Gregor Zamza is the main character in Franz Kafka's story Transformation. His tragic fate makes you think about life. The metamorphoses that happened to him, in fact, are a reflection of the state in which he remained all the time. Nothing has changed, only at the beginning of the story the reader considers Gregor a man, and later begins to understand that he was and remains an insect.
The meaning of the story "Transformation"
From the very beginning, this short phantasmagoric novel plunges the reader into a state of deep aesthetic shock.
The very first sentence, where Gregor Zamza wakes up in the morning and discovers that he suddenly became an insect, describes a situation contrary to common sense. But it is precisely this detail, described by Kafka in a narrative manner with overt demonstrative “unaesthetic” that makes you start and seem to wake up. The disgust caused by the reader with a detailed description of a beetle with a human height with its chitinous body and many thin legs moving on its abdomen, is later replaced by a feeling of credibility and even some routine. You begin to realize the bitter prosaicity of the genre originality of the story. A piercing story that unfolds more inside an insect person than outside, makes the reader completely immerse himself in his inner world and experiences.
What is the main character
Gregor the story reflects the image of a person living the life that many live without realizing it. He is an ordinary traveling salesman - a cloth dealer. Material difficulties forced him to put up with hateful work, and the dream gave him strength for this, that he would be able to provide his family with everything necessary and allow his beloved sister to study. “If only we did not have to endure hardships for the family,” Gregor Zamza woke up with these thoughts every morning. His characterization from the very beginning pushes the idea of the unenviable fate of the hero. A ruined father, a sick mother, and a seventeen-year-old sister were completely dependent on him. However, he himself took full responsibility for their well-being. He was tormented by torment and constant worries about others.
Only Gregor Zamza was responsible for the well-being of all. The image of the hero personifies a person who is conscientious and extremely responsible. Even seeing what his body has become, he is only worried that now he will not be able to work and will fail his family. When, after waking up, he heard the manager rushing towards him, he apologizes and tries to communicate with him.
Gregor Zamza. Character Character
Sensitive, attentive, responsive and kind - this is how the central character appears to the reader. At first, his description does not fit with the image of a terrible insect. But the painful realities of his existence make empathy with the hero. Now it’s hard to make out who you empathize with more - an insect with a human soul or a person living like an insect. After all, the transformation of the hero is really just a reflection of his internal state in which he has been so long.
It seems that with Gregor there was not a transformation, but a reunion of the external and internal sensations. For his family, a change in appearance seems to be the last touch in his “insect”. When Zamza falls in his room, unable to cope with the changed body, the manager notes that "something fell there." Seeing that his son is late for work, his relatives chant their name, reminiscent of an appeal to an animal. For relatives, he had long since lost his human appearance. Now Gregor had to realize this. However, the hero learns all these and other truths in the guise of an insect. The death of the main character marks the end of that pure and human that was inside his family. And this brings undisguised relief to his loved ones, whom he loved so much. An agonizing and lonely death, Gregor Zamza dies.
"Transformation." Quotes from the story
Many complex thoughts lurk in simple excerpts from the story. Kafka's works are often characterized as "a lot of meaning in a small number of words."
Gregor, after the transformation, suddenly discovers that “from calm thinking there is much more sense than outbursts of despair”. These words reveal how useless Zamza's actions were that he was so proud of. And the main idea of the story is in two lines: "He who loves his neighbor in the world commits no more and no less injustice than he who loves himself in the world."