‘It is impossible to read ‘The Metamorphosis’ without constantly calling into question ideas about identity and how it is constructed and/or dismantled’. Discuss

The Metamorphosis is an extremely difficult story to read without calling into question ideas about identity, as there are so many different people’s perspectives about and views on Gregor. There is his own personal view, the view of the family, the view of strangers the view of the author and the view of the narrator. The reader then has to try to decide through which perspective they are going to read The Metamorphosis, either seeing Gregor as human or simply as an insect, as the different perspectives create different meanings throughout the text. This problem is emphasised by the constant shift of the narrator, for example at the start of the story one of the sentences starts with Gregor’s thoughts and voice and then ends with the narrator’s voice ‘what’s happened to me, he thought’ (Kafka, Franz, ‘The Metamorphosis’ Norton Critical Edition (Norton, London, 1996) P.3)

The identity of Gregor has been constructed in many different ways, firstly by society – in...