Sane or Insane
The novel The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is about a young man Gregor who believes that he has turned into an insect. Franz Kafka illustrates Gregor as a bug but never actually reveals the reality of the story. The story takes place in Gregor’s home where he has all the experiences as a bug. People believe that he is actually insane and that he was driven to insanity by pressures in his life. One can look at this novel through different perspectives but there is no doubt that Gregor has issues in his life. While thinking he has transformed into an insect, Gregor was instead driven towards insanity by factors of his life.
While looking at reality, one realizes that it is impossible to completely transform into an insect. Gregor is crazy because no one actually turns into a completely different species. “He was lying on his back as hard as armor plate, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his vaulted brown belly, sectioned by arch-shaped ribs, to whose domed the cover, about to slide off completely, could barely cling. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, were waving helplessly before his eyes.”(Franz Kafka, 1) Gregor is obviously insane because from his description, his body completely transformed which is not possible for it to happen. Gregor was also driven to insanity because he does not carry out his life regularly.
Gregors’s life was saturated with stress and abnormal eating habits which lead him to many problems that fed his insanity. He also felt out of place everywhere he went which aided him over the edge into madness. “But the empty high-ceilinged room in which he was forced to lie flat on the floor made him nervous, without his being able to tell why – since it was, after all, the room in which he had lived for the past five years – and turning half unconsciously and not without a slight feeling of shame, he scuttled under the couch.”(Franz Kafka, 2) Gregor feels out of place...