Gregor Zamza - the hero of the novel "Transformation"

Gregor Zamz is the main character of Franz Kafka's novel The Transformation. His tragic fate makes you think about life. Metamorphoses that happened to him, in fact, are a reflection of the state in which he stayed 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 "Transformation"

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

In the first sentence, where Gregor Zamza wakes up in the morning and discovers that he suddenly became an insect, a situation is described that contradicts common sense. But it is this detail, described by Kafka in a narrative manner with a barely demonstrative "unaesthetic", makes one start and seem to wake up. The aversion caused by the reader's detailed description of the beetle with human growth with its chitinous body and a set of thin legs moving on the abdomen, is later replaced by a sense of plausibility and even some commonness. You begin to realize the whole bitter prosaic nature of the genre idiosyncrasy of the story. A piercing story unfolding more inside the insect person than outside, makes the reader completely immersed in his inner world and experiences.

What is the protagonist

Gregor In the story reflects the image of a person living a life that many people live without realizing it. He is an ordinary traveling salesman - a cloth merchant. The material difficulties forced him to put up with the hated work, and the strength for this was given by a dream that he could provide all necessary for his family and give the opportunity to study his beloved sister. "If only we did not have to endure hardships for the family," Gregor Zamza woke up with these thoughts every morning. His characterization from the very beginning pushes the idea of the unenviable fate of the hero. The ruined father, the sick mother and the seventeen-year-old sister completely depended on him. However, he himself took full responsibility for their welfare. He was tortured by torments and constant experiences about others.

For the well-being of all, only Gregor Zamza answered. The image of the hero personifies a conscientious and extremely responsible person. Even when he saw what his body was, he only worries about not being able to work and letting his family down. When, after awakening, he heard the manager break into him, he asks for forgiveness and tries to explain himself to him.

Gregor Zamza. Characteristics of the character

Sensible, 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 agonizing realities of his existence compel the hero to empathize. Now it's hard to make out who is more sympathetic - an insect with a human soul or a person living like an insect. After all, the transformation of the hero is in fact just a reflection of his inner state, in which he has been so long.

It seems that with Gregor there was not a transformation, but a reunion of external and internal sensation. For his relatives, a change in appearance appears to be the last stroke in his "insect". When Zamza falls in his room, unable to cope with the changed body, the manager states that "something has fallen there." Seeing that the son is late for work, his relatives chant his name, resembling an appeal to the animal. For relatives, he has long lost his human form. Now it had to be realized by Gregor. However, all these and other truths the hero learns already in the guise of an insect. The death of the main character marks the end of that pure and human that was within his family. And this brings unconcealed relief to his loved ones, whom he loved so much. Gregor Zamza dies with a painful and lonely death.

"Transformation." Quotations from the story

Many complex thoughts lurk in simple excerpts from the story. Kafka's works are often described as "a lot of meaning in a small number of words".

Gregor, after the transformation, suddenly discovers that "from calm reflection, the sense is much greater than from the impulses of despair." These words reveal how useless were the actions of Zamza, with which he was so proud. And the main idea of the story is in two lines: "Whoever loves his neighbor in the world does not commit more and no less injustice than he who loves himself in the world."