Реферат: The Metamorphosis Essay Research Paper The MetamorphosisKafka

newspaper: old, half-rotten vegetables; bones left over from the evening meal,

caked with congealed white sauce; some raisins and almonds; a piece of cheese,

which two days before Gregor had declared inedible; a plain slice of bread, a

slice of bread and butter, and one with butter and salt” (p. 24). Besides being

the only member of the family still willing to face Gregor daily, she is also

the family representative of Gregor, in a sense, to a mother who doesn’t

understand and a father who is hostile and opposing. The father is physically

violent toward his metamorphosed Gregor, pushing him through a door in Part I:

“…when from behind his father gave him a strong push which was literally a

deliverance and he flew far into the room, bleeding freely” (p. 20). Grete

appears to concentrate on protecting Gregor from this antagonistic father and an

indecisive mother. In Part II, when Grete leads her mother into Gregor’s room

for the first time, we see the strange way in which Grete has become both the

expert and the caretaker of Gregor’s affairs (Nabokov 271). She convinces her

mother that it is best to remove all of the furniture from his room. Kafka

attributes her actions partly to an adolescent zest: “Another factor which might

have been also the enthusiastic temperament of an adolescent girl, which seeks

to indulge itself on every opportunity and which now tempted Grete to exaggerate

the horror of her brother’s circumstances in order that she might do all the

more for him” (p. 34).

The change in Grete’s attitudes and actions toward Gregor probably fully

begin in Part II, during the scene where Gregor struggles over to the window and

leans against the panes to look outside. Grete, seemingly beginning to forget

the Gregor still has human feelings and sensitivities, rudely opens the window

and voices her disgust at the distasteful odor of his den. Moreover, she

doesn’t bother to hide her feelings when she sees him. One day, about a month

after Gregor’s metamorphosis, “when there was surely no reason for her to be

still startled at his appearance, she came a little earlier than usual and found

him gazing out of the window…she jumped back as if in alarm and banged the