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Gabriela Gonzalez

Professor Beadle

ESW 113 A

01 August 2019

The Metamorphosis into Disability

The ​Metamorphosis​ represents a larger issue,​ and​ one well known ​one​ would be people

with disabilities. The ​violente​ treatment they face is unfair as they have no control over the way

they were born. The society we live in has a tendency to look at them as not one of our kinds.

Franz Kafka was a German-speaking jewish novelist and short-story writer also well known for

being the author of​ ​The Metamorphosis​. In ​The Metamorphosis,​ Gregor’s transformation into an

insect caused him to be treated terribly, and ​this ​is a problem that the world has ​as ​people with a

disability are treated ​inhumanely​. The way he is treated ​negatively ​reflects how society sees and

treats people with disabilities. ​This negative view that society has towards people with

disabilities causes people with disabilities to be treated with violence.

Our society sees people with disabilities differently than people without a disability.

Gregor didn’t want anyone to see him after he was transformed let alone the chief clark as he

knew that it would change the way he saw him and he would end up losing his job. When the

chief clark had barely heard his voice he got scared and said, “It was an animal’s voice”(Kafka

26). ​He was already seen as an animal rather than a person just because his voice was different.

Gregor was in a different body type but he was still the same person inside.​ ​It’s important to

consider someone's feelings when they are going through something like gregor is. It was
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heartbreaking for Gregor to just be seen as the creature he was transformed into rather than his

human self.​ Gregor’s mother was even disgusted by the way he was eating therefore, she was

frightened and jumped into his father’s arms. That catastrophe lead into his father thinking that

Gregor had done something terrible to his mother and ended up in violence. After that situation

they started to treat gregor differently.​ In an article by Canada and the World Backgrounder

states, “As recently as the 1960s they were simply locked up in large institutions, living in grim,

overcrowded, and often-abusive conditions”. In those institutions they treated the inmates like

trash as if they weren’t human beings. Their Families would even spend thousands of dollars to

lock up their children when they would only see them as a burden. This is similar to the way

Gregor’s family was treating him. They kept him locked up in his room away from the world

and fed him leftover food, basically trash. Gregor, like people with disabilities, was treated

inhumanely.

The treatment that people with disabilities faced ​isn’t ​always the best. At first Gregor’s

sister, Grete, felt sympathy for her brother and gave him his favorite food which was milk and a

piece of bread. She later on found out that he could no longer eat due to his transformation and

“not from lack of appetite”(Kafka 43). She started to feed him rotten and leftover scraps. Gregor

felt sad but he knew that “Certainly they did not wish Gregor to die of hunger but perhaps they

preferred to know nothing about his meals except by harsay- they could not have borne to see

him- perhaps, also, in order to diminish their disgust, his sister was taking pains to spare them

the slightest trouble”(Kafka 45). His mother and father hardley wanted to see or hear of him so

his sister would bare the pain for them all, treating him as if he was an animal. It was almost as

if they hated him for turning into this insect. Christopher Mikton has a Ph.D in Criminology and
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Tom Shakespeare an English sociologist and broadcaster claims ​“These are likely to include

disability hate crimes, financial abuse, over-medication of people with mental health conditions,

violence in institutions, and the greater role of dependency in perpetrator–victim

relationships”(Mikton and Shakespeare). This is similar to what Gregor was going through

because his family was starting to hate Gregor for his transformation and they started to blame

Gregor for the financial problems they were left in. ​ All over the world people with disabilities

have been treated with violence and have been put in systems that don’t care for them as Gregor

was treated similar when his family stripped him away from existence. They made him feel like

he wasn’t part of the family anymore and all he could do is stay in his room and hide under her

sofa so that no one could see him as he felt so ashamed to come out while they were around.

People with disabilities are ​stripped ​of their humanity. Gregor did everything possible to

not cause his sister more pain including “To spare her this sight, he took a sheet on his back,

dragged it to the sofa a task which occupied some hours and spread it in such a way that his

sister could see nothing under the sofa, even if she stooped”(Kafka 53)​. He spent hours trying

his best to not cause his sister anymore pain, therefore, ​he started to isolate himself from his

family after watching his sister Grete struggle for a while he chose to take the time and find a

way that didn’t make it so difficult to see him in fact to not see him at all. ​This started to strip

Gregor away from the person he used to be. Another problem that he faced was that, as ​much as

he tried to listen to the conversations his family would have “no one, not even his sister

imagined that he could understand them”(Kafka 45). He never imagined that his family would

turn against him; that they would talk about their financial problem as if ​it​ was his fault,

thinking that he had no idea what they were saying. ​Gregor felt humiliated by his own family.
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This is an important thing to realize because as much as we think that people with disabilities

are different than us, it doesn't mean they don’t have feelings or that they cant understand us.

Gregor was starting to feel helpless and people with disabilities sometimes feel the same way

which can bring their self esteem down.

The violence and unsupportive families that people with disabilities live with can drive

them into chaos. This was Gregor's big problem and when his sister started to acknowledge that

this was the way things were going to be from now on, she convinced his family to turn away

from him and let him be on his own, which abandoning him. As the article Canada and the

World Backgrounder states, “There have been numerous tragic cases of desperate parents

killing their handicapped children, and themselves. Usually, this is because they couldn't get the

assistance they needed, or they simply wanted to end their child's suffering. But, advocates for

the disabled say these caregivers deserve no sympathy”. When families can no longer bare to

see their child in the misery that they live in it is sad but true that they decide to abandon them.

Unfortunately this is what drove Gregor to his death when he could no longer bare the pain he

was putting onto his family and himself.

However, they’re more and more family supportive groups that deal with people with

disabilities. Canada and the World Backgrounder enforce, “Starting in the 1950s, parents were

encouraged to raise theft children at home, and continue to do so when they became adults.”

Gregor didn’t live the best live after his transformation because his family didn’t bother to give

him the attention and love he needed. “Many people who are now cared for by their families

would have been institutionalized had they been born a generation earlier”(Canada and the

World Backgrounder. The world was in a bad place treating people with disabilities like trash.
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Families kept them locked up in institutions because they were ashamed of their own child.

Now in days we support people with disabilities and we push them to strive towards their

dreams. As long as they have the right support and state of mind they can accomplish anything

they set their minds to. All the violent treatment people with disabilities went through caused

them to feel abandoned by their own family and is what drove Gregor to killing himself. It is

important to recognize these factors because it can cause more harm to the person who is

already dealing with a disability. The world is in need of change in the way they treat and see

people with disabilities.

Overall Gregor’s transformation reflects on a larger issue our society has. People with

disabilities all over the world have been dealing with violence and hatred for a long time. They

were put into institutions and treated terribly. Although Gregor didn’t have a disability his

family treated him as if he was disabled. Therefore, he was locked up in his room, hidden from

the world incapable of doing anything for himself which drove his family into abandoning him

then into his death. Now our society has improved the way we see people with disabilities.

They’re new programs like the Heart Project that support people with disabilities and make

them feel as they can do anything possible. It also brings other people with disabilities together

to make new friends and build relationships.

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Work cited

Kafka, Franz. “​The Metamorphosis​”. Vanguard Press, Inc. 1946.

"Looking for inclusion: as a minority group, people with disabilities, and their families, are

fighting to have their needs met, and to be seen as part of society". ​Canada and the World

Backgrounder​, Oct. 2003, p. 14+. ​General OneFile​,

http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A110915132/ITOF?u=csunorthridge&sid=ITOF&xid

=8d1bde1f. Accessed 9 July 2019.

Mikton, Christopher. and Tom Shakespeare. "Introduction to Special Issue on Violence Against

People With Disability". ​Journal of Interpersonal Violence​ 29.17 (2014): 3055-062.

Https://doi-org.libproxy.csun.edu/10.1177/0886260514534531. Accessed 9 July 2019.