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EWRT1C - Sample Analysis Paper #2This is a sample of the type of detailed analysis I'm looking for.
"The Metamorphosis"
By Raymond Chang
" [T]he assumption of a dichotomy between human beings and the world: a person is merely in the world, not with the world or with others; the individual is a spectator, not a re-creator. In this view, the person is not a conscious being; he or she is rather the possessor of a consciousness: an empty "mind" passively open to the reception of deposits of reality from the world outside." (P75 Freire, pedagogy of the oppressed) Gregor being the exception, every character in the story has allowed the reality of the dominant worldview to dictate their relationships. Gregor realizes that he is not perceived as a person that can interact with the world but as a "spectator" to fulfill a social role, where he becomes the means to an end, capitol. The lack of authenticity in his relationships is what causes his awakening. Capitalistic social roles allow for his family to commodify and objectify Gregor. His family's treatment leads to Gregor's transformation and slow starvation, which is directly correlated with his hope to maintain any ties with humanity. These hopes fades as his family ties begins to fade.
Gregor has pierced the facade of civility behind the economic social roles that he interacts with daily. He realizes that even though his job allows him to travel the world, he perceives past the glamour and sees his own loneliness. His constant traveling only allowed for superficial relationships. In a job that he has worked for years, he still refers to his boss as "the manager" which represents the only relationship they have. When his parents had sent for a doctor and a locksmith he had felt "integrated into human society once again." Gregor recognized the irony of what he had coined as being integrated human society, with another socially constructed role of doctor-patient and locksmith-employer. When the servants in his house were fired or quit, they are only referred to by title, such as "maid" and "cleaning woman" and not by name. After months or even years of service no one was perceived as more than their job. The realization that his family relationships were just as superficial as the maid's relationship to the family began to weigh heavily on him.
I believe that Gregor's transformation was a subconscious cry for help, directed at the people that should be able to help him. He had just spent eight days of his vacation at home and most of it in his room. On the day of his awakening as a cockroach Gregory even complemented himself "on the precaution he had adopted from his business trips, of locking the doors during the night even at home." Inherent to this action is that he was locking the strangers out. He may have been waiting for his family to come and notice that is was their son or brother that needed attention. It was his subconscious way of screaming, "Here I am" and "Do not step on me." Instead of help, "Gregor could not find out what excuses had been made to get rid of the doctor and the locksmith." Sending away for a doctor and locksmith was the only human thing his parents had done for him, but when they learned he could not work they sent them away. They ignored his cry and began to lock him in his room instead of him locking them out. His sister takes on the role of taking care of him physically but never does she attempt to talk to him. He never refers to his parents by anything other than the social role they represent, mother and father. He presents nothing personal about either parent, which expresses the lack of relationship between them. His sister and mother then began "depriving him of everything he loved," by removing the furniture from his room. After the incident his room became a storage closet much like his family's memory of him.
Gregor's sister gradually stops commenting on how little Gregor ate, showing her growing indifference. As Gregor's further isolation is ignored and no doctor is called for his deteriorating condition caused by starvation. Their indifference shows that the family no longer sees Gregory as a human but truly as a financial burden. Gregor also realizes this and the more depressed he becomes the less he eats. When Gregor's sister stops cleaning his room Gregor begins to only chew food and spit it out. Gregor's deteriorating condition coincided with the metamorphosis of his sister's role from a carefree girl, to his previous role, the support of the family. Ironically the person he had lived through vicariously, placing his hopes and attempting to give her the life he had wanted, now had the role that he had only endured in an attempt to give her a better life. She was his last connection to humanity, his last place to look for companionship. She represents in his mind the only relationship of substance in which he could be understood, the relationship in which he had placed his hope. His parents had rejected him by never talking to him, never sending for a doctor. His sister had rejected the role of his caretaker and finally in the end of the story the need of his existence. Then from her mouth came "... we have to get rid of it," and with that her mother "mechanically" wipes his sister's tears away, as if she had been waiting for someone to say it. With those words his death would follow. Before he died he thought about how much he loved his family not how they loved him, and made a conviction to disappear. He could have died long before her rejection, but it was with that rejection that came his last breath.
Gregor felt many deaths before he died; the loss of meaning in his job, the loss of his parents and finally the loss of his sister. The metamorphosis was an attempt to draw out some type of connection for the relationships around him and with each failure came a nail in his coffin. As his ability to produce capitol faded so did the relationships around him. As punishment in some native American cultures, they would ignore a tribe member forever, what was equivalent to a death sentence. Capitalism has only maintained the illusion of freedom, underneath which are often mechanical objects like Gregor's parents, opiated to be part of the system.
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