). Recent research on post-traumatic growth demonstrates that people can overcome severe trauma and even use it to transform themselves into stronger, healthier persons than they were before the trauma ( Ramos and Leal, 2013 ).

The third function of transformations focuses on their ability to promote social unity.

According to Campbell (1972 , p. 57), hero transformations “drop or lift [heroes] out of themselves, so that their conduct is not their own but of the species, the society.” The transformed hero is “selfless, boundless, without ego.” The most meaningful transformations are a journey from egocentricity to sociocentricity, from elitism to egalitarianism ( Campbell, 1949 ; Wilber, 2007a , b ; Rohr, 2011b ). No longer psychologically isolated from the world, the transformed person enjoys a sense of communion with others. In his description of the hero’s journey, Campbell (1949 , p. 25) wrote, “where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.” Friedman (2017) has introduced the construct of self-expansiveness describing how boundaries between ourselves and others, and even between ourselves and the world, can be seen as permeable. As Friedman puts it, “viewing others as an alternate manifestation of oneself can promote heroism, as one’s individual life is not viewed as separate” (p. 15).

Fourth, transformations also advance society in meaningful ways. The apex of the hero’s journey is the hero’s boon, or gift, to society. It is this gift that separates the hero’s journey from simply being a test of personal survival. For the quest to be heroic, the classic heroic protagonist must put her newly acquired insights and gifts to use in order to better the world ( Campbell, 1949 ; Rohr, 2011b ). The heroic boon to society follows the successful completion of the individual journey, and so we can say that the social boon is entirely dependent upon the hero’s personal transformation that made the individual quest a success. Hero mythology, according to Campbell (1972 , p. 48), is designed to teach us that society is not a “perfectly static organization” but represents a “movement of the species forward.”

Finally, transformations contribute to a deepening of our spiritual and cosmic understanding of the universe. According to Campbell (1988 , p. 152), the hero’s transformation involves learning “to experience the supernormal range of human spiritual life.” Myths, he said, “bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual” (p. 19). In every hero tale, the hero must “die spiritually” and then be “reborn to a larger way of living” (p. 141), a process that is the enactment of a universal spiritual theme of death being the necessary experience for producing new life ( Campbell, 1991 , p. 102). Hero transformations supply cosmic wisdom. van Gennep (1909) observed that transformative rituals in early human tribes have “been linked to the celestial passages, the revolutions of the planets, and the phases of the moon. It is indeed a cosmic conception that relates the stages of human existence to those of plant and animal life and, by a sort of pre- scientific divination, joins them to the great rhythms of the universe” (p. 194).

Internal and External Sources of Transformation

Allison and Goethals (2017) distinguished between sources of transformative change that come from within the individual and sources that originate from outside the individual. There are several types of internal sources of transformation. For example, transformation can arise as a result of natural human development. An initial transformative event, a sperm cell fertilizing an egg, leads to a zygote transforming into an embryo, which then becomes a fetus, a baby, a toddler, a child, an adolescent, a young adult, a mid-life adult, and an elderly adult. Another internal source of change resides in people’s needs and goals. According to Maslow’s (1943) pyramid of needs, an individual is motivated to fulfill the needs at a particular level once lower level needs are satisfied. Once the needs at the four lower levels are satisfied, one is no longer concerned with them or driven by them. In effect, one transitions to higher levels and eventually achieves self-actualization, during which one might enjoy peak experiences of having discovered meaning, beauty, truth, and a sense of oneness with the world – a transformative state reminiscent of James’ (1902) description of the religiously converted individual.

A third internal source of transformative change is human transgression and failure. People often undergo significant change after being humbled by their “fallings and failings” ( Rohr, 2011b , p. xv). Campbell (2004 , p. 133) cautioned that not all heroic quests conclude with heroic triumph. “There is always the possibility for a fiasco,” he said. These occasional fiascos can inspire heroic transformations by producing the kind of suffering needed as impetus for a greater hero journey. It is a general truth that for substance abusers to be sufficiently motivated to seek recovery from their addictions, they must reach a profound level of pain and suffering, commonly referred to as “hitting rock bottom.” Suffering, according to Rohr (2011b , p. 68), “doesn’t accomplish anything tangible but creates space for learning and love.” This space has been called liminal space ( Turner, 1966 ; van Gennep, 1909 ), defined as the transitional time and space between one state of being and an entirely different state of being. In liminal space, one has been stripped of one’s previous life, humbled, and silenced.

Transgressions, and the liminal space that follows them, are the fertile soil from which heroic transformations bloom.

Another internal source of transformation is what Allison and Goethals (2017) call an enlightened dawning of responsibility. This dawning is captured in a simple phrase, composed of 10 two-letter words, “If it is to be, it is up to me” ( Phipps, 2011 ). There is a long history of social psychological work devoted to studying the forces at work that promote the dawning of responsibility in emergency settings ( Latane and Darley, 1969 ). Research has shown that in a crisis a small but courageous minority of people do step up to do the right thing even when there are strong pressures to avoid assuming responsibility. These fearless social aberrants, most of whom are ordinary citizens, are able to transcend their circumstances and transform from ordinary to extraordinary. For example, about one-third of the participants in Milgram’s (1963) obedience study defied the authority’s command to continue applying painful electric shocks to another participant. Whistleblowers are another notable example; they have the mettle to step up and do right thing at great potential cost to themselves ( Brown, 2017 ). Bystander training is now available to cultivate this dawning of responsibility in situations where transformative leadership is needed ( Heroic Imagination Project, 2018 ).

External situational forces can also evoke transformative change. Situations, for example, can trigger emotional responses that transform us. This idea is consistent with the wisdom of James (1902 , p. 77), who observed that “emotional occasions……are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements.” Emotions need not be negative to induce change. Feelings of elevation can transform people psychologically and behaviorally ( Haidt, 2003 ). People become elevated after witnessing a morally beautiful act, and this elevated feeling has been shown to produce altruistic acts ( Thomson and Siegel, 2013 ). A second external source of transformation is the series of trials that all heroes must undergo during their journey. Suffering can be an internal cause of transformation when it results from self-destructive actions, but suffering caused by outside forces can serve as an external source of transformation. Campbell (1988 , p. 154) argued that “trials are designed to see to it that the intending hero should be really a hero. Is he really a match for this task?” The time of greatest peril for the hero occurs when she enters the belly of the whale ( Campbell, 1949 ). In stories of Jonah and Pinocchio, the belly can be entered literally, but typically the belly is symbolic of the hero’s deepest inner-demons which must be “disempowered, overcome, and controlled” (p. 180). According to Campbell (1988) , the hero’s journey consists of the psychological task of overcoming one’s fears and slaying one’s dragons. This transformative process has been explored by positive psychologists who refer to it as part of the journey of post-traumatic growth, during which people are able to transform tragedy into triumph ( Rendon, 2015 ).

A third external source of transformation is the vast hero literature and mythology to which we are exposed throughout our lives. Allison and Goethals (2014 , 2016 , 2017 ) have long argued that narratives about heroes, pervasive in all of storytelling from Gilgamesh to the present day, serve as a nourishing catalyst for transformative change. The central premise of the heroic leadership dynamic (HLD) is that our consumption of heroic tales takes place within an interactive system that is energetically in motion, and drawing us toward rising heroes and repelling us from falling ones. The HLD framework proposes two transformative functions of hero stories: an epistemic function and an energizing function. Hero narratives supply epistemic growth by offering mental schemas that describe prosocial action, reveal basic truths about human existence, unpack life paradoxes, and cultivate emotional intelligence. The epistemic value of hero tales is revealed in Campbell’s (1988) observation that hero mythology offers insights into “what can be known but not told” (p. 206) and that “mythology is the womb of mankind’s initiation to life and death” ( Campbell, 2002 , p. 34). Hero tales also offer energizing benefits, providing people with agency and efficacy. Narratives of heroism bring about moral elevation, repair psychic wounds, and promote psychological growth ( Kinsella et al., 2015 , 2017 ; Allison and Goethals, 2016 ).

The fourth external source of transformation is the social environment of the hero. In hero narratives and classic mythology, the hero’s journey is populated by numerous friends, companions, lovers, parent figures, and mentors who assist the hero on her quest ( Campbell, 1949 ). The hero is always helped along the journey by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. Campbell also discussed the importance of encounters with parental figures; male heroes seek atonement with father figures, and female heroes seek it with mother figures.

Campbell also described the hero’s brush with lovers and temptresses, who can either assist, distract, or do harm to the hero. Most people who are asked to identify their heroes describe a mentor or coach who exerted a transformative effect on them ( Allison and Goethals, 2011 ; Goethals and Allison, 2012 , 2014 ).

Campbell (1949) argued that the appearance of a mentor during the initiation stage of the hero’s journey is a critically important component of the quest. Mentors help heroes become transformed, and later, having succeeded on their journeys, these transformed heroes then assume the role of mentor for others who are at earlier stages of their quests. In short, “transformed people transform people” ( Rohr, 2014 , p. 263). Mentors can have a transformative effect with their words of advice, with their actions, or both. Words can fall on deaf ears but one’s actions, attitudes, and lifestyle can leave a lasting imprint. St. Francis of Assisi expressed it this way: “You must preach the Gospel at all times, and when necessary use words” ( Rohr, 2014 , p. 263). A mentor can be viewed as a type of hero who enhances the lives of others ( Kinsella et al., 2015 ).

The hero’s journey offers a transformative experience toward wisdom that can be shared later with others. In short, the journey prepares people for leadership roles. According to Burns (1978) , transforming leaders strive to satisfy followers’ lower needs (e.g., survival and safety) in preparation for elevating them to work together to produce significant higher-level changes. Burns portrayed transforming leadership as collaborative engagement “in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality” (p. 20). Followers are thus “elevated,” creating a “new cadre of leaders” (p. 20). This conceptualization is consistent with Campbell’s (1949) emphasis on the role of mentorship during the hero’s journey. The mentor elevates the hero and prepares her for her future role as a mentor to others. Burns’ framework also makes explicit a notion that is largely implicit in Maslow’s (1943) model, namely, that the self-actualized person has become an elder, a mentor figure, and a moral actor who wields transformative influence over others. Erikson’s (1994) theory of lifelong development makes the similar claim that older generative individuals, having been given so much early in life, are now in a position to give back to younger people.

Other theories also point to the transformative effect of mentoring and leadership.

Hollander (1995) proposed a two-way influence relationship between a leader and followers aimed primarily at attaining mutual goals. Hollander defined leadership as “a shared experience, a voyage through time” with the leader in partnership with followers to pursue common interests.

For Hollander, “a major component of the leader–follower relationship is the leader’s perception of his or herself relative to followers, and how they in turn perceive the leader” (p. 55). Tyler and Lind (1992) have shown that these perceptions are crucially important in cementing good follower loyalty. Followers will perceive a leader as a “legitimate” authority when she adheres to basic principles of procedural justice. Leaders who show fairness, respect, and concern for the needs of followers are able to build followers’ self-esteem, a central step in Maslow’s (1943) pyramid, thereby fostering followers’ transformative movement toward meeting higher-level needs.

Three Transformative Arcs of Heroism

Allison and Goethals (2017) identified three deficits of the hero at the initial stage of her journey. The untransformed hero is lacking (1) a sociocentric view of life; (2) an autonomy from societal norms that discourage transformation; and (3) a mindset of growth and change. Below we explain how the arc of heroic metamorphosis bends toward sociocentricity, autonomy, and growth.

Egocentricity to Sociocentricity

Campbell (2004 , p. 55) believed that one of the central functions of hero mythology is to “get a sense of everything – yourself, your society, the universe, and the mystery beyond – as one great unit.” He claimed that “when we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness” ( Campbell, 1988 , p. 155). In most hero narratives, the hero begins the journey disconnected from the world. She is a self-centered, prideful individual whose sole preoccupation is establishing her identity, her career, and her material world. The entire point of her hero journey is to awaken her to the broader goal of thinking beyond herself in achieving communion with the entire world and universe ( Friedman, 2017 ). To the extent that we spend the first stages of our lives selfishly building our personal identities and careers, we may be designed to awaken in later stages to our original predisposition toward sociocentricity ( Rohr, 2011b ). Campbell (2001) urged us all to cultivate this greater purpose of forming compassionate unification with all of humanity. He believed this awakening is the central function of hero mythology.

Dependency to Autonomy

A person’s willingness to deviate from the dominant cultural pattern is essential for heroic transformation. Heroes do the right thing, and do what they must do, regardless of authority, tradition, and consequence. Maslow (1943) called this characteristic autonomy . “There are the ‘strong’ people,” wrote Maslow, “who can easily weather disagreement or opposition, who can swim against the stream of public opinion and who can stand up for the truth at great personal cost” (p. 379). Fulfillment of the lower needs in the pyramid is essential for autonomy to develop in individuals. “People who have been made secure and strong in the earliest years tend to remain secure and strong thereafter in the face of whatever threatens” (p. 380). Zimbardo (2008) has championed the idea that heroes are people with the ability to resist social pressures that promote evil, and that such resistance requires the moral courage to be guided by one’s heart rather than by social cues. Zimbardo and other hero activists drive home the point that “the opposite of a hero isn’t a villain; it’s a bystander” ( Chakrabortty, 2010 ; Langdon, 2018 ). While the transformed hero enjoys “union with the world,” she remains an autonomous individual who can establish her own path in the world that is unfettered by pressures to conform to social pressures.

Stagnation to Growth

One can be autonomous but not necessarily growing and stretching toward realizing one’s full potential. The pre-transformed hero naturally resists change, and thus severe setbacks may be her only impetus to budge. Without a prod, she will remain comfortable in her stagnation, oblivious to the idea that anything needs changing. The hero’s journey marks the death of pretense and inauthenticity, and the birth of the person one is meant to be. Campbell (1988 , p. 168) described the process as “killing the infantile ego and bringing forth an adult.” Sperry (2011) has argued that people are so attached to their false selves that they fear the death of the false self even more than they fear the death of their physical self. Our growth can also be inhibited by a phenomenon called the crab bucket syndrome ( Simmons, 2012 ). This syndrome describes the consequences of our entrenchment with our families, our friends, and our communities, and they with us. Any attempt we make to crawl up and out of the bucket is met with failure as the crabs below us pull us back down. For most of us, the hero’s journey represents the best way, and perhaps the only way, to escape the bucket and discover our true selves. Campbell (1991) argued that a healthy, transformed individual accepts and embraces her growth and contradictions. “The psychological transformation,” wrote Campbell, “would be that whatever was formerly endured is now known, loved, and served” (p. 207).

Three Activities Promoting Transformation

Can anything be done to promote heroic transformation? We noted earlier that one cannot be in charge of one’s own heroic transformation. According to Rohr (2011a) , engineering our own personal metamorphosis on our own “is by definition not transformation. If we try to change our ego with the help of our ego, we only have a better-disguised ego” (p. 5). There are things we can do, however, to make transformation more likely. From our review of theory and research on heroism, developmental processes, leadership, and spiritual growth, we can identify three broad categories of activities that encourage transformation. These activities include participation in training and developmental programs, spiritual practices, and (of course) the hero’s journey. On the surface these activities appear dissimilar, yet engaging in these practices produces similar transformative results.

Training and Development Practices

In examining the characteristics of people who risked their lives to save others, Kohen et al. (2017) discovered several important commonalities. They found that these heroes “imagined situations where help was needed and considered how they would act; they had an expansive sense of empathy, not simply with those who might be considered ‘like them’ but also those who might be thought of as ‘other’ in some decisive respect; they regularly took action to help people, often in small ways; and they had some experience or skill that made them confident about undertaking the heroic action in question” (p. 1). With this observation, Kohen et al. (2017) raise four points about preparation for heroism. First, they note the importance of imagining oneself as ready and capable of heroic action when it is needed. This imagination component involves the development of mental scripts for helping, an idea central to Zimbardo’s Heroic Imagination Project (2018) hero training programs. Established a decade ago, the Heroic Imagination Project aims to encourage people to envision themselves as heroes and to “prepare heroes in training for everyday heroic action.” The group achieves this goal by training ordinary people to “master social and situational forces as well as their automatic human tendencies in order to act in ways that are kind, prosocial, and even heroic.” Participants are trained to improve their situational awareness, leadership skills, moral courage, and sense of efficacy in situations that require action to save or improve lives.

Second, Kohen et al. (2017) emphasize the importance of empathy, observing that heroes show empathic concern for both similar and dissimilar others. A growing body of research supports the idea that empathy can be enhanced through training, an idea corroborated by the proliferation of empathy training programs around the world ( Tenney, 2017 ). Svoboda (2013) even argues that empathy and compassion are muscles that can be strengthened with repeated use. Third, Kohen et al. (2017) note that heroes regularly take action to help people, often in small ways. Doing so may promote the self-perception that one has heroic attributes, thereby increasing one’s chances of intervening when a true emergency arises. Finally, Kohen et al. (2017) observe that heroes often have either formal or informal training in saving lives. These skills and experiences may be acquired from training for the military, law enforcement, or firefighting, or they may derive from emergency medical training, lifeguard training, and CPR classes ( Svoboda, 2013 ).

In a similar vein, Kramer (2017) has devised a methodology for helping people develop the courage to pursue their most heroic dreams and aspirations in life. He identifies such courage as existential courage , consisting of people’s identity aspirations and strivings for their lives to feel meaningful and consequential. Kramer’s technique involves fostering people’s willingness to take psychological and social risks in the pursuit of desired but challenging future identities. His “identity lab” is a setting where students work individually and collaboratively to (1) identify and research their desired future identities, (2) develop an inventory or assessment of identity- relevant attributes that support the realization of those desired future identities, (3) design behavioral experiments to explore and further develop those self-selected identity attributes, and, finally, (4) consolidate their learnings from their experiments through reflection and assessment. Kramer’s results show that his participants feel significantly more “powerful,” “transformative,” “impactful,” and “effective” in pursuing their identity aspirations. They also report increased self-efficacy and resilience.

Another example of training practices can be found in initial rituals and rites of passages found in many cultures throughout the world. Although modern Western cultures have eliminated the majority of these practices, most cultures throughout history did deem it necessary to require adolescents, particularly boys, to undergo rituals that signaled their transformation into maturity and adulthood ( Turner, 1966 ; van Gennep, 1909 ). In many African and Australian tribes, initiation requires initiates to experience pain, often involving circumcision or genital mutilation, and it is also not uncommon for rituals to include a challenging survival test in nature. These initiation tests are considered necessary for individuals to become full members of the tribe, allowing them participate in ceremonies or social rituals such as marriage. Initiations are often culminated with large elaborate ceremonies for adolescents to be recognized publicly as full-fledged adult members of their society.

Child-rearing can serve as another type of transformative training practice. A striking example can be seen in Fagin-Jones’s (2017) research on how parents raised the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. Fagin-Jones found that the parenting practices of rescuers differed significantly from the parenting of passive bystanders. Rescuers reported having loving, supportive relationships with parents, whereas bystanders reported relationships with parents as cold, negative, and avoidant. More rescuers than bystanders recalled their parents as affectionate and engaged in praising, hugging, kissing, joking, and smiling. These early cohesive family bonds encouraged other-oriented relationships based on tolerance, inclusion, and openness.

Rescuers reported that their family unit engendered traits of independence, potency, risk-taking, decisiveness, and tolerance. Bystanders, in contrast, recalled a lack of familial closeness that engendered impotence, indecisiveness, and passivity. Rescuers’ parents were less likely than bystanders’ parents to express negative Jewish stereotypes such as “dishonest,” “untrustworthy,” and “too powerful.” Overall, rescuers were raised to practice involvement in community, commitment to others’ welfare, and responsibility for the greater good. In contrast, bystanders’ parents assigned demonic qualities to Jews and promoted the idea that Jews deserved their fate.

Spiritual Practices

For millennia, spiritual gurus have extolled the benefits of engaging in a variety of spiritual practices aimed at improving one’s mental and emotional states. Recent research findings in cognitive neuroscience and positive psychology are now beginning to corroborate these benefits. Mindfulness in particular has attracted widespread popularity as well as considerable research about its implications for mental health. The key component of mindfulness as a mental state is its emphasis on focusing one’s awareness solely on the present moment. People who practice mindful meditation show significant decreases in stress, better coping skills, less depression, improved emotional regulation, and higher levels of resilience ( Hofmann et al., 2010 ). Mindful meditation quiets the mind and thus “wakes us up to what is happening,” allowing “contact with life” ( Hanh, 1999 , p. 81). Tolle (2005) argues that living in the present moment is a transformative experience avoided by most people because they habitually choose to clutter their minds with regrets about the past or fears about the future. He claims that “our entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself” (p. 99). Basking in the present moment is the basis of the psychological phenomenon of “flow” described by Csikszentmihalyi (2008) . When experiencing flow, people are “in the zone,” fully present, and completely “immersed in a feeling of energized focus” (p. 45).

Related to mindfulness is the process of non-dualistic thinking ( Loy, 1988 ) also called right thinking ( Hanh, 1999 ), contemplative thinking ( Rohr, 2009 ), third-force thinking, and the third eye ( Song, 2002 ). The Indian “tika” placed on the human forehead is more than decoration; it signifies a non-dual way of viewing the world. According to Rohr (2009) , non-dual thinking is deemed necessary for understanding phenomena that defy rational analysis: love, death, God, suffering, and eternity. The transcendent nature of mindful, non-dual thinking shares many of the characteristics of the heroically transformed mind that we have discussed in this article.

The spiritual attribute of humility can also be transformative. When asked to name four cardinal virtues, St. Bernard is reported to have answered: “Humility, humility, humility, and humility” ( Kurtz and Ketcham, 1992 ). Humility has been shown to be linked to increased altruism, forgiveness, generosity, and self-control ( Worthington et al., 2017 ). One can argue that humility cannot be practiced, as the idea of getting better at humility runs contrary to being humble. However, we suspect that one can practice humility by adopting the habit of admitting mistakes, acknowledging personal faults, avoiding bragging, and being generous in assigning credit to others.

Gratitude is another transformative spiritual practice validated by recent research. Algoe (2012) found that gratitude improves sleep, patience, depression, energy, optimism, and relationship quality. Practitioners have developed gratitude therapy as a way of helping clients become happier, more agreeable, more open, and less neurotic. Moreover, neuroscientists have found that gratitude is associated with activity in areas of the brain associated with morality, reward, and value judgment ( Emmons and Stern, 2013 ). Closely related to gratitude are experiences with wonder and awe, which have been shown to increase generosity and a greater sense of connection with the world ( Piff et al., 2015 ). Enjoying regular doses of wonder is a telltale trait of the self-actualized individual ( Maslow, 1943 ).

Another transformative spiritual practice is forgiveness. Research shows that people who are able to forgive others have improved relationships, better mental health, lower stress and hostility, improved blood pressure, less depression, and a healthier immune system ( Worthington, 2013 ). “Letting go” is another spiritual practice that can produce transformation. It has also been called release, acceptance, or surrender. Buddhist teach Hanh (1999 , p. 78) claims that “letting go give us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness.” James (1902) also described the beneficial practice of letting go among religiously converted individuals: “Give up the feeling of responsibility, let go your hold, resign the care of your destiny to higher powers, be genuinely indifferent as to what becomes of it all, and you will find not only that you gain a perfect inward relief, but often also, in addition, the particular goods you sincerely thought you were renouncing” (p. 110).

Finally, we turn to the complex emotion of love as a transformative agent. In addition to starring in Casablanca , Humphrey Bogart played the lead role in Sabrina , another film demonstrating the transformative power of love. In Sabrina , Bogart played the role of Linus, a workaholic CEO who has no time for love. His underachieving brother David begins a romance with a young woman named Sabrina, and it becomes clear that this budding relationship jeopardizes a multi-million-dollar deal that the company is about to consummate. To undermine the relationship, Linus pretends to show romantic interest in Sabrina, and he succeeds in winning her heart. Despite the pretense, Linus falls in love for the first time in his life, resigns as CEO, and runs away with Sabrina to Paris. Love has completely transformed him from a cold, greedy businessman into a warm, enlightened individual. Similar transformations in film and literature are seen in Ebenezer Scrooge (in A Christmas Carol ), the Grinch (in How the Grinch Stole Christmas ), Phil Connors (in Groundhog Day ), and George Banks (in Mary Poppins ).

In Man’s Search for Meaning , Frankl (1946 , p. 37) wrote, “The salvation of man is through love and in love.” Hanh (1999 , p. 170), moreover, weighs in that “love, compassion, joy, and equanimity are the very nature of an enlightened person.” Loving kindness also transforms us biologically ( Keltner, 2009 ). People who make kindness a habit have significantly lower levels of stress hormones such as cortisol. Making an effort to help others can lead to decreased levels of anxiety in individuals who normally avoid social situations. Being kind and even witnessing kindness have also been found to increase levels of oxytocin, a hormone associated with lower blood pressure, more sound sleep, and reduced cravings for drugs such as alcohol and cocaine. Loving others lights up the motivation and reward circuits of the limbic system in the brain ( Esch and Stefano, 2011 ). Research also reveals that people who routinely show acts of love live longer compared to people who perform fewer loving actions ( Vaillant, 2012 ).

The Hero’s Journey

We opened this article by noting that the only way most of us undergo transformation is to embark on the hero’s journey. While we have complete control over whether we receive training that can facilitate a heroic metamorphosis, and over whether we engage in spiritual practices, we have far less control over our participation in the classic hero’s journey. We can only remain open and receptive to the ride that awaits us. As we have noted, our departure on the journey can be jarring – we often experience an accident, illness, transgression, death, divorce, or disaster. The best we can do is fasten our seatbelts and trust that the darkness of our lot will eventually transform into lightness. But we cannot remain passive. During the journey we must be diligent in doing our part to secure allies and mentors, and to take actions that cultivate strengths such as resilience, courage, and resourcefulness ( Williams, 2018 ). After being transformed ourselves, we feel the obligation to transform others in the role of mentor. Having traversed the heroic path, we may use our heroism to craft a newfound purpose for our existence, a purpose that drives us to spend our remaining years making a positive difference in people’s lives. Bronk and Riches (2017) call this process heroism-guided purpose .

Additional Issues Worth Pondering

Several unexplored issues involving heroic transformation deserve more thorough treatment than we can devote to them here. These issues focus on education, religion, gender, inclusive transcendence, and barriers to transformation. We give brief attention to these topics below.

Education and Transformation

On July 16, 2003, legendary President of South Africa Nelson Mandela delivered a speech in support of the Mindset Network, a non-profit organization designed to improve educational opportunities for children of all ages. “Education,” he said, “is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” This statement attracted widespread media attention and remains a highly recurring internet meme today. A Google search of “education can change the world” yields thousands of hits echoing Mandela’s claim and extending the idea to include education being the key “to success,” “to happiness,” “to freedom,” “to the world,” and “to the future.” Summing up our supreme collective confidence in education, United Nations Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock declared that “Education is the key to everything” ( Theirworld, 2017 ).

Are these claims true? We believe it is a mistake and perhaps even dangerous to equate education with transformation. Consider, for example, the link between education and crime. Some studies suggest that education mitigates crime ( Buonanno and Leonida, 2006 ; Machin et al., 2011 ) while other studies find that education either plays little or no role in preventing violence. Bergen and Pandey (2005) report that the vast majority of terrorists who perform violent acts are college educated. For example, all 12 men involved in the 1993 World Trade Center attack had a college education. All the pilots in the September 11 th terrorist attacks and their collaborators, as identified by the 9/11 commission, attended universities. The lead pilot, Mohamed Atta, was college-educated, and the operational planner, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, studied engineering in North Carolina. The chilling masked figure on many ISIS beheading videos was Mohammed Emwazi, who had a college degree in computer programming. In the same vein, Ramsland (2015) has found that some of the most notorious serial killers of our time were highly educated, including Ted Bundy and the “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski.

We do not wish to undersell education’s positive consequences for individuals and societies. Improving educational opportunities for citizens no doubt helps people satisfy needs in Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy, especially those at the lower levels of the pyramid. Nelson Mandela was no doubt correct about education improving the quality of life for communities operating near subsistence levels. Our claim is that education is insufficient for meeting higher level needs of esteem and for cultivating social belongingness, self-transcendence, union with the world, and self-actualization. In short, education is a beginning step toward transformation but falls short in fully producing a truly awakened individual.

Religion and Transformation

As noted earlier, James (1902) described the psychological consequences of religious conversion as including feelings of peace, the ability to see clearly, the sense of union with all of humanity, a feeling of newness, the experience of happiness, the desire for generosity, and the sense of being part of something bigger than oneself. While these results of conversion are all signs of healthy religion, many of us are very well aware of “religious” individuals who preach war instead of peace, who exclude rather than include, who display anger in lieu of joy, and who show greed instead of generosity. In short, being “religious” and even engaging in religious practices such as attending church does not guarantee the kind of religious conversion experiences described by James. In fact, going through the motions of religion can heighten one’s sense of righteousness and arrogance, setting in motion a dark transformation toward principles that are antithetical to James’ observation of mature religion. Many people who are “holier than thou” end up holier than no one. Rohr (2010) argues that the litmus test for healthy spiritual transformation is whether one shows “a movement toward the edge, the outside, the lower, the suffering, and the simple. It’s never about climbing.”

Women as Transformers

In his studies of initiation rituals worldwide, Rohr (2005) observed that non-western cultures throughout history have been more likely to require males to participate in these rites of passage as compared to females. Underlying this gender difference is the widespread belief that young males require initiation rituals to transform them into men, whereas young females tend to be naturally capable of transforming into womanhood without formal rituals. Differences in biology and culturally assigned gender roles have been posited to explain this difference ( Rohr, 2005 ; Formica, 2009 ). For women, transformation is corporeal. Women personally undergo biological transformations in processes such as menstruation, pregnancy, labor, and breastfeeding. Throughout most of human history, women have also been assigned culturally mandated activities involving transformation. For example, child-rearing traditionally involved women transforming children into adults. Moreover, most human cultures have historically assigned women the task of preparing food for the family, during which women transformed wheat into bread and cream into butter.

If, as we have argued, transformation involves promoting unity and adopting a sociocentric mindset, then women may be agents of transformation. Throughout history, men have built things, fixed things, and defended us from things ( Rohr, 2005 ) – all in the service of satisfying lower level needs. True transformation, however, occurs at higher levels where women may have the advantage. Rohr has even boldly claimed that “transformation is deeply embedded in feminine consciousness” (see also Ross, 2017 ). In her review of research on gender differences in leadership effectiveness, Hoyt (2014) found convincing evidence that women may be more transformative as political leaders. Compared to men, women leaders are more likely to improve standards of living, education, and healthcare. They enjoy more success in peace negotiations and are more likely to reach across party lines. Women more so than men are likely to adopt democratic and participatory styles of leadership. Moreover, women are more likely to follow ethical guidelines, engage in philanthropy, and promote the welfare of women, children, and families. With all their accomplishments as leaders, women may also show more humility than men ( Fumham et al., 2001 ; Perry, 2017 ). Over 2500 years ago, the Tao Te Ching offered this wise description of women as humble, transformative leaders:

Can you play the role of woman?

Understanding and being open to all things…

Giving birth and nourishing,

Bearing but not possessing,

Working yet not taking credit,

Leading yet not dominating,

This is the Primal Virtue.

Transcend and Include

Central to the phenomenon of transformation is the principle of transcend and include ( Wilber, 2001 ). Higher stages of transformation do not discard the values of the lower stages; they include them. When we are young, we hold strong opinions that later seem naïve to us, yet we are not necessarily “wrong” at the time; we are merely incomplete. An illustration of this idea can be found in our musings about our childhood baseball heroes, Willie Mays (for George Goethals) and Willie Stargell (for Scott Allison). We both freely admit that our taste in heroes has evolved and matured since the 1950s and 1960s, yet if you ask us if that means that Mays and Stargell are no longer our heroes, we will quickly tell you that they remain our heroes to this very day. Maintaining this preference exemplifies the principle of transcend and include.

Transformation to a higher level of consciousness always transcends but also includes the lower levels ( Rohr, 2011b ). This does not mean that we equate Mays and Stargell with Gandhi and Mandela. It means that we appreciate their heroic influence on us during a crucial time in our development.

Campbell’s (1949) understanding of the transform and include principle is seen in his description of the transformed hero as the “master of both worlds.” At the end of their transformative journey, heroes are as comfortable navigating in their original world as in the new world that they now inhabit. There are implications of this principle for gender roles. Male- oriented activities of making, fixing, and protecting must be transcended by female-oriented activities of inclusion, participation, and harmony. But with transcendence must come inclusion, as we cannot expect to survive as a society without always leaving room for those so-called male activities.

Transformation Toward Psychopathology

Heroic transformation does not always lead to improvement in an individual’s well-being. Recent research has revealed that adopting a heroic self-concept can at times produce significant psychological maladjustment ( Shahar, 2013 ; Israeli et al., 2018 ). From this perspective, a heroic self-representation may develop when people experience personal threat, stress, and challenge, either in themselves or in others to whom they are close. These heroic self-representations can assume the form as the self-as-savior , the self-as-conqueror , or heroic identification . When confronting these psychological challenges, people may identify with the ideal heroic image of the person who can conquer any difficult obstacle or who can heroically remove those obstacles for suffering others. The consequences of taking on this role of a hero can be significant increases in perceived stress, self-criticism, lack of a sense of coherence, general psychopathology, maternal overprotection, dissociative depersonalization and absorption, transliminality, PTSD severity, and attachment anxiety.

Shahar (2013) and Israeli et al. (2018) have uncovered convincing evidence for this type of pathological heroic transformation. These scholars studied adults during a prolonged exposure ‘Operation Protective Edge,’ which occurred in Israel between July 8, 2014 and August 26, 2014 ( Israeli et al., 2018 ). The operation measured Israeli citizens’ emotional states while they were exposed to extensive air strikes, ground fighting in Gaza, and continuous large-scale rocket fire from Gaza to Israel. The results showed that participants’ heroic identification predicted increased anxious mood and negative affect. Moreover, participants who viewed themselves as self-as-savior showed an increased anxious mood under high levels of perceived-stress related to the missile attacks. Israeli et al. (2018 , p. 23) concluded that “under stress, heroic identification increases characterological self-blame/self-criticism and experiential avoidance, and decreases help-seeking.” These findings are fascinating in pointing toward the potential harm associated with undergoing a heroic transformation. Whereas we argue that heroic transformation is a necessary and positive step toward mature growth and achieving one’s full potential, it seems clear that taking one’s heroism to an extreme under stressful circumstances can lead to psychological harm. We believe that the research reported by Shahar (2013) and Israeli et al. (2018) is extremely important in identifying boundary or delimiting conditions of positive heroic transformation effects. Future research might productively be directed toward further establishing the circumstances under which adopting a heroic self-representation yields favorable versus unfavorable consequences for people.

Barriers to Transformation

We now turn to factors that can stand in the way of people undergoing a positive transformative experience in life. The largest barrier, of course, is a person’s unwillingness to heed the call to go on the hero’s journey. We all know people, including prominent world leaders, who are “stuck” in early stages of development. It would behoove the world to understand why so many people are stuck and what can be done to nudge more of us along the transformative journey. Earlier we reviewed activities that promote transformation, and one might argue that any barriers to change are merely the inverse of these promotional activities. While there may be some truth in this idea, it is also true that some barriers are less intuitive or obvious than one might suspect. The great Islamic poet Rumi once offered this advice to those seeking enlightenment: the task is sometimes not to pursue a transformative loving experience “but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” ( Barks, 2005 , p. 18).

A major source of arrested development is the problem of self-ignorance. A recurring theme in psychological research is that people are unaware of much of their own psychological functioning ( Nisbett and Wilson, 1977 ; Wegner, 2002 ; Bargh and Morsella, 2008 ; Alicke, 2017 ). This lack of self-awareness may explain people’s resistance to transformative growth. Early psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Adler, and Horney were the first to point to the destructive effects of behaving unconsciously. Jung (1956) described the shadow as the dark, unknown aspects of our personalities that prevent us from transforming into our full potential. Building on Jung’s work, Campbell observed that all “the images of [hero] mythology are referring to something in you,” and that our shadow impedes our ability to make the best use of these images (p. 68).

A second barrier is found in impoverished environments that deny people opportunities for transformation. Maslow’s (1943) model of hierarchical needs suggests that people can get stuck at lower stages of the hierarchy that focus on satisfying basic biological and security needs. Heroic potential may be suppressed when individuals are afflicted by poverty or safety concerns that hinder their ability to progress upward in the hierarchy toward higher-level goals. Resolving this problem is easy in theory but extremely difficult in practice, as most world societies either lack the will or the means to eliminate poverty. Related to this idea is another barrier – exposure to traumatic events that can impede people’s ability to undergo transformative growth. Trauma disrupts people’s sense of safety and their ability to cope with the overwhelming threat and danger, damaging their physical, emotional, and cognitive functioning processes ( Keck et al., 2017 ). Safety and security needs become paramount to the traumatized individual, rendering higher level needs unimportant. The good news is that most people can show great progress in recovering from the deleterious effects of trauma. This healing is the basis of the hopeful phenomenon of post-traumatic growth ( Rendon, 2015 ).

A fourth barrier to transformation is people’s strong tendency to self-identify as victims.

Individuals who have been harmed and who derive their entire personal identity from being wronged by someone else, or by society, may find it difficult to grow and transcend their victimhood. We are not making the claim that there are no legitimate victims; there most certainly are people who have been harmed and have real grievances. Our argument is that adopting a strong and permanent victim identity is a sure way of avoiding growth and moving beyond the pain of having been harmed. A highly unfortunate consequence of harboring a victim mindset is the need to scapegoat. People tend to reason that if someone has harmed them, then that perpetrator must be punished. There is no doubt that scapegoating others has been the primary cause of most violence and warfare throughout human history. Until people learn to take individual responsibility for their lives and for their anger, the deadly duo of victimhood and scapegoating will continue to work in concert to thwart heroic transformation.

Another barrier to transformation lies in the absence of good mentorship. Social sources of wisdom, inspiration, and change are critical elements of the hero monomyth as described by Campbell (1949) . These social sources appear in the form of friends, mentors, peers, and allies, all of whom represent rich and essential sources of transformation. There are times, moreover, when people encounter the wrong mentor whose advice does more harm than good. Allison and Smith (2015) used the term dark mentors to describe these damaging guides who not only undermine people’s ability to walk the heroic path; they encourage us down the wrong path.

Severe mental and physical illness can also impede people’s ability to undergo heroic transformation. Most individuals facing severe mental or physical disability are unable to reap the benefits of the hero’s journey because they are preoccupied with managing their condition. Related to this problem is the prevalence of narcissism. Psychologists believe that roughly 6% of US adults are afflicted with narcissistic personality disorder ( Bressert, 2018 ), which means that at least 15 million Americans may be narcissists. The characteristics of narcissism are a heightened sense of importance, a drive for unlimited success, a belief in one’s special nature, exploitation of people, little empathy, and an arrogant attitude. Narcissists are unlikely to undergo heroic transformation because they don’t believe they need one and thus avoid it entirely ( Worthington and Allison, 2018 ). The narcissist assigns blame for his problems to others, leading the him to believe that other people need to change rather than the narcissist himself.

Finally, people may avoid heroic transformation because they lack psychological flexibility, defined as an individual’s ability to adapt to fluctuating situational demands. Those classified as low in psychological flexibility have been shown to experience less growth and development ( Kashdan and Rottenberg, 2010 ). To help people overcome inflexibility, Hayes et al. (2011) developed a therapeutic approach called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The goal of ACT is to increase people’s ability to remain in the present moment as a conscious human being, and to learn new behaviors that serve desired goals. Psychological flexibility can be achieved through six core ACT processes, several of which sound like mindful pathways to Buddhist enlightenment. The six elements of ACT are acceptance, cognitive defusion, presence, seeing the self in context, values, and committed action. All of these processes reflect positive psychological and spiritual skills that enable people to grow and evolve into healthy adaptive human beings. They also resemble Franco et al. (2016) skillset of heroic eudaimonia, which includes mindfulness, autonomy, and efficacy (see also Jones, 2017 ).

This article has reviewed the functions, processes, and consequences of the hero’s transformation. William James once observed, “Whenever one aim grows so stable as to expel definitively its previous rivals from an individual’s life, we tend to speak of the phenomenon, and even wonder at it, as a transformation” ( James, 1902 , p. 70, italics added). James’ use of the word “wonder” implies that people are moved by the transformations they see in people, and also that these transformations are a rare occurrence. As did James, we suspect that many people spend their entire lives resisting change, denying the need for it, and suffering as a result of avoiding it. As Jung (1945) observed, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious” (p. 335).

The transformed hero exemplifies the zenith of human development. Psychologists have called this state self-actualization ( Maslow, 1943 ), the condition of well-being that allows people to flourish ( Seligman, 2011 ), the achievement of “bliss” ( Campbell, 1988 ), and the experience eudaimonia ( Franco et al., 2016 ). From their journey, heroes accumulate wisdom about their place in the world; they acquire the courage to face their deepest fears; they connect with all of humanity; they seek justice no matter the cost to themselves; they show humility; and they embark on a journey that “opens the world so that it becomes transparent to something that is beyond speech, beyond words, in short, to what we call transcendence” ( Campbell, 2014 , p. 40; see also Friedman, 2017 ). The wisdom of writers and philosophers, from Homer in 800 BCE to Phil Zimbardo today, informs us that we are all called to lead a heroic life. Yet most people are unaware of this fact, or they face impediments that impede the realization of their heroic potential. If the ultimate goal of the hero’s journey is for the hero to bestow the world with transformative gifts, then one would think that the world would be doing everything possible to promote the hero’s journey for everyone. We hope that this article represents progress toward shedding light on why transformation is elusive and what can be done to promote it.

Author Contributions

All authors contributed equally to the development and expression of the ideas in this article.

This research was supported by Summer Research Fellowships awarded to SA, AM, SS, and MS.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : hero, heroic transformation, hero’s journey, heroic development, human development

Citation: Allison ST, Goethals GR, Marrinan AR, Parker OM, Spyrou SP and Stein M (2019) The Metamorphosis of the Hero: Principles, Processes, and Purpose. Front. Psychol. 10:606. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00606

Received: 31 August 2018; Accepted: 04 March 2019; Published: 21 March 2019.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2019 Allison, Goethals, Marrinan, Parker, Spyrou and Stein. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Scott T. Allison, [email protected]

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Exploring the Depths of Modern Life as Reflected in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis

2023, IUBAT Review—A Multidisciplinary Academic Journal

This paper explores the philosophical themes present in Franz Kafka's seminal work, The Metamorphosis (1915). Through an analysis of the novella, the paper delves into how Kafka grapples with profound issues such as alienation, existential crisis, and the human condition. The paper examines the transformative journey of the protagonist, GregorSamsa, who undergoes a physical and psychological metamorphosis into a bug, serving as a metaphor for the human experience of feeling disconnected from oneself and others. By immersing readers in Gregor's surreal and isolating world, Kafka prompts introspection into the inherent struggles of human existence. Moreover, the paper explores Kafka's masterful use of absurdity and dark humor throughout the narrative, shedding light on the futility of human existence and the inevitability of death. By interweaving absurd and grimly humorous elements, Kafka offers a critique of societal norms and underscores the existential anxieties that arise when confronted with the absurdity of life. The pervasive sense of irony and bleakness in the novella serves to highlight the absurd and inherently flawed nature of the human condition. Furthermore, the research paper delves into the influences that shaped Kafka's philosophy, particularly his Jewish identity and experiences living in a rapidly changing, industrializing society. Kafka's writing reflects the anxieties and struggles of individuals in a modernized world, highlighting the existential dilemmas faced by those grappling with societal expectations and personal identity. By examining the philosophical dimensions of "The Metamorphosis," this paper offers a nuanced and in-depth analysis of Kafka's views on the human experience and the search for meaning in modern life. It invites readers to engage with the profound questions raised by Kafka's work and provides valuable insights into his philosophical stance.

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Daath Voyage

sheeryn khan

The proposed research paper endeavors to investigate the quest for emotional identity experienced by the narrator in Franz Kafka's novel The Metamorphosis. The novel opens with the narrator's realization that he has been transformed into a monstrous vermin, which can be perceived as Gregor's unintentional isolation from family and society. His Metamorphosis can be interpreted as a form of emotional escape from stressful reality and its dangers. It analyzes the emotional and psychological transformations experienced by the narrator, trying to be a part of something higher than what he was born. It narrates how he alienates himself from the surroundings while pretending someone that others wanted him to be. It represents a meta-conflict that budded in him due to a perplexing state of 'who he is' and 'what he wants to be.' Kafka's The Metamorphosis is a masterpiece of modern literature that examines universal concerns of despair, hope, and conflict an individual comes across in his alike Kafka.

Sophia Dichari

Ars Artium, Vol. 7

Franz Kafka died at a relatively young age of forty but in his young writing career, his works exemplify the strange nature of the human spirit. It is difficult to pin down Kafka; whether he is a realist writer or a fantasist. His The Metamorphosis takes the most fantastic assumption of transforming a human being into a giant bug and then taking the thematic and the textual discourse in the most ordinary, casual and realistic manner. The text doesn't fail to depict the futile, horrifying and labyrinthine world of the first half of the 20 th century. Mostly read as an allegorical text, The Metamorphosis in this paper, would be analyzed as not being just an allegory but also as a text that can be read as an anti-realist text. The protagonist, Gregor Samsa is actually the anti-hero of the text. He transforms overnight from being a family provider to being a family secret. The paper would highlight the various levels of "metamorphosis" that take place, not just of Gregor but also of his family members as they too change by the transformation of Gregor Samsa.

Mrinal Sarkar

Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis is too long to be a short story and again shorter for a novel. Like the form of novella, the story also dwindles between choices: whether to accept the transformed life or to keep on living the same life that Gregor can no longer stand a moment. The novella is a process – a transformation along with its many problems and the incapacity of actually going for what is needed the most. The need perhaps is very ambiguous, considering the need of Gregor’s family and the need of Gregor’s, something which he only realized but could not have the means to fulfil.

Metin BOŞNAK

Born in Prague as the son of well-to-do Jewish parents, he was a pupil at the Gymnasium. He thereafter was a student at Prague University, first of chemistry and German language and literature, from which he switched over to the law. He made friends with a fellow student, Max Brod, who, after Kafka"s early death, published his friend"s work. Kafka was a jew, and once described himself as "the eternal Jew... wandering senselessly through a senselessly obscene world."1 His life was indeed wandering in the wilderness. He was, in his own words, "full of childish hopes (particularly as regards women)"; these hopes, however, are"merely mirages born of despair," especially at those times when he was "the wretchedest of creatures in the desert." Canaan was his only "Promised Land, for no third place exists for mankind." He also added in his diary, referring to his miserable life, that he was "as lonely as F.Kafka." Kafka scratches the surface of everyday existence to reveal a world of absurdity and paradox, of aimlessness and futility, in which unrevealed and unexplained anxiety torments man. His style is exact and lucid, despite the grotesque unreality of the occurrences used to describe. His stories, in their combination of clarity and unreality, are masterpieces of dream-fiction. Kafka is known for the visionary character of his novels, stories, parables, and sketches, all of which center on the problematic existence of modern man, including Kafka himself in the person of Joseph K. in The Castle. After this preliminary observation, the purpose of the present paper is to undertake a study of Kafka"s famous story, Metamorphosis, with references to Ovid"s Metamorphoses. Lucius" Golden Ass. Miller"s Death of a Salesman. And Tolstoy"s The Death of Ivan Ilyich.

Antoine Athanassiadis

The following essay describes the act of reading involved in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" and discusses, on this basis, the value of Kafka's novel for reflecting on the phenomenological question of "dislocation". This essay endeavors to answer the following set of questions: to what extent is our reading of Kafka's novel possible? What does the act of reading produce on the reader? How is this performativity related to formal and narrative aspects of the book? What is the nature of our act of reading? These questions are addressed by discussing the issue of dislocation, on three levels: formal (1), reflexive (2) and responsive (3). In part one, I give a non-exhaustive description of the formal structure of the story by means of the concepts of reversal and gesture. In part two, I argue that our reading act is premised upon a necessary but impossible interplay with Gregor Samsa and that this interplay constitutes the reflexive layer of our reading. In part three, I give an account of what it is like to reflect on the act of reading Kafka's novel and suggests that this reflexivity makes our reading a responsive act to an adverse experience, before concluding.

Stanley Corngold

• Franz Kafka and Literary Criticism: ‘The Metamorphosis’ and ‘The Burrow’, vdm, Saarbrücken, 2010

Professor Rosy Singh

These two essays explore Kafka's universe in two of his writings, the canonical 'The Metamorphosis' and the little-known 'The Burrow'. Both narratives, each with a fantastic animal as the central character, present a series of existentially blocked situations. In 'Metamorphisis', the father-son relationship is problematic right from the start, but it is the brother-sister relation, to be specific, the elder brother-younger sister relationship that is crucial. Ultimately Gregor Samsa's death is the only possible way-out of this nightmare. Similar human predicaments and psychic complexities are presented in 'The Burrow'. Possessed with the idea of a soundproof house secure from trespassers, a restless creature sweats, slogs and suffers. He spends his entire youth constructing such a burrow. There is an endless and a hopeless search for a perfect existence. This semiotic study shows that human conditions are not static but in constant movement. The book is not just for the die-hard Kafka lovers. It is meant for all the literature enthusiasts who seek the author first and foremost in his writing and not in his history, personal or collective.

Atul Ranjan

The present document takes into account the human dilemma in modern society, this dilemma leads to desolation and dejection in the life of a person who is dedicated to feeding, protecting, and providing for his family. The situation in man's life comes when he fails to earn and provide and is considered useless. Gregor Samsa in Metamorphosis was the only breadwinner for his sister, mother, and father. He worked as a travelling salesman, who was content with his earnings. Franz Kafka shows the very staunch reality of Gregor when he wakes one day as transformed into an insect, unable to move, eat and go outside, he fails to bring bread or earn for his family, which eventually leads them into poverty as well as shame due to his appearance. Gregor becomes useless and a liability to his family, which forced him to commit suicide. Kafka moulded a story that shows how our society works for a man who doesn't earn and provide. Gregor's life becomes much more miserable due to his family's attitude toward him.

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Kafka’s “Metamorphosis”: Life in Modernity

The Metamorphosis is an expressionist novella by Franz Kafka that is considered one of the most intriguing and absurdist pieces of fiction while presenting an intricate psychological and philosophical analysis of modern realities. The complexity and inherent meaning of the plot have been a widely debated literally topic. Kafka is able to capture the transient and existentialist nature of industrial urbanization. The transformation of Gregor represents a metaphor for liberation from the chains of society which ultimately highlights the estrangement, immorality, and degradation of life in modernity.

The plot maintains a certain level of absurdity. As an expressionist writer, Kafka does not explain or justify many of the motifs in the story. The metamorphosis occurs, and neither Gregor nor his family’s reactions indicate that the described world is realistic but rather exists in a state without any structure or integrity. However, this may be a reflection of the realities of life in modernity which creates conditions that perpetuate alienation, loss of fundamental human values, and dysfunction. Hierarchical social relationships overwhelm the concept of family and biology. Despite his years of support and care, Gregor’s transformation becomes a topic of shame for the family. His eventual death arrives not due to the physical effects of the insect body but because of the abuse he suffers at the hands of those for whom he dearly cared. The family’s emergence as a working unit is a perverse form of redemption which is the product of Gregor’s demise.

Estrangement is a common aspect of modern times. Despite complex technology which enhances connectivity, many feel alienated. Gregor felt similarly in the story, working an interpersonal job but having no real relationships. Superficial relationships are a critical factor in the story. Gregor’s metamorphosis further alienated him by creating a psychological divide with even his family. The inability to communicate and his physical state becomes a point of isolation which was simply an extension of his human form. Gregor feels strange in his own room, personal tastes, and relationships. The metamorphosis simply confirmed the environment of alienation which is created by the modern social order.

Through metamorphosis, Gregor was reduced to a primitive creature. Human history suggests that society has evolved into a sophisticated state. However, Kafka created the effect of reverse evolution in Gregor by making him an insect suggesting that species can change into primitive forms. This is a commentary on the realities of modernist society which highlights that the attitudes of the Samsa family are an indicator that humans may not have evolved that much. In modern urban society, identity is derived down to economic contribution, only having value as long as one can earn a salary at a dehumanizing job. People are artificially isolated, and ethical or familial values are degraded, especially if one is different.

Gregor’s humiliating demise is an accurate reflection of humans in the current modernity of the technological era. Information systems and complex computer networks highlight the importance of material existence and the speed of its deterioration as more aspects of life move into cyberspace which is a “subversion of an ethical universe” (Michaelides 101). The insect, which is some horrendous vermin acting purely on automatic instinct is symbolic of the degradation of the human spirit which is disappearing within the modernity of technological achievement and social structures. However untenable the thought, humans are being reduced to digital files of information. Automation and such inorganic reality make humanity similarly primitive to that of an insect’s existence.

The Metamorphosis creates doubt about the assumptions of daily life. Relationships, social status, and materialistic success may be ambiguous and not matter in the end. Gregor’s transformation highlights the transitory nature of human life that can be affected by the slightest change of fortune. In the realities of modernity, self-identity has become dependent on societal roles and external approval.

Works Cited

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 1915. Planet E-Book, Web.

Michaelides, Pavlos E. “Modernity and The Existential Metaphysics of Life and Death in Kafka’s Metamorphosis.” International Journal of Arts & Sciences, vol. 9, no. 4, 2017, pp. 101-118.

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A Summary and Analysis of Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Metamorphosis’ is a short story (sometimes classed as a novella) by the Czech-born German-language author Franz Kafka (1883-1924). It is his best-known shorter work, published in German in 1915, with the first English translation appearing in 1933. ‘The Metamorphosis’ has attracted numerous interpretations, so it might be worth probing this fascinating story more closely.

You can read ‘The Metamorphosis’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Kafka’s story below.

Plot Summary

Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed into a giant insect. Although he briefly considers this transformation, he quickly turns his thoughts to his work and his need to provide for his parents (he lives with them and his sister) so that they can pay off their debts. He also thinks about how much he hates travelling.

He realises he is already late for work, but hesitates to call in sick because he has never had a day off sick before, and knows this might raise alarm bells. When he responds through the bedroom door after his mother calls to him, he realises that his voice has become different as a result of his metamorphosis into an insect. When his family try to enter his bedroom, they find the door locked, and he refuses to let them in.

Then there’s a knock at the door and it’s the chief clerk for whom Gregor works, wondering where Gregor has got to.

Still Gregor refuses to open the door to his family or to his visitor. The chief clerk is affronted and tells Gregor through the door that his work has not been good enough and his position at the company may not be safe. Gregor seeks to defend himself, and assures the clerk that he will soon return to work. However, because Gregor’s voice has changed so much since his transformation, nobody can understand what he’s saying.

Gregor opens the door and his mother screams when she sees him. He asks the chief clerk to smooth things over at the office for him, explaining his … sudden metamorphosis into an insect.

Later that evening, having swooned and dozed all day, Gregor wakes up at twilight and finds that his sister had brought him milk with some bread in it. Gregor attempts to drink the milk, but finds the taste disgusting, so he leaves it. He climbs under the couch so his family don’t have to look at him, while his sister tries to find him food that he can eat.

Gregor overhears his family talking in the other room, and discovers that, despite their apparent debts, his parents have some money stashed away. He has been going to work to support them when he didn’t have to.

As well as the changes to his voice, Gregor also realises that his vision has got worse since his transformation. He also discovers that he enjoys climbing the walls and the ceiling of his bedroom. To help him, his sister gets rid of the furniture to create more space for him to climb; Gregor’s mother disagrees and is reluctant to throw out all of Gregor’s human possessions, because she still trusts that he will return to his former state one day.

When he comes out of the room, his mother faints and his sister locks him outside. His father arrives and throws apples at him, severely injuring him, because he believes Gregor must have attacked his own mother.

After his brush with death, the family change tack and vow to be more sympathetic towards Gregor, agreeing to leave the door open so he can watch them from outside the room as they talk together. But when three lodgers move in with the family, and his room is used to store all of the family’s furniture and junk, he finds that he cannot move around any more and goes off his food. He becomes shut off from his family and the lodgers.

When he hears his sister playing the violin for the lodgers, he opens the door to listen, and the lodgers, upon spotting this giant insect, are repulsed and declare they are going to move out immediately and will not pay the family any of their rent owed. Gregor’s sister tells her parents that they must get rid of their brother since, whilst they have tried to take care of him, he has become a liability. She switches from talking about him as her brother and as an ‘it’, a foreign creature that is unrecognisable as the brother they knew.

Gregor, overhearing this conversation, wants to do the right thing for his family, so he decides that he must do the honourable thing and disappear. He crawls off back to his room and dies.

Gregor’s family is relieved that he has died, and the body is disposed of. Mr Samsa kicks the lodgers out of the apartment. He, his wife, and their daughter are all happy with the jobs they have taken, and Mr and Mrs Samsa realise that their daughter is now of an age to marry.

The one thing people know about ‘The Metamorphosis’ is that it begins with Gregor Samsa waking up to find himself transformed into an insect. Many English translations use the word in the book’s famous opening line (and we follow convention by using the even more specific word ‘beetle’ in our summary of the story above).

But the German word Ungeziefer does not lend itself easily to translation. It roughly denotes any unclean being or creature, and ‘bug’ is a more accurate rendering of the original into English – though even ‘bug’ doesn’t quite do it, since (in English anyway) it still suggests an insect, or at least some sort of creepy-crawly.

For this reason, some translators (such as David Wyllie in the one we have linked to above) reach for the word vermin , which is probably closer to the German original. Kafka did use the word Insekt in his correspondence discussing the book, but ordered that the creature must not be explicitly illustrated as such at any cost. The point is that we are not supposed to know the precise thing into which Gregor has metamorphosed.

The vagueness is part of the effect: Gregor Samsa is any and every unworthy or downtrodden creature, shunned by those closest to him. Much as those who wish to denigrate a particular group of people – immigrants, foreigners, a socio-economic underclass – often reach for words like ‘cockroaches’ or ‘vermin’, so Gregor’s transformation physically enacts and literalizes such emotive propaganda.

But of course, the supernatural or even surreal (though we should reject the term ‘Surrealist’) setup for the story also means that ‘The Metamorphosis’ is less a straightforward allegory (where X = Y) than it is a more rich and ambiguous exploration of the treatment of ‘the other’ (where X might = Y, Z, or even A, B, or C).

Gregor’s subsequent treatment at the hands of his family, his family’s lodgers, and their servants may well strike a chord with not just ethnic minorities living in some communities but also disabled people, people with different cultural or religious beliefs from ‘the mainstream’, struggling artists whose development is hindered by crass bourgeois capitalism and utilitarianism, and many other marginalised individuals.

This is one reason why ‘The Metamorphosis’ has become so widely discussed, analysed, and studied: its meaning is not straightforward, its fantastical scenario posing many questions.  What did Kafka mean by such a story? Is it a comedy, a tragedy, or both? Gregor’s social isolation from his nearest and dearest, and subsequent death (a death of despair, one suspects, as much as it is a noble sacrifice for the sake of his family), all suggest the story’s tragic undercurrents, and yet the way Kafka establishes Gregor’s transformation raises some intriguing questions.

Take that opening paragraph. The opening sentence – as with the very first sentence of Kafka’s novel, The Trial – is well-known, but what follows this arresting first statement is just as remarkable. For no sooner has Gregor discovered that he has been transformed, inexplicably, into a giant insect (or ‘vermin’), than his thoughts have turned from this incredible revelation to more day-to-day worries about his job and his travelling.

This is a trademark feature of Kafka’s writing, and one of the things the wide-ranging term ‘Kafkaesque’ should accommodate: the nightmarish and the everyday rubbing shoulders together. Indeed, the everyday already is a nightmare, and Samsa’s metamorphosis into an alien creature is just the latest in a long line of modernity’s hellish developments.

So the effect of this opening paragraph is to play down, as soon as it has been introduced, the shocking revelation that a man has been turned into a beetle (or similar creature).

Many subsequent details in Kafka’s story are similarly downplayed, or treated in a calm and ordinary way as if a man becoming a six-feet-tall insect is the most normal occurrence in the world, and this is part of the comedy of Kafka’s novella: an aspect of his work which many readers miss, partly because the comedic is so often the first thing lost in translation.

And, running contrariwise to the interpretation of ‘The Metamorphosis’ that sees it as ‘just’ a straightforward story about modern-day alienation and mistreatment of ‘the other’ is the plot itself, which sees Gregor Samsa freed from his life of servitude and duty, undertaking a job he doesn’t enjoy in order to support a family that, it turns out, are perfectly capable of supporting themselves (first by the father’s money which has been set aside, and then from the family’s jobs which the mother, father, and daughter all take, and discover they actually rather enjoy).

Even Gregor’s climbing of the walls and ceiling in his room, when he would have been travelling around doing his job, represents a liberation of sorts, even though he has physically become confined to one room. Perhaps, the grim humour of Kafka’s story appears to suggest, modernity is so hellish that such a transformation – even though it ends in death – is really the only liberation modern man can achieve.

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Kafka's Metamorphosis: A Journey of Identity with Language as a Vehicle

The original cover of Kafka's Metamorphosis , as the author intended it. Ominously, the cover does not contain an image of Gregor Samsa in his transformed state--the nature of his new form is left entirely up to the reader. 

Kafka’s Metamorphosis is a magical realist, allegorical tale that touches on the theme most central to us all—that of struggling to find and express one’s own identity in a world of ever-present, all-consuming obligations. As this short essay will explore, the reader leaves the novel feeling unsettled and unsatisfied, imprinted—one might even say scarred—with the message that sometimes the world one lives in makes it impossible to ever express that identity and to have it understood.

The novella opens with a most preposterous scenario , immediately testing, and seeking to expand, the reader’s ability to suspend disbelief. The story’s protagonist, Gregor Samsa, has awoken one morning to find himself “transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin” (7). This first sentence puzzles the reader, as one is not yet sure what to think. What is meant by “vermin,” one wonders? Is Mr. Samsa dreaming? Is the mysterious narrator speaking figuratively? As we read on, we learn that no, Mr. Samsa is not dreaming. The narrator continues on to describe to describe Mr. Samsa’s shivering discovery of his new, grotesque self—“his armor-like back,” “his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections,” and “his many legs, pitifully thin” (7). Puzzlingly, however, Mr. Samsa’s reaction is not one of shock or horror. Instead, he refers to his own new form as “nonsense,” and immediately tries with all his might to get himself out of bed so that he can start his day, as though it were like any other. 

Mr. Samsa’s reaction from this point on is packed with symbolic meaning. As he tries to get himself out of bed and exclaims “Oh God,” it has nothing to do with his new form! Rather, he completes his sentence by musing, “what a strenuous career it is that I’ve chosen! Travelling day in and day out. ... It can all go to Hell!” (7). He explores more of his new, unsightly body, and continues his thought, noting, “Getting up early all the time, it makes you stupid. ... If I didn’t have my parents to think about I’d have given in my notice a long time ago .... [O]nce I’ve got the money together to pay off my parents’ debt to him – another five or six years I suppose – that’s definitely what I’ll do. First of all though, I’ve got to get up, my train leaves at five” (7-8). Despite having transformed into some ambiguous bug-like creature, Mr. Samsa is so preoccupied by his work as a traveling salesman and his parents’ debt that he is unable to worry about his condition. His only thoughts are how he will get to work and get his family back on solid financial footing. These thoughts continue throughout the work, as Mr. Samsa thinks often about his family’s debt and how they will live without him. He feels his absence only as a provider, rather than a brother, friend, or son. 

A trailer for a movie based on Metamorphosis , produced and released in 2012. 

A reflective piece in The New Yorker discussing the difficulties in meaning of translating Metamorphosis . 

We glean from this opening series of events that Kafka presents Mr. Samsa as a man so utterly controlled by the obligations of his life that his own identity—to the point of his very being as a human—became lost in the mix. Indeed, Kafka sustains this message by maintaining a shroud of mystery around just what Mr. Samsa has become. In the English translation, Mr. Samsa as presented as a “vermin,” “insect,” “dung beetle,” and “bug,” at various points, but the reader never learns for sure. In fact, Kafka was deliberately ambiguous, writing in a letter to his editor before publication that “the insect is not to be drawn,” so that the reader may form his own image (Jones, 2015). Moreover, Kafka’s original German term for Mr. Samsa’s new form, ungeheueres Ungeziefer , “poses one of the greatest challenges to the translator” (Bernofsky, 2014). The term comes from a Middle High German word that means “sacrificial animal” but that also “describes the class of nasty creepy-crawly things.” The English translation of “vermin,” however, evokes the image of a rodent, which is distinct. Though the lack of clarity here might simply stem from the ambiguities of language and translation, one might also view it as an instrument of meaning—that neither the narrator nor Mr. Samsa can precisely describe his new condition signifies the difficulty of coming to terms with one’s identity. Moreover, that Mr. Samsa dies in his new form at the end of the tale leaves the reader with the message that sometimes one becomes wholly swallowed by the various obligations that twist and pull on us all. 

The text of a lecture from Professor Warren Breckman at the University of Pennsylvania detailing how Kafka's life may have influenced his writings. 

A brief review of Kafka’s family and the context of his life provide added weight to this suggested theme. Indeed, according to those who knew and have studied him, Kafka felt a strong “sense of personal weakness and failure,” and resented his day job as a lawyer and as a bureaucrat with the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute (Breckman, 2000). Just as Mr. Samsa, it seems that Kafka himself struggled to establish his identity—wanting desperately to please his father with his writing, but failing—and devolved into self-loathing. Perhaps Kafka viewed himself as a grostesque alien creature, distant from his family, and fretting about the fiscal obligations around him that he believed prevented him from enjoying his life. In that way, the realist element to Kafka’s magical realist tale comes from his own perspective on his life. While deeply autobiographical in this sense, The Metamorphosis is a tale to which all can relate, as it reminds us powerfully of the glaring monsters within us that we create to shield ourselves from the world.  

Bernofsky, Susan. "On Translating Kafka's 'Metamorphosis.'" The New Yorker . 14 January, 2014. 

   Accessed 23 February 2016.

Breckman, Warren. "Kafka's Metamorphosis  in His Time and Ours." Penn Reading Project Lecture .

   6 September, 2000. Accessed 23 February 2016. 

Jones, Josh. "Franz Kafka Says the Insect in The Metamorphosis Should Never be Drawn; Vladimir

  Nabokov Draws It Anyway." Open Culture . 21 October, 2015. Accessed 23 February 2016.

Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis . New York: Classix Press, 2009.

The Metamorphosis

Introduction of the metamorphosis.

Metamorphosis was originally published in the German language as Die Verwandlung and later translated into English. It is a popular novelette written by Franz Kafka . It was first published in 1915 and immediately created an uproar in the literary circles. Later, it was translated into several other languages, after which it became a foundation for writing about/on the grotesque and psychological issues. The story , though, revolves around a poor salesman and his inexplicable transformation into a vermin, it highlights the struggle of the downtrodden in the face of mounting financial pressures.

Summary of The Metamorphosis

Gregor Samsa is an ordinary salesman. He maintains busy life to look after his entire family, trying to live in relative prosperity and happiness. His routine continues until a day comes when he gets up to see himself transformed into a monstrous insect or vermin. Considering it a new awakening dream, he goes to sleep again after throwing a casual glance at his room and tries to roll over but finds it uncomfortable on account of his shape. He finds his new legs and thinks about his life as a salesman but then turns to the clock to see that much time has passed after he has tried to sleep.

Gregor hears continuous knocking that keeps him on the toes. He tries to speak but nothing intelligible comes out of his mouth. He wishes there is a fix to the abnormal change. He tries to get out of the bed fails, locking himself in the room. After his absence, his manager comes to ask the reason for his delay. Hence Gregor, reveals the transformation as they wait for him to open the door. Strangely, no one recognizes him at first.

The manager issues a threat about his unsatisfactory performance despite his repeated protests. Then all of a sudden the manager is horrified while looking at Gregor in his changed shape. Gregor tries to request him by catching the fleeing manager but injures himself after which his father throws him back into the room with a cane and shuts the door. Exhausted with this way of dealing with people, he feels tired and goes to sleep that day.

When he wakes up, he sees food in the room but soon comes to know that his taste for regular human food is not there anymore. He starts listening to the sounds coming from the outside. Finally, his sister, Grete, senses his situation and throws rotting bread crumbs inside the room that he finds tasty. This act of eating leftover vegetables and crumbs turns into his routine, while the rest of the time he hides under the couch to avoid frightening her. He senses as well as hears his family talking about the impending financial crunch and his mother’s desire to see him, including the refusal from his sister and father to allow her to see him.

Soon he finds himself adjusting to his new life comfortably and trying to explore the wall and the ceiling. Making it his new routine, he explores the room which his sister, Grete, changes for him, removing additional furniture from the room. He tries to make them keep the woman’s picture in the room, but it is also removed. During the move, Gregor’s mother faints. Finally, Grete calls him one day but he runs toward the kitchen. His father, who just enters the room injuries him by throwing an apple, thinking he may have attacked his mother. However, the situation clears when she explains it to her husband. The apple lodges on Gregor’s back which become infected.

The family soon decides to give him some room to move. They also open the door for a few hours in the evening. He, however, becomes worried at their relative poverty , while Grete’s resentment also intensifies. The maid is gone, and the family is consulting to house three boarders which increases his distress. During this period, Gregor also realizes that his family are doing much better financially. His father had some savings. His mother and sister are also earning well. When one evening, a cleaning lady accidentally opens the door, he sees three boarders asking his sister to play the violin. When they see Gregor, they leave without paying her.

Grete, sensing Gregor’s presence as a threat to the family’s survival, tells the family to get rid of him. As he sees his father agreeing to her proposal, he also consents in his heart to alleviate their suffering. Therefore, he silently dies at night . The family discovers his body in the morning. His dead body is soon disposed of by the charwoman/maid. The family also review their financial conditions and notice that Grete is beautiful and will hopefully find a good husband. The family even goes on holiday after Gregor’s death and decides to move to a different apartment.

Major Themes in The Metamorphosis

• Transformation: Whether it is a physical transformation, a general transformation, or a situational transformation, it plays an important role in a family’s fortune. When Gregor Samsa sees himself changed, he feels the unease of seeing his family facing the financial crunch. However, he soon realizes that they have learned to live without him, for they have also transformed themselves; a necessity for their survival. Therefore, transformation, whatever it may be, is the major thematic strand of this story.
• Loss of Identity : After he sees his transformation into a vermin, Gregor realizes that his ability to communicate and think has not changed. This seems an extraordinary situation for him, for he has lost his identity but not the ability. He can clearly think and see others reacting to his situation and condition, yet he is unable to do anything. Soon his former identity of the traveling salesman changes into an odious vermin. With this transformation, he loses his identity and status of the breadwinner of the family.
• Social Isolation: When Gregor loses his physical shape, he also loses his social circles. Even his Manager comes running amuck to get him back or issue him threats of sacking instead of finding the reality behind his absence and late coming. This social isolation, soon, penetrates the family circle and the day arrives when Grete has to suggest that they must get rid of him, or lose their lives in impending penury and hunger.
• Human Relations: Human relations are a mystery that is evident from the loss of the status of Gregor Samsa from the important person of the family to a throw-away thing. Economic situation and status create human relations. Gregor Samsa is an important person of the family as well as the organization. However, he loses this status and relations when it comes to the transformation and loss of his former status and situation.
• Family Responsibility: Family responsibility is the thematic strand in that unless a person takes up the responsibility of himself and others, he is not worthy of respect and honor. Gregor Samsa loses his responsibility after he becomes a vermin. Hence, the family soon loses him after thinking that he is becoming a burden and liability rather than taking up the responsibility.
• Disability: Disability has its own ramifications, while survival of the fittest seems to rule the roost where Gregor has lost his ability to bring a change in the family. His disability has brought ruin for him, for the family faces the financial strain on account of his being a burden and nuisance for the family.
• Alienation of Man: Man becomes alienated from himself, his surroundings, and his family in a routinized lifestyle. Gregor Samsa may have suffered from a mental transformation, but he has lost his importance on account of his day-to-day routinized life in which he has no time to think about himself. His alienation soon takes his own life when the family sees that he is no more useful.
• Sense of Guilt: Gregor feels guilt that he has failed to take up the family responsibility after his physical transformation despite knowing that it is none of his mistakes. However, this sense of not assisting the family during the crunch leads him to consent to his elimination from the scene.
• Absurdity of Life: The transformation of Gregor also throws light on the absurdity of the life of human beings and the choices a person has to make himself worthwhile in the family as well as in society. Gregor loses his identity, place, and status when his situation changes and sees this absurdity of his life from close quarters. Therefore, he thinks it fit to die instead of continuing living in this humiliation.

Major Characters in The Metamorphosis

• Gregor Samsa: The central character and the protagonist , Gregor Samsa has been shown as a traveling salesman, who has routinized his life for the uplift of his family, proving himself a responsible adult. However, the sudden transformation of his physical shape into an odious vermin has played havoc with his future, crippling him to become a no-man and the most hated figure within his family. He loses his status, his centrality, and his identity as a result of this transformation, and soon hears that his family, too, is fed up with him like his Manager and the company. Therefore, he thinks it wise to die peacefully instead of making life difficult for his family members, who are now on the verge of making a decision to get rid of him.
• Grete Samsa: Despite her tender years, Grete proves an equally responsible and dependable figure, who shoulders the family during these trying times when the main breadwinner has transformed into a vermin, a change that is proving an anathema for the family. She takes up the double responsibility; fetching finances to run the house and taking care of the vermin, her brother. However, when she sees that the issues are paralyzing her ability to make the family survive the odds, she takes the family into confidence to get rid of Gregor Samsa. Although it does not show her hatred, it is rather a pragmatism of getting rid of one, instead of all.
• Mr. Samsa: As the head of the family, Mr. Samsa faces his inability to fetch finances to run the household. Fully dependent on his son’s salesmanship, he sees no way out of this dilemma that brings attacks of agony and estrangement on him. This becomes his fury whenever a chance comes to him. Later, Gregor realizes that Mr. Samsa was lying and had been saving some money in investments. The family was not entirely dependant on Gregor’s income. Mr. Samsa was one of the major reasons for Gregor’s misery. When he hears that Gregor is no more, he thanks God due to the prospectus of marrying his daughter and living with his wife happily.
• Mrs. Samsa: Mrs. Samsa, though, is typical in her domestic limits, she becomes horrified at the sudden transformation of her favorite and dependable son into a vermin. But strangely, her love for her son stays, though, she dares not to visit his room. Her hope that someday this process would reverse continues until she comes to accept the reality that her son has to go.
• The Manager: Despite being a secondary character, the significance of the anonymous Manager lies in the fact that he makes the family realize the uselessness of Gregor Samsa, for Gregor, is now unable to join his duty and hence is not a breadwinner. This initial thinking penetrates Grete, who, by the end, voices her concern to win the family’s consent.
• The Servant Girl: Anna is the maidservant of the family and knows the odious transformation of Samsa, but the financial crunch that the family faces on account of Gregor’s transformation takes her job, too.
• Cleaning Woman: After Anna leaves the family, the cleaning woman appears on the scene and comes to know about the strange creature living in the house. Disgusted at this revelation, she leaves the house.
• Three Boarders: These three boarders appear in the novel by the end when they come to live as family guests, but immediately leave out of fear after coming to know that such a huge vermin is living in a room.  

Writing Style of The Metamorphosis

The novel, Metamorphosis, shows Kafka’s style through the use of long and simple sentences . However, the irrationality of the incident of the transformation of Gregor has not lost its bizarreness in the simplicity of the words and sentences. The tone turns to a nonchalant one that continues until the end. That is why this distinct style has been named Kafkaesque style, which shows the sardonic attitude of Kafka in presenting highly fantastical elements in his narratives and continue narrating them as if they are real.

Analysis of Literary Devices in The Metamorphosis  

• Action: The main action of the novel comprises Gregor Samsa’s transformation into a vermin and loss of his value, and importance in the family. The rising action occurs when Gregor gets up to find himself a vermin. The falling action occurs when the family members gather and Grete suggests that he should be thrown away to save the family.
• Allegory : Metamorphosis shows the use of allegory through the presentation of the main idea that modern society has transformed human beings into routinized creatures having little consciousness of the self. Gregor’s transformation turns him into a vermin without having any value.
• Antagonist : Although it seems that fate is the main antagonist of Metamorphosis in the opening chapters, yet it seems that Mr. Samsa is the primary antagonist who seems to have been restored to his position as the head after Gregor’s transformation.
• Allusion : There are various examples of allusions given in the novel. The first is the Biblical allusion of the apple as given in the story of Adam and Eve, and the second is the allusion of the crucifixion as Gregor has been nailed down like Christ on the crucifixion. For example, i. It was an apple; immediately a second one flew after it. Gregor stood still in fright. Further flight was useless, for his father had decided to bombard him. (Part-II) ii. But he felt as if he was nailed in place and lay stretched out completely confused in all his senses. (Part-II)
• Conflict : The are two types of conflicts in the novel . The first one is the external conflict that starts between Gregor and the Manager about his work in the company. Another conflict is in the mind of Gregor about his existence, his position in the family, and about the problems of the family how they are going to solve them.
• Characters: Metamorphosis presents both static as well as dynamic characters . The young man, Gregor Samsa, and his sister, Grete, both are dynamic characters. However, the rest of the characters do not see any change in their behavior, as they are static characters like Mr. Samsa and Mrs. Samsa, including the Manager and the three boarders.
• Climax : The climax takes place when the three lodgers threaten to leave in the morning without making any payment, leaving the family high and dry. Therefore, the family reaches the solution which lies in throwing away Gregor Samsa.
• Foreshadowing : The novel shows the following examples of foreshadowing . i. But as he finally raised his head outside the bed in the open air, he became anxious about moving forward any further in this manner, for if he allowed himself eventually to fall by this process, it would take a miracle to prevent his head from getting injured. (Part-I) ii. In the middle of all this, the manager called out in a friendly way, ‘Good morning, Mr. Samsa.’ ‘He is not well,’ said his mother to the manager, while his father was still talking at the door, ‘He is not well, believe me, Mr. Manager. (Part-I) Both these foreshadows show that Gregor is not going to witness his previous status as the head of the family as well as the useful worker of the company.
• Hyperbole : Hyperbole or exaggeration occurs in the novel at various places. For example, i. One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams , he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. (Part-I) The above sentence is hyperbole , and also sets the stage for the fantasy shown in the shape of further hyperboles used in the novel.
• Imagery : Imagery means to use of five senses such as in the below examples. i. One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. (Part-1) ii. Still, what should he do now? The next train left at seven o’clock. To catch that one, he would have to go in a mad rush. The sample collection wasn’t packed up yet, and he really didn’t feel particularly fresh and active. And even if he caught the train, there was no avoiding a blow up with the boss, because the firm’s errand boy would’ve waited for the five o’clock train and reported the news of his absence long ago. (Part-1) Both of these examples show the use of different images such as the image of dreams, bug, movement, and image of his shape. The second example also shows the images of sound, touch, and sight.
• Metaphor : Metamorphosis shows good use of various metaphors such as the extended metaphors of Gregor Samsa, turning into a bug or a vermin. A couple of examples of the metaphors are given below. i. Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. (Part-I) ii. In his present situation, such futile ideas went through his head. (Part-II) iii. A huge bony cleaning woman with white hair flapping all over her head came in the morning and the evening to do the heaviest work. (Part-III)
• Mood : The novel shows an absurd mood , though it becomes tragic, ironic, and at times highly sarcastic. Sometimes, it also becomes gloomy when Gregor thinks about himself and his family problems, but then becomes sardonic.
• Motif : Most important motifs of the novel are the loss of humanity, the loss of innocence, family love, financial pressure, and above all human life.
• Narrator : The novel is narrated by a third-person narrator . It is also called an omniscient narrator who happens to be the author himself as he can see things from all perspectives .
• Protagonist : Gregor Samsa is the protagonist of the novel. The novel starts with his transformation and ends with his death.
• Rhetorical Questions : The novel shows good use of rhetorical questions at several places. For example, i. Did you understood a single word?’ the manager asked the parents, ‘Is he playing the fool with us?’ ‘For God’s sake,’ cried the mother already in tears, ‘perhaps he’s very ill and we’re upsetting him. Grete! Grete!’ she yelled at that point. ‘Mother?’ (Part-I) ii. Come, wouldn’t it be better to go back to the living room for just another moment?’ (Part-II) iii. ‘What do you mean?’ (Part-III) This example shows the use of rhetorical questions posed by different characters such as first by Gregor to himself, the Manager to his family, and Grete to herself.
• Theme : A theme is a central idea that the novelist or the writer wants to stress upon. The novel shows the titular thematic strands of metamorphosis and the absurdity of life, human relations, and the importance of financial issues in life.
• Setting : The setting of the novel is a small apartment in a small German town.
• Simile : The novel shows good use of various similes. For example, i. In order to get as clear a voice as possible for the critical conversation which was imminent, he coughed a little and certainly took the trouble to do this in a really subdued way, since it was possible that even this noise sounded like something different from a human cough. (Part-I) ii. …it sounded like the wind whistling. (Part-I) iii. The father relentlessly pressed forward pushing out sibilants, like a wild man. (Part-I) iv. The whole thing really looked just like a coverlet thrown carelessly over the couch. (Part-II) The first simile compares his cough to some other sound, the second his sound to the whistling of the wind, the third his father to a wild mand, and the fourth the sheet to something like a coverlet.
• Irony : The novel shows situational irony . For example, i. If I were to try that with my boss, I’d be thrown out on the spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn’t be really good for me. If I didn’t hold back for my parents ’ sake, I would’ve quit ages ago. I would’ve gone to the boss and told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart. (Part-I) ii. The sister began to play. The father and mother, followed attentively, one on each side, the movements of her hands. Attracted by the playing, Gregor had ventured to advance a little further forward and his head was already in the living room. He scarcely wondered about the fact that recently he had had so little consideration for the others; earlier this consideration had been something he was proud of. (Part-II) Both of these examples show the situation’s irony, how the situation has changed, and how the reaction comes. The first is the situation of his thinking that he is sincere and the boss does not think so without considering his situation, while the second also makes him think about himself without thinking about his situation.

Related posts:

• The Metamorphosis Themes
• The Metamorphosis Characters
• The Metamorphosis Quotes
• Franz Kafka

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Essay On The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. The story follows Gregor Samsa, a young man who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect-like creature.

The novel has been interpreted in many ways, but is often seen as a commentary on the human condition, and our relationship to work and family. The story continues to be relevant today, as we grapple with our own uncertain futures.

If you’re interested in reading The Metamorphosis, you can find it online or in most bookstores. The novel is a classic of 20th-century literature, and is sure to provoke thought and discussion.

In his essay, Helmut Richter examined The Metamorphosis’s plot. The major storyline of the narrative is Gregor’s failure at his job, which leads to his death. Early in the book, the climax of the story begins. When Gregor wakes up one morning and discovers that he has become a huge insect, he recognizes that he has failed as a salesman.

The bug Gregor becomes is a burden to his family, and eventually leads to his demise. The resolution of The Metamorphosis is Gregor’s death. Even though Gregor is no longer human, he still has human characteristics. He does not want to be a bother to his family and decides that the best way to help them is to die. In order for Gregor to die, he must first detach himself from his family emotionally.

The final step in The Metamorphosis is when Gregor’s sister, Grete, finds him dead in his room. Grete has changed throughout the story as well. She goes from someone who loves and cares for her brother, to someone who can no longer stand the sight of him. The death of Gregor brings the family back together and they are finally able to move on with their lives.

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is a novel about a man who turns into a giant insect. The story follows Gregor as he tries to adapt to his new life, while also dealing with the struggles that come along with it. The novel explores themes of family, work, and relationships. The Metamorphosis is a classic piece of literature that is still relevant today.

Many people would claim that The Metamorphosis reflects Kafka’s own life. These individuals would call it a self-portrait. Gregor’s parents were similar to Kafka’s in many ways. He was born into a wealthy family and his father was domineering. His mother, like Grete in the novel, was a kind woman who sided with his father often. The resemblance of the families resembles that of Gregor’s sister, who is also named Grete. Kafka’s sister, like Grete in the book, was the only one in his family who stood by him and he liked.

He also believed that Kafka was “trying to come to terms with his own existence.” The novel has been argued to be about many things, but most people would agree that it is a story about an individual’s journey and battle with humanity.

Kafka begins The Metamorphosis with Gregor Samsa waking up from uneasy dreams. He wakes up to find himself transformed into a “monstrous vermin.” The first thing he thinks about is how he will miss his train and let down his employer. The metamorphosis could be interpreted as Gregor going through puberty, or it could simply be seen as a physical representation of his emotional state. Throughout the novel, Gregor continuously tries to hold onto his human form and humanity, but as time goes on he starts to lose touch with reality.

He becomes more insect-like and less human. His family also begins to change and their attitudes towards him start to change. At first, they are shocked and terrified of him, but eventually they begin to treat him like an animal. They stop seeing him as Gregor Samsa, and start seeing him as “the creature” or “the beast.”

Gregor’s sister is the only one in his family that seems to truly care for him, and she is the only one that does not treat him like a monster. She is the only one that tries to see past his physical appearance and see him for who he really is. She is also the only one that tries to keep him in touch with his humanity. She does this by reading to him, playing music for him, and even bringing him food.

The relationship between Gregor and his sister is very similar to the relationship between Kafka and his own sister. Kafka’s sister was the only one in his family that he was close to and that he could rely on. Towards the end of The Metamorphosis, Gregor’s health starts to rapidly decline and he eventually dies.

His death could be seen as a symbolic representation of him giving up on his humanity. He dies alone in his room, away from his family, and they do not even bother to check on him until after he is dead. The final straw for Gregor is when his sister gets engaged and she no longer has time for him. He dies knowing that he is no longer needed or wanted by his family, and that they would be better off without him.

D. Roth explains the main theme of The Metamorphosis as transformation. He believes that Gregor’s entire family, not just him, undergoes a metamorphosis in this story. When Gregor transforms into an insect, his family’s life is irrevocably altered. Gregor’s family is frequently ignorant of how much work he does for them on their behalf.

In the final moments of The Beach Boy, his father’s company was in debt and he was forced to help support the household. When Gregor transforms into an insect at the novel’s conclusion, a lazy, ungrateful family is completely transformed. Gregor’s family quickly discovers that living with an insect will be much more difficult than before.

The change in Gregor’s family is the result of his change. The theme of The Metamorphosis is thus change. Richter goes on to discuss other themes in The Metamorphosis such as identity, isolation, and relationships. He argues that when Gregor turns into an insect, his entire sense of self is changed.

Gregor no longer feels like a human being and he becomes isolated from the rest of his family. His relationships with his family members are also changed. Richter argues that The Metamorphosis is ultimately a story about alienation and estrangement.

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The Metamorphosis Themes: from Isolation to Alienation

Gregor’s transformation and inability to communicate dehumanize him in the eyes of his family. The Metamorphosis’ themes explore this problem in detail, thus becoming crucial for understanding Kafka’s mind.

In this article, IvyPanda writers prepared a thorough analysis of the story’s themes.

• 👽 Theme of Isolation
• 🐛 Transformation Theme
• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family Theme
• 💎 Deeper Meaning

🎓 References

👽 isolation in the metamorphosis.

The Metamorphosis themes are undoubtedly worthy of a separate discussion. Among them, the theme of alienation and isolation plays a significant role in the novel.

The literal isolation started when Gregor woke up one morning only to find himself turned into a monstrous vermin-like creature. He gained a new body, which made him an alien to the human world. He lost his ability to speak the human language, making screeching sounds instead. His new routine came to staying in his room day and night, where he explored his condition, contemplated anxieties, and occasionally watched his family through a crack in the bedroom door. Slowly but surely, the family grew tired of this new version of Gregor.

The inability to communicate heavily impacted Gregor’s relationship with his parents and his sister Grete in particular as she tried to understand him the most. Despite his metamorphosis, he remained conscious but couldn’t explain all his emotional and psychological conflicts, which added to his loneliness and desperation. This mutism constrained Gregor from communicating not only with his family but with the whole of humankind.

Yet, there is a reason why Franz Kafka is considered a genius of psychological literature. The irony of Gregor’s alienation in Metamorphosis stretches way beyond his initial transformation and its consequences. Gregor Samsa was lonely and desperate before the events of the book. He worked as a traveling salesman, a job synonymous with constant moving and personal isolation. It restrained him from having any close relationships outside of his family circle.

Even nowadays, people who travel a lot due to the nature of their jobs experience general feelings of loneliness and, sometimes, even depression. The reader has to imagine how hard it was to travel and work in the past with limited means of communication. As Kafka mentions in The Metamorphosis , the only contact between Gregor and his family occurred through letters. This type of correspondence takes a greater amount of time to reach its addressee than modern-day instant texting and calling through the mobile network.

Moreover, Gregor was doomed with emotional isolation from the start, as his family members always took his existence for granted. Gregor’s altruism played a twisted joke on him, making the poor soul a simple “ money bag ” for the Samsas. This type of alienation has been consistent since the beginning of the Modern Age, when capitalist ideas started to influence people’s minds and hearts . Pragmatism and efficiency took over spiritualism.

Returning to the book, throughout most of the story, Gregor still cares for his family and wishes to help them. He ignores his dire circumstances. Nevertheless, in the last chapter, Gregor realizes that he does not miss anyone from the outside world. In the end, Gregor’s remains are thrown out like some trash by the charwoman.

To sum up all of the above, in the greater context, Gregor’s character has always been condemned to be lonely, as Kafka made sure of that. The transformation only amplified Gregor’s separation from the world. By bringing the alienation theme, Kafka offers his views on the troubles of the Modern Age.

💬 Alienation Quotes

“Oh God, he thought, what an exhausting job I’ve picked on! Traveling about day in, day out. It’s much more irritating work than doing the actual business in the office, and on top of that there’s the trouble of constant traveling, of worrying about train connections, the bed and irregular meals, casual acquaintances that are always new and never become intimate friends.” (Chapter 1)

“On hearing these words from his mother Gregor realized that the lack of all direct human speech for the past two months together with the monotony of family life must have confused his mind [..].” (Chapter 2)

“[…] once more, after this long interval, there appeared in his thoughts the figures of the chief and the chief clerk, the commercial travelers and the apprentices, the porter who was so dull-witted, two or three friends in other firms, a chambermaid in one of the rural hotels, a sweet and fleeting memory, a cashier in a milliner’s shop, whom he had wooed earnestly but too slowly-they all appeared, together with strangers or people he had quite forgotten, but instead of helping him and his family they were one and all unapproachable and he was glad when they vanished.” (Chapter 3)

🐛 The Metamorphosis: Theme of Transformation

Transformation is one of the key themes in The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. The story starts with Gregor waking up and discovering that he turned into an insect-like creature. Although his body has undergone irreversible changes, his mind still remains human, undergoing changes over the course of the story. A symbolic conflict occurs between his mind and body: Gregor human vs. Gregor insect.

The first example presents itself at the very beginning of the book. Despite suspecting that something is wrong, Gregor does not fully grasp the horrid situation he is in. He thinks of it as some sort of temporal “illness.” As time progresses, Gregor keeps worrying about his job duties and inability to work. Throughout the story, it seems as if Gregor never completely realized how monstrous and shocking he looked.

With Gregor’s further development, the new body adjusts to new realities. He tries to walk upright but quickly realizes that the horizontal position is more convenient. Gregor experiments with his numerous legs and climbs onto the walls around the room. He creeps under the sofa by a “half-unconscious action” where he feels more comfortable. The initial boredom and isolation contribute to the reshaping of his consciousness.

Gradually, Gregor’s metamorphosis alters his mindset. He tries to eat the food he used to love, but his strange instincts oppose it. Gregor does not understand who he could refuse his favorite dish. He automatically gorges into rotten chunks left by Grete the second time.

Even when Gregor thinks like a human, his capability to make logical conclusions and decisions slowly fades. The way he acts every time someone comes into his room supports this fact.

Gregor starts to feel disconnected from Grete every time she enters his room and opens the windows. It does not appease his insect senses. “The very way she came in distressed him,” Kafka states. During Grete’s cleaning, Gregor “would crouch trembling under the sofa all the time.”

Another great example of Gregor’s inner conflict occurs when Grete and her mother decide to move furniture from his bedroom. His insect part is, at first, glad about that change, as it would allow him to crawl around the room with more freedom. But then his mother vocalizes her concerns about the possible negative effect of the furniture’s absence on her son’s mind. What if the familiar objects can help him to remain his mind and return to his original body? The question triggers Gregor’s human part of consciousness, forcing him to climb onto the print of the lady in the muff to show protest.

Still, over the rest of the story, the insect side of Gregor slowly but surely overtakes his human side. He hisses and shrieks at every disturbance. As he almost loses his self-identity, the last and most powerful reminder of his consciousness appears at Grete’s violin concert . Gregor feels uplifted and inspired by the music, which makes him feel human again.

For a moment, his human dreams and desires return, but the reader sees that he cannot view himself as a person anymore. He imagines himself as a vermin, communicating with his sister in that form. In a sense, it confirms that he can no longer physically turn into a person, reversing the transformation.

Finally, on his deathbed, Gregor is thinking about his family. His last thoughts are filled with love and tenderness towards the people who abandoned him. Gregor was able to become human again. Thus, The Metamorphosis ’ theme of Gregor’s mental transformation made a coherent circle in the book.

💬 Quotes on Transformation

“Pitilessly Gregor’s father drove him back, hissing and crying “Shoo!” like a savage. […] If only he would have stopped making that unbearable hissing noise! It made Gregor quite lose his head. He had turned almost completely round when the hissing noise so distracted him that he even turned a little the wrong way again.” (Chapter 1)

“This made him realize how repulsive the sight of him still was to her, and that it was bound to go on being repulsive, and what an effort it must cost her not to run away even from the sight of the small portion of his body that stuck out from under the sofa.” (Chapter 2)

“He especially enjoyed hanging suspended from the ceiling; it was much better than lying on the floor; one could breathe more freely; one’s body swung and rocked lightly; and in the almost blissful absorption induced by this suspension it could happen to his own surprise that he let go and fell plump on the floor. Yet he now had his body much better under control than formerly, and even such a big fall did him no harm.” (Chapter 2)

👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family Theme in The Metamorphosis

One of The Metamorphosis’ key themes is the subject of family and sympathy. Gregor’s close kin are his parents and sister Grete. Their reactions to his metamorphosis affect him significantly, just like his transformation influences their behavior and development.

Mr. Samsa is the authority in the family. Concerning his attitude, the question arises:

How does Gregor’s father react to his transformation?

His first reaction to Gregor was a mixture of anger and great sorrow. After realizing what happened, he “wept till his great chest heaved.” His hostility could have occurred because Mr. Samsa initially acted as the defender of the household, seeing a giant bug in his son’s room.

Soon after, he might have understood that this very bug could be his son, and it caused him great distress. His only son will not be able to provide for the family anymore. So, Mr. Samsa’s initial reaction is double-edged.

For the rest of the novella, the father treats Gregor as an insect, scaring him and hurting him physically. The hostility reaches its boiling point when Mr. Samsa throws apples at Gregor after returning from the tiring job in Chapter 2.

Mrs. Samsa is horrified by Gregor’s new appearance. She experiences a panic attack the first time she sees her son and cannot bear looking at him again.

Throughout the novella , the mother feels sympathy towards Gregor and tries to think of his condition as some sort of “temporary illness.” She wishes to visit her son’s room from time to time to be close to him, even though she is afraid of looking at him. Her humanity in The Metamorphosis is evident. Mrs. Samsa even begs her husband not to hurt Gregor when he starts throwing apples at the poor soul.

However, this sympathy is not genuine. She also understands that the insect, Gregor or not, cannot support the family anymore. She subconsciously does not wish to deal with Gregor’s new shape. Her exhaustion from her new job and lack of comfort makes her accept Grete’s demand to “get rid of it” (Gregor) in the last chapter.

The sister’s relationship with Gregor is complicated as her attitude changes and develops in the book.

At first, Grete is sympathetic towards Gregor, as her brother always loved and supported her. She tries to think that Gregor is still there in an insect body, though she is terrified by his presence from the beginning. Grete starts looking after Gregor by bringing him food and cleaning his room. However, this sympathy gradually becomes twisted and untrue, as she looks after him less and less. She cares about being the only one who takes care of Gregor rather than about his well-being.

Why does Grete’s attitude change?

There are two ways to answer this question. Firstly, the exhausting days of working as a salesgirl take a toll on her, making her neglect her nursing duties. Secondly, her relationship with Gregor deteriorates. His inability to communicate and his behavior force Grete to perceive him more as an insect.

At the violin concert , Gregor embarrasses the family in front of their lodgers that leads to a minor scandal. This event makes Grete lose the remaining sympathy for him. She is convinced that if there were her brother in the insect’s body, he would not have made so much trouble for the family. With ease, she persuades the mother and father to agree with her.

The readers see the story from Gregor’s point of view. The second chapter describes Gregor’s initial attitude towards his family. So, there is the following question:

How does Gregor treat his family during part II?

Gregor recalls his initial pride at being able to support his family. He also contemplates how they will manage without his help now. These thoughts give him much anxiety as he wants to help and support his parents and sister even after the transformation.

Gregor misses his mother, feels proud and terrified of his father’s growing authority.

The only human that visits him throughout chapter 2 is his sister, and Gregor is grateful that she looks after him. He wishes to thank her but cannot produce human speech.

Soon, Gregor’s relationship with everyone starts to decline as he becomes less human.

How has Gregor’s attitude towards his family changed?

His humanity slowly fades, and by the end of the novella, he acts like an insect. He gets frustrated with both Grete’s negligence towards him and her presence. He starts to hide from her every time she enters the room to terrify her less and escape the noise and disturbance.

Gregor doesn’t strive for communication with the family members and views them from the corner of his room like an outsider. He reflects less on his connection with people, thinking more about food and his worsening physical state.

💬 Quotes about Family

“His parents did not understand this so well; they had convinced themselves in the course of years that Gregor was settled for life in this firm, and besides they were so preoccupied with their immediate troubles that all foresight had forsaken them.” (Chapter 1)

“These had been fine times, and they had never recurred, at least not with the same sense of glory, although later on Gregor had earned so much money that he was able to meet the expenses of the whole household and did so. They had simply got used to it, both the family and Gregor; the money was gratefully accepted and gladly given, but there was no special uprush of warm feeling.” (Chapter 2)

“He must go,” cried Gregor’s sister, “that’s the only solution, Father. You must just try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we’ve believed it for so long is the root of all our trouble. But how can it be Gregor? If this were Gregor, he would have realized long ago that human beings can’t live with such a creature, and he’d have gone away on his own accord. Then we wouldn’t have any brother, but we’d be able to go on living and keep his memory in honor. As it is, this creature persecutes us, drives away our lodgers, obviously wants the whole apartment to himself and would have us all sleep in the gutter.” (Chapter 3)

💎 The Metamorphosis’ Deeper Meaning

The essential question of the story is whether it is possible to feel sympathy and kindness towards a horrifying creature who cannot be helpful or likable. Does such a being deserve the same sympathy as a human?

As everyone in the family starts working, they realize that they are becoming independent from Gregor. They grow tired and enraged due to all the responsibilities towards him. Yet, the biggest block to their sympathy is the loss of his human shape and inability to communicate. He does not act like a human being, cannot speak or express his thoughts and emotions. From his family’s viewpoint, this monstrous creature lacks every trait that Gregor once had.

Gregor faced inhumanity when he turned into a vermin, and the reader sees how materialism influences people’s relationships. Even though the story suggests that Gregor deserves sympathy and love in his new form, it also demonstrates how that’s impossible through his family. They were able to regain positive emotions for him only after his death.

Thanks for reading the article! To examine the short story even more, read our article about symbolism in The Metamorphosis .

• The Rise of Capitalism — Mises Institute
• Themes in The Metamorphosis with Analysis — Literary Devices
• ‘Metamorphosis’ Book Review: Kafka and Capitalism — Patty Inglish, ThoughtCo
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• Chapter III
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IvyPanda. (2023, August 12). The Metamorphosis Themes: from Isolation to Alienation. https://ivypanda.com/lit/study-guide-on-the-metamorphosis/themes-from-isolation-to-alienation/

"The Metamorphosis Themes: from Isolation to Alienation." IvyPanda , 12 Aug. 2023, ivypanda.com/lit/study-guide-on-the-metamorphosis/themes-from-isolation-to-alienation/.

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IvyPanda . 2023. "The Metamorphosis Themes: from Isolation to Alienation." August 12, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/lit/study-guide-on-the-metamorphosis/themes-from-isolation-to-alienation/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Metamorphosis Themes: from Isolation to Alienation." August 12, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/lit/study-guide-on-the-metamorphosis/themes-from-isolation-to-alienation/.

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The Meta-morphosis of Mark Zuckerberg

The robotic nerd depicted in “The Social Network” has turned into the kinder, more accessible face of Silicon Valley. What’s going on?

By Vanessa Friedman

In the run-up to Meta’s first-quarter earnings report this week, a video image of Mark Zuckerberg suddenly started going viral.

Not because of the artificial intelligence assistant he was touting or because of the expected ad revenue growth, but because of the silver chain he was wearing around his neck.

“Mark Zuckerberg made an announcement about something Meta is doing with A.I., but I could not listen to or retain a second of it because when I look at the Reel of him talking, all I see is necklace,” Amy Odell wrote in her Substack, Back Row.

Later, a doctored version of the same picture with Mr. Zuckerberg sporting some scruffy facial hair got people even more excited. The 4,000-plus mostly drooling comments under an Instagram post from the celebrity news account The Shade Room included one from Gwyneth Paltrow, who compared Mr. Zuckerberg to her ex-husband, Chris Martin.

All of a sudden, it seems, people care a lot about how Mark Zuckerberg, 39, looks. At a time when the halcyon promise of technology has been cast in a darker, more suspicious light, the guy whose relentless allegiance to a gray T-shirt became synonymous with the nerd pledge to “move fast and break things” has somehow become the kinder, gentler face of technology.

“The history of Silicon Valley has always been about a carefully constructed image and narrative used to reinforce its myths,” said Venky Ganesan, a partner at the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. But, he went on, “The playbook is changing.”

And Mr. Zuckerberg has emerged as the most visible sign yet that in the phenomenology of Silicon Valley, we are entering a post-Jobsian age.

Once upon a time, back in the days when Steve Jobs was the prophet of a better future through computing, the virtues of his approach to life seemed self-evident, including the adoption of an immutable daily uniform as the ideal form of dress. It freed the mind from the paltry concerns of such everyday choices as what color shirt goes with what socks. (So annoying!) Thus it was, too, with Mr. Zuckerberg, who went so far as to announce in a 2014 Facebook forum that he wore the same T-shirt every day because “I really want to clear my life so that I have to make as few decisions as possible, other than how to best serve this community.”

(Admittedly, it was a luxury version of a gray T-shirt from Brunello Cucinelli, but it was still a T-shirt.)

But after multiple trips by chief executives to Washington, D.C. , to testify about the controversies about anxiety and depression caused by social media pressures; after the convictions of Elizabeth Holmes (she of the Jobs-like black turtleneck) and Sam Bankman-Fried ; after the cesspool of conspiracy theories and anger that has emerged on X; after all that, the story — and its heroes’ journeys and its heroes’ costumes — suddenly doesn’t look so convincing. Behold the new, looser Mr. Zuckerberg.

He has become, said Joseph Rosenfeld, an image consultant and stylist who works with executives in New York and California, “a more democratized figure.”

Arguably the seeds were planted back in 2021, when Facebook turned into Meta, and Mr. Zuckerberg’s first avatar — dressed, as he generally was IRL, in a T-shirt and jeans — turned out to have a closet of alternative outfits, including a skeleton unitard and an astronaut’s suit. The transformation picked up steam as Mr. Zuckerberg discovered the joys of mixed martial arts and started posting photographs of himself shirtless , sweaty and with various bumps and bruises. It then reached a tipping point with the introduction of the platform Threads.

Not long after Mr. Zuckerberg unveiled his “open and friendly public space for conversation,” he also unveiled his own new, friendlier look — one that focused less on an automated uniform and more on experimentation (everything being relative), as recorded via his own Instagram posts. Suddenly, it seemed as though he was having fun with fashion.

He cheerfully shared photographs of himself looking “Yellowstone”-ready in a chunky shearling coat by Overland. (It seems to be the Maverick Rancher coat, which is the sort of subconscious tell “Saturday Night Live” might embrace.) Next came snaps of himself and his wife, Priscilla Chan, at Anant Ambani’s three-day pre-wedding celebration in Gujarat, in various forms of Indian-inspired finery: a gold silk Sunderbans Tigress shirt from Rahul Mishra, a black Alexander McQueen suit embroidered with silver dragonflies and a pastel floral kurta.

And then Mr. Zuckerberg added a pic titled “ jersey swap ” in which he and Jensen Huang of Nvidia traded outerwear, with Mr. Zuckerberg donning one of Mr. Huang’s trademark leather jackets and Mr. Huang his shearling. By the time of his last jaunt to the capital, he had let his tightly controlled Julius Caesar haircut grow into looser curls.

He has even started sharing shopping tips. When Jen Wieczner of New York magazine wrote an article identifying a sweater Mr. Zuckerberg wore as from the stealth wealth brand Loro Piana, he popped into the comments under the magazine’s Instagram post to note that the garment was actually a crew neck from Buck Mason — a Los Angeles brand that focuses on American classics — not one from an Italian luxury house owned by LVMH.

Then, when one of Mr. Zuckerberg’s followers complimented a ribbed knit cardigan he wore in a date night pick on his feed, he jumped in with a tag: “It’s @johnelliottco — I’m loving their stuff recently.”

Other brands he favors now include Todd Snyder and Vuori.

“They are kind of trendy names,” said Derek Guy, who blogs about men’s wear at Die, Workwear! “Everything has a different silhouette, like the sweatshirt with overly long sleeves or the T-shirt with dropped shoulder seams.”

Mr. Guy and Mr. Ganesan, of Menlo Ventures, said they were convinced that Mr. Zuckerberg had enlisted professional help (which is to say, a stylist) to help him develop his look. But a spokeswoman for Meta said that was not the case — at least for his day-to-day life. “Mark mostly buys clothes he finds on Instagram,” she said. “Though he does get input from time to time for formal events and occasions.”

Either way, Mr. Zuckerberg’s pivot from the luxury labels made famous by the morally bankrupt billionaires of “Succession” to more contemporary brands means that “he now has a stable of clothing that makes him an accessible figure for the world and his audience,” Mr. Rosenfeld said.

His new wardrobe also distinguishes him from rivals like Jeff Bezos — who has transformed himself into a real life version of Iron Man, with his bulging muscles, leather jackets and yachts — and Elon Musk, who seems to be channeling a sort of “Top Gun”-meets- “Goldfinger” vibe.

By contrast, Mr. Ganesan said, Mr. Zuckerberg now looks like “the buddy you want to call if you’re doing backyard construction.” Think of him as the tech dude next door. All of which matters because, Mr. Ganesan went on, “mainstream America can relate to that, and he is offering a mainstream product.”

And that, he said, is just “very good for business.”

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article, using information from Blanks by Thirteen Studios, misidentified the manufacturer of a white T-shirt that Mark Zuckerberg wore in Las Vegas. The shirt was made by John Elliott, not Blanks by Thirteen.

How we handle corrections

Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014. More about Vanessa Friedman

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