What is the tragedy of Gregor Samsa. The main themes of the short story “Metamorphosis”

The twentieth century has reworked human nature, and life itself on earth will find itself on the verge of extinction. Two world wars, concentration camps, and the death of millions caused human life ceased to be the highest value. Franz Kafka was physically cut off from society. The writer himself drove himself into a dead end of loneliness, but with a wounded soul he subtly felt the nature of man, his essence, and in his works he tried to show his vision of everything that was happening around. The hero of the short story “Metamorphosis” is decent and kind person. Gregor Samsam works hard, gives all his money to his family, and closest people willingly accept this sacrifice from him. They take it for granted, without even thinking about the fact that a young healthy man should have a life: a house, a wife, children. Gregor gets up early, works hard, and his earnings made it possible for his family to live in abundance, have servants, and not think about the future. And one day the irreparable happened. Gregor turned into an insect; his parents and leggings no longer understood him. He instantly lost the illusion that his life had great value not only for him, but also for at least several other people in this world.

The company represents the entire society. The head of the company remained deaf to the pleas of the most diligent employee to listen to him, condescend to his helpless state and not kick him out of work. The company, and therefore society, turned away from Samsa.

The people closest to Gregor also remained deaf to the grief of their son and brother. The father, seeing what a monster his son had become, grabbed a stick and began to push him into the room, and then threw hard, large apples at him until he crippled him. The mother first fainted when she saw her son, and then seemed to resign herself to his misfortune and stopped being interested in Gregor’s condition. The only person The one who really sympathized was the sister, a very young girl, but after a few hours she would be the first to talk about the fact that Gregor needed to be gotten rid of somehow. She couldn’t know for sure, her brother understood, but she didn’t even close the living room doors so that he wouldn’t at least hear her verdict. The family formally seemed to still be taking care of Gregor: they provided food and cleaned the room. But no one asked why he didn’t eat anything, and the corners of the room were covered with dust. And yet, the hero not only did not take offense at his parents and sister, he recalled with pleasure how much he managed to do for the family and what else he hoped to do in the near future if such a disaster had not happened to him. He dreamed of sending his sister to the conservatory, because she loved music and played the violin well.

Gregor saw his happiness in his family living poorly, without material problems.

And so the insect quietly dies in its room, and the family breathes a sigh of relief, because now they can only live their own lives.

It turned out that they contained small means to survive for a while without thinking about poverty. The father forgot about his old age and went to work again, having, although sick with asthma, but still able to put his hands to work, his sister earned good money in the store. No one fell into despair, the world did not turn upside down because the insect man died. Everything remained as it was.

Who is to blame for this death? Society? Family? No! Nobody wanted such a misfortune to happen to Gregor Samsa. He, as a person, as a person, as a higher creation of God, died not at the moment of transformation, but when he decided to forget about himself, about his life. You cannot devote your life to someone or anything. You have to love yourself at least a little, think about your soul, and then human nature will not allow someone to turn into an insect.

Gregor Samsa is the main character in Franz Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis". His tragic fate makes him think about life. The metamorphoses that happened to him are actually 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 "Metamorphosis"

From the very beginning, this short phantasmagoric story plunges the reader into a state of deep aesthetic shock.

The very first sentence, where Gregor Samsa wakes up in the morning and discovers that he has suddenly become an insect, describes a situation that contradicts common sense. But it is precisely this detail, described by Kafka in a narrative manner with undisguised demonstrative “unaestheticness,” that makes you shudder and seem to awaken. Disgust evoked in the reader detailed description a human-sized beetle with its chitinous body and many thin legs moving on its abdomen, a little later gives way to a feeling of plausibility and even some ordinariness. You begin to realize all the bitter prosaicness genre originality stories. The poignant plot, unfolding more inside the insect-man than outside, makes the reader completely immersed in his experiences.

What is the main character like?

Gregor's story reflects the image of a man living a life that many people live without realizing it. He is an ordinary traveling salesman - a cloth merchant. Financial difficulties forced him to put up with a job he hated, and what gave him strength was the dream that he would be able to provide everything necessary for his family and give his beloved sister the opportunity to study. “If only the family wouldn’t have to endure hardship,” Gregor Samsa woke up with these thoughts every morning. His characterization from the very beginning suggests the unenviable fate of the hero. His ruined father, sick mother and 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.

Gregor Samsa was the only one responsible for everyone's well-being. The image of the hero personifies a person who is conscientious and extremely responsible. Even after seeing what his body has become, he only worries that now he will not be able to work and that he will let his family down. When, after waking up, he heard the manager breaking in on him, he tried to explain to him.

Gregor Samsa. Characteristics

Sensitive, attentive, sympathetic and kind - this is how the reader sees the central character. His description at first does not fit with the image of a terrible insect. But the painful realities of his existence make him empathize with the hero. Now it’s hard to tell who you sympathize with more - the insect with human soul or a person living like an insect. After all, the transformation of a hero is actually just a reflection of him internal state, in which he has been staying for so long.

It seems that what happened to Gregor was not a transformation, but a reunification of external and internal sensations. For his family, the change in appearance as if it's becoming the finishing touch in his "insect" nature. When Samsa falls in his room, unable to cope with his changed body, the manager states that “something fell there.” Seeing that their son is late for work, his relatives chant his name, reminiscent of addressing an animal. For his family, he had long since lost his human appearance. Now Gregor had to realize this too. 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 humane thing that was inside his family. And this brings undisguised relief to his loved ones, whom he loved so much. Gregor Samsa dies a painful and lonely death.

"Transformation." Quotes from the story

Many complex thoughts are hidden in simple passages from the story. Kafka's works are often characterized as having "a lot of meaning in a few words."

After the transformation, Gregor suddenly discovers that “calm reflection is much more useful than impulses of despair.” These words reveal how useless Samsa's actions, of which he was so proud, were. And the main idea of ​​the story lies in two lines: “Whoever loves his neighbor in the world commits no more or less injustice than he who loves himself in the world.”

The extraordinary diary that Franz Kafka kept throughout his life has come to us thanks, oddly enough, to the betrayal of Max Brod, his friend, who vowed to burn all the writer’s works. He read and...could not fulfill his promise. He was so shocked by the greatness of his nearly destroyed creative heritage.

Since then, Kafka has become a brand. Not only is it taught in all humanitarian universities, it has become a popular attribute of our time. He entered not only cultural context, but also in fashion among thoughtful (and not so thoughtful) young people. Black melancholy (which many use as a kitschy T-shirt with a show-off image of Tolstoy), non-conveyor live fantasy and convincing artistic images attract even an inexperienced reader. Yes, he hangs out at the reception of the first floor of a skyscraper and tries in vain to find out where the elevator is. However, few rise to the penthouse and taste the full pleasure of the book. Luckily, there are always girls behind the counter who will explain everything.

A lot has been written about this, but it is often florid and scattered; even searching the text does not help. We have sorted all the information found into points:

Symbolism of the number "3"

“As for the symbolism of “three”, which Nabokov is so passionate about, perhaps we should also add something completely simple to his explanations: trellis. Let it be just three mirrors turned at an angle to each other. Perhaps one of them shows the event from Gregor’s point of view, another from the point of view of his family, the third from the reader’s point of view.”

The phenomenon is that the author dispassionately, methodically describes a fantastic story and gives the reader a choice between reflections of his plot and opinions about him. People imagine themselves as frightened philistines, helpless insects and invisible observers of this picture who make their judgment. three dimensional space the author reproduces with the help of peculiar mirrors. They are not mentioned in the text; the reader himself imagines them when he tries to give a balanced moral assessment of what is happening. There are only three aspects of a linear path: beginning, middle, end:

“Connecting the novella with the microcosm, Gregor is presented as a trinity of body, soul and mind (or spirit), as well as the magical - transformation into an insect, the human - feelings, thoughts, and the natural - appearance(beetle body)"

Gregor Samsa's muteness

Vladimir Nabokov, for example, believes that the dumbness of an insect is an image of the dumbness that accompanies our life: petty, fussy, secondary things are discussed and grinded for hours, but innermost thoughts and feelings, the basis of human nature, remain in the depths of the soul and die in obscurity.

Why insect?

Under no circumstances is it a cockroach or a beetle! Kafka deliberately confuses lovers of natural history by mixing up all the signs of arthropod creatures known to him. Whether it is a cockroach or a beetle does not matter. The main thing is the image of an unnecessary, useless, nasty insect that only bothers people and is disgusting and alien to them.

“Of all humanity, Kafka meant only himself here - no one else! He has grown these family ties into the chitinous shell of an insect. And - see! - they turned out to be so weak and thin that an ordinary apple thrown at it breaks this shameful shell and serves as a reason (but not the reason!) for the death of the former favorite and the pride of the family. Of course, meaning himself, he painted only the hopes and aspirations of his family, which with all the strength of his literary nature he was forced to discredit - such was his calling and fatal fate.”

The main themes of the short story “Metamorphosis”

1. The number three plays a significant role in the story. The story is divided into three parts. Gregor's room has three doors. His family consists of three people. As the story progresses, three maids appear. Three residents have three beards. Three Samsas write three letters. I am wary of overemphasizing the meaning of symbols, because as soon as you remove the symbol from the artistic core of the book, it ceases to please you. The reason is that there is artistic symbols and there are banal, fictitious and even stupid symbols. You will find many such silly symbols in psychoanalytic and mythological interpretations of Kafka's works.
2. Another thematic line is that of doors opening and closing; it permeates the entire story.
3. The third thematic line is the ups and downs in the well-being of the Samsa family; a delicate balance between their prosperity and Gregor's desperately pathetic state.

Expressionism. Signs of style, representatives

It's no secret that many researchers attribute Kafka's work to expressionism. Without an understanding of this modernist phenomenon, it is impossible to fully appreciate The Metamorphosis.

Expressionism (from Latin expressio, “expression”) is a movement in European art era of modernism, which received greatest development in the first decades of the 20th century, mainly in Germany and Austria. Expressionism strives not so much to reproduce reality as to express the emotional state of the author. It is presented in many artistic forms, including painting, literature, theater, architecture, music and dance. This is the first artistic movement, fully manifested itself in cinema.

Expressionism arose as an acute reaction to the events of that time (First World War, Revolutions), The generation of this period perceived reality extremely subjectively, through the prism of such emotions as disappointment, fear, despair. Motifs of pain and screaming are common.

In painting

In 1905, German Expressionism took shape in the group "Bridge", which rebelled against the superficial verisimilitude of the Impressionists, seeking to return German art lost spiritual dimension and diversity of meanings. (This is, for example, Max Pechstein, Otto Müller.)

Banality, ugliness and contradiction modern life gave rise to feelings of irritation, disgust, anxiety and frustration among the expressionists, which they conveyed with the help of angular, distorted lines, quick and rough strokes, and flashy color.

In 1910, a group of expressionist artists led by Pechstein broke away to form the New Secession. In 1912, the Blue Rider group was formed in Munich, whose ideologist was Wassily Kandinsky. There is no consensus among experts regarding the attribution of “The Blue Rider” to expressionism.

With Hitler's rise to power in 1933, expressionism was declared "degenerate art"

Expressionism includes artists such as Edmond Munch and Marc Chagall. And Kandinsky.

Literature

Poland (T. Michinsky), Czechoslovakia (K. Chapek), Russia (L. Andreev), Ukraine (V. Stefanik), etc.

On German The authors of the “Prague School” also wrote, who, despite all their individuality, are united by an interest in situations of absurd claustrophobia, fantastic dreams, and hallucinations. Among the Prague writers of this group are Franz Kafka, Gustav Meyrink, Leo Perutz, Alfred Kubin, Paul Adler.

Expressionist poets – Georg Traklä, Franz Werfel and Ernst Stadler

In theater and dance

A. Strindberg and F. Wedekind. The psychologism of playwrights of the previous generation is, as a rule, denied. Instead of individuals, in the plays of the Expressionists there are generalized figures-symbols (for example, Man and Woman). Main character often experiences spiritual insight and rebels against the father figure.

In addition to German-speaking countries, expressionist dramas were also popular in the USA (Eugene O'Neill) and Russia (plays by L. Andreev), where Meyerhold taught actors to convey emotional states using their bodies - sudden movements and characteristic gestures (biomechanics).

For the same purpose of transmitting acute emotional states The dancer through his plasticity serves the expressionist dance of modern Mary Wigman (1886-1973) and Pina Bausch (1940-2009). The world of ballet was first introduced to the aesthetics of expressionism by Vaslav Nijinsky; his production of the ballet “The Rite of Spring” (1913) turned out to be one of the most huge scandals in the history of performing arts.

Cinema

Grotesque distortions of space, stylized scenery, psychologization of events, emphasis on gestures and facial expressions - distinctive features expressionist cinema that flourished in the Berlin studios from 1920 to 1925. Among the largest representatives of this movement are F. W. Murnau, F. Lang, P. Wegener, P. Leni.

Architecture

In the late 1910s and early 1920s. The architects of the North German brick and Amsterdam groups used the new technical possibilities offered by materials such as improved brick, steel and glass to express themselves. Architectural forms were likened to objects of inanimate nature; in individual biomorphic structures of that era they see the embryo of architectural bionics.

Due to the difficult financial condition post-war Germany's most bold projects expressionist buildings, however, remained unembodied. Instead of constructing real buildings, architects had to be content with designing temporary pavilions for exhibitions, as well as sets for theater and film productions.

The age of expressionism in Germany and neighboring countries was short. After 1925, leading architects, including V. Gropius and E. Mendelssohn, began to abandon all decorative elements and rationalize architectural space in line with the “new materiality”.

Music

Some musicologists describe the late symphonies of Gustav Mahler, the early works of Bartok and some of the works of Richard Strauss as expressionism. However, most often this term is applied to composers of the new Viennese school led by Arnold Schoenberg. It is curious that since 1911, Schoenberg corresponded with V. Kandinsky, the ideologist of the expressionist group “Blue Rider”. They exchanged not only letters, but also articles and paintings.

Kafka's stylistics: the language of the short story “Metamorphosis”, examples of tropes

The epithets are bright, but not numerous: “shell-hard back”, “convex belly crushed by arched scales”, “numerous, pathetically thin legs”, “tall empty room of the scarecrow”.

Other critics argue that his work cannot be attributed to any of the “isms” (surrealism, expressionism, existentialism); rather, it comes into contact with the literature of the absurd, but also purely externally. Kafka's style (as opposed to content) does not at all coincide with expressionist, since the presentation in his works is emphatically dry, ascetic, and lacks any metaphors or tropes.

In each work, the reader sees a balancing act between the natural and the extraordinary, the individual and the universe, the tragic and the everyday, the absurd and logic. This is the so-called absurdity.

Kafka liked to borrow terms from the language of law and science, using them with ironic precision, guaranteeing against the intrusion of the author's feelings; This was precisely Flaubert’s method, which allowed him to achieve exceptional poetic effect.

Vladimir Nabokov wrote: “The clarity of speech, the precise and strict intonation contrasts strikingly with the nightmarish content of the story. His sharp, black-and-white writing is unadorned by any poetic metaphors. The transparency of his language emphasizes the dark richness of his imagination."

The short story is a realistic narrative in form, but in content it is organized and presented like a dream. The result is an individual myth. As in a real myth, in “Transformation” there is a concrete sensory personification mental characteristics person.

The Story of Gregor Samsa. Various interpretations of the motive of transformation in the story

Vladimir Nabokov states: “In Gogol and Kafka, the absurd hero lives in absurd world" However, why do we need to juggle the term “absurd”? Terms - like butterflies or beetles pinned to a stand - with the help of a pin from an inquisitive entomologist. After all, “Transformation” is the same “ Scarlet flower“, only - exactly the opposite.

It is worth noting that the very transformation of the hero into an insect brings the reader to the fabulous. Having turned, he can only be saved by a miracle, some event or action that will help break the spell and win. But nothing like that happens. Contrary to the laws of fairy tales, happy ending doesn't happen. Gregor Samsa remains a beetle, no one lends him a helping hand, no one saves him. Projecting the plot of the work onto the plot classic fairy tale, Kafka, albeit involuntarily, makes it clear to the reader that if in a traditional fairy tale the victory of good always occurs, then here evil, which is identified by the outside world, wins and even “finishes off” the main character. Vladimir Nabokov writes: “The only salvation, perhaps, seems to be Gregor’s sister, who, at first, acts as a kind of symbol of the hero’s hope. However, the final betrayal is fatal for Gregor." Kafka shows the reader how Gregor the son disappeared, Gregor the brother, and now Gregor the beetle must disappear. A rotten apple in the back is not the cause of death, the cause of death is the betrayal of loved ones, the sister, who was a kind of stronghold of salvation for the hero.

One day, in one of his letters, Kafka reports strange case what happened to him. He discovers a bedbug in his hotel room. The hostess who came to his call was very surprised and reported that not a single bug was visible in the entire hotel. Why would he appear in this particular room? Perhaps Franz Kafka asked himself this question. The bug in his room is his bug, his own insect, like his alter ego. Was it not as a result of such an incident that the writer’s idea arose, giving us such a wonderful short story?

After family scenes, Franz Kafka hid in his room for months, not participating in family meals or other family interactions. This is how he “punished” himself in life, this is how he punishes Gregor Samsa in the novel. The transformation of the son is perceived by the family as a kind of disgusting illness, and Franz Kafka’s ailments are constantly mentioned not only in diaries or letters, they are almost a familiar theme throughout many years of his life, as if inviting a fatal illness.

The thought of suicide, which haunted Kafka at the age of thirty, of course, contributed to this story. It is common for children - at a certain age - to lull themselves to sleep after a fictitious or real insult by adults with the thought: “I’m going to die - and then they will know.”

Kafka was categorically against illustrating the novella and depicting any insect - categorically against it! The writer understood that uncertain fear is many times greater than fear at the sight of a known phenomenon.

The Absurd Reality of Franz Kafka

The attractive feature of the short story “Metamorphosis,” like many other works of Franz Kafka, is that fantastic, absurd events are described by the author as a given. He does not explain why the traveling salesman Gregor Samsa one day woke up in his bed with insects, and does not evaluate the events and characters. Kafka, as an outside observer, describes the story that happened to the Samsa family.

Gregor's transformation into an insect is dictated by the absurdity of the world around him. Being in conflict with reality, the hero comes into conflict with it and, not finding a way out, tragically dies

Why is Gregor Samsa not indignant, not horrified? Because he, like all of Kafka’s main characters, does not expect anything good from the world from the very beginning. Becoming an insect is just a hyperbole of the ordinary human condition. Kafka seems to be asking the same question as the hero of Crime and Punishment F.M. Dostoevsky: is a person “a louse” or “has the right.” And he answers: “louse.” Moreover: he implements the metaphor by turning his character into an insect.

Franz Kafka, a Prague Jew who wrote in German, published almost no works during his lifetime, only excerpts from the novels “The Trial” (1925) and “The Castle” (1926) and a few short stories. The most wonderful of his short stories "Metamorphosis" was written in the fall of 1912 and published in 1915.

Hero of "Metamorphosis" Gregor Samsa is the son of poor Prague inhabitants, people with purely materialistic needs. About five years ago his father went bankrupt, and Gregor entered the service of one of his father’s creditors and became a traveling salesman, a cloth merchant. Since then, the entire family - his father, his asthmatic mother, his beloved younger sister Greta - rely entirely on Gregor and are completely dependent on him financially. Gregor is constantly on the move, but at the beginning of the story he is spending the night at home between two business trips, and then something terrible happens to him. The short story begins with a description of this event:

Waking up one morning from troubled sleep, Gregor Samsa found himself transformed in his bed into a terrible insect. Lying on his armour-hard back, he saw, as soon as he raised his head, his brown, convex belly, divided by arched scales, on the top of which a blanket was barely holding on, ready to finally slide off. His numerous legs, pitifully thin compared to the size of the rest of his body, swarmed helplessly before his eyes.

"What happened to me?" - he thought. It wasn't a dream.

The form of the story gives different possibilities for its interpretation (the interpretation offered here is one of many possible). "Metamorphosis" is a multi-layered short story, in its art world Several worlds are intertwined at once: the external, business world, in which Gregor reluctantly participates and on which the well-being of the family depends, the family world, enclosed in the space of Samsa’s apartment, who is struggling to maintain the appearance of normality, and Gregor’s world. The first two are openly hostile to the third, central world short stories. And this last one is built according to the law of a materialized nightmare. Let us once again use the words of V.V. Nabokov: “The clarity of speech, the precise and strict intonation contrasts strikingly with the nightmarish content of the story. His sharp, black and white writing is not decorated with any poetic metaphors. The transparency of his language emphasizes the dark richness of his imagination.” The novella in form looks like a transparently realistic narrative, but in reality it turns out to be organized according to the illogical, whimsical laws of dreams; the author's consciousness creates a purely individual myth. This is a myth that is in no way connected with any classical mythology, a myth that does not need classical tradition, and yet this is a myth in the form that it can be generated by the consciousness of the twentieth century. As in a real myth, in “The Metamorphosis” there is a concrete sensory personification of a person’s mental characteristics. Gregor Samsa - literary descendant of " little man"realist tradition, a conscientious, responsible, loving nature. He treats his transformation as a reality that cannot be revised, accepts it and, moreover, feels remorse only for having lost his job and let his family down. At the beginning of the story, Gregor makes gigantic efforts to get out of bed, open the door of his room and explain to the manager of the company, who was sent to the apartment of the employee who did not leave on the first train, Gregor is offended by the owner’s mistrust, and, tossing heavily in his bed, he thinks:

And why was Gregor destined to serve in a company where the slightest mistake immediately aroused the gravest suspicions? Were her employees all scoundrels? Was there not among them a reliable and dedicated man who, although he had not devoted several morning hours to the work, was completely maddened by remorse and simply unable to leave his bed?

Having long ago realized that his new appearance is not a dream, Gregor still continues to think of himself as a person, while for those around him, the new shell becomes a decisive factor in their attitude towards him. When he falls out of bed with a thud, the manager behind the closed doors of the next room says: “Something fell there.” “Something” - that’s not what they say about an animate being, which means from the point of view of the external, business world human existence Gregor is completed.

Family, home world, for whom Gregor sacrifices everything, also rejects him. It is characteristic how in the same first scene the family members try to wake up, as it seems to them, the awakened Gregor. First, his mother carefully knocks on his locked door and says in a “gentle voice”: “Gregor, it’s already a quarter to seven. Weren’t you planning to leave?” The father’s address contrasts with the words and intonation of the loving mother; he knocks on the door with his fist, shouts: “Gregor! Gregor! What’s the matter? And a few moments later he called again, lowering his voice: Gregor-Gregor!” (This double repetition of a proper name is already reminiscent of addressing an animal, such as “kitty-kitty,” and anticipates the father’s further role in Gregor’s fate.) From behind the other side door, the sister says “quietly and pitifully”: “Gregor! Are you unwell? Help anything for you?" - at first, the sister will feel sorry for Gregor, but in the end she will decisively betray him.

Gregor's inner world develops in the novel according to the laws of the strictest rationalism, but in Kafka, like many writers of the 20th century, rationalism imperceptibly turns into the madness of the absurd. When Gregor, in his new guise, finally appears in the living room in front of the manager, his mother faints, his father begins to sob, and Gregor himself sits under his own photograph of the times. military service, which “depicts a lieutenant with his hand on the hilt of his sword and smiling carefreely, inspiring respect with his bearing and his uniform.” This contrast between the former appearance of Gregor the man and Gregor the insect is not specifically played out, but becomes the background for Gregor’s speech:

Well,” said Gregor, well aware that he was the only one who remained calm, “now I’ll get dressed, collect samples and go.” Do you want, do you want me to go? Well, Mr. Manager, you see, I’m not stubborn, I work with pleasure; traveling is tiring, but I couldn’t live without traveling. Where are you going, Mr. Manager? To the office? Yes? Will you report everything?.. I'm in trouble, but I'll get through it!

But he himself does not believe his words - however, those around him no longer distinguish words in the sounds he makes, he knows that he will never get out, that he will have to rebuild his life. In order not to once again frighten his sister, who is caring for him, he begins to hide under the sofa, where he spends time in “cares and vague hopes, which invariably led him to the conclusion that for now he must behave calmly and is obliged with his patience and tact to ease the family’s troubles, which hurt her with his current condition." Kafka convincingly depicts the state of the hero’s soul, which increasingly begins to depend on his bodily shell, which breaks through in the narrative with certain twists of the absurd. Everyday life seen as a mystical nightmare, a technique of defamiliarization taken to the highest degree - this is characteristic features Kafka's mannerisms; his absurd hero lives in an absurd world, but touchingly and tragically struggles, trying to break into the world of people, and dies in despair and humility.

Modernism of the first half of the century is today considered classical art XX century; the second half of the century is the era of postmodernism.

Who is to blame for the death of Gregor Samsa

I. The main character and his family. (The main character, who turns into an insect, is Gregor Samsam. He belongs to a bourgeois family with vulgar tastes and a limited range of interests. Main value for them it’s money, although no one except Gregory works. At first it seems that the father cannot work and the sister will not find work. Gregor Zamzam really wants to please his father and save money for his sister to study at the conservatory. He is a traveling salesman and therefore spends most of his time on the road, suffering from inconvenience, hunger and irregular bad food. He can't even find friends because his society is constantly changing. And all this for the sake of Greta’s father, mother and sister.)
II. How did the transformation happen? (Just one rainy morning, when Gregor was at home, he woke up to run, as always, to the station for the early train and saw “that he turned around at a terrifying insect.” But he still does not believe that this is not a nightmare , and is only concerned with the fact that he was late for the morning train. Everyone was worried. At first, Gregor asked if he was feeling well and he himself remembered that more than once, waking up in the morning, he felt some kind of slight pain, but did not attach much importance to it. Now a terrible transformation has taken place.)
III. Who is worried about transformations? (The very name “Transformation” has not only a direct meaning. After all, when trouble happened to Gregor, he was afraid that the family would be in poverty without him. But it turned out that Gregor was in vain to worry so much, because, firstly, his father had savings , and secondly, it turned out that he was not so sick and could work in the bank as before. And his sister found a job, but while Gregor worked for them, they took it for granted. But when they noticed this transformation, the hero was happy. , that they are not in poverty without him. He was a man of duty and loved his family. And, unfortunately, something else changed, namely their attitude towards Gregor, who over time began to irritate them.)
IV. The family's attitude towards Gregor - insects. (At first, the mother and sister felt sorry for Gregor the insect, while there was hope that he would get sick. They tried to feed him, to please him. Especially the sister. But over time, the mother became afraid to look at him, and the sister stopped hiding her disgust for him. Father from the very beginning he tried to physically harm him. When Gregor the insect crawled out to listen to his sister’s play, his father, driving him into the room, threw an apple and injured Gregor. Gregor the insect could not pull out the apple, it lived in him, causing harm. physical suffering. But what struck him worst of all was the attitude of his sister, whom he loved so much. She said: “I don’t want to call this creature brother and I only say one thing: we need to get rid of it somehow...” They all once willingly called him brother and son, were proud of him and took advantage of his work, but now they thought about themselves, about what people will say - about anything, just not about Gregor, leaving him alone with his misfortune without hope not only for help, but even for sympathy.)
V. Who is to blame for the death of Gregor Samsa? (Not being able to look after Gregor the insect, his parents hired a maid for him, a rude and tactless woman. However, at least she was not afraid of him and somehow helped. And what should one have demanded from a strange woman: money cannot buy sympathy. And The worst thing was how his relatives treated him. It was they who gradually killed Gregor, first depriving him of even the hope of recovery, and then his father crossed himself, having learned about death, the insects took away his desire to live, and he began to think. , what should disappear so as not to disturb the family. And the family themselves did not want to worry, they even got angry when the maid wanted to tell them that they no longer needed to hide the insect, they got rid of it like garbage. They hoped for a happy future. . Without Gregor.)