He tries to talk to his family, he really does, and at the beginning it seems like they at least sort of understand him.
"Gregor," someone called--it was his mother--"it's a quarter to seven. Didn't you want to catch the train?" What a soft voice! Gregor was shocked to hear his own voice answering, unmistakably unmistakably unmistakably own voice, true, but in which, as if from below, an insistent distressed chirping intruded, which left the clarity of his words intact only for a moment really, before so badly garbling them as they carried that no one could be sure if he had heard right. Gregor had wanted to answer in detail and to explain everything, but, given the circumstances, confined himself to saying, "Yes, yes, thanks, Mother, I'm just getting up." The wooden door must have prevented the change in Gregor's voice from being noticed outside, because his mother was satisfied with this explanation and shuffled off." (Kafka 5)
However, this understanding doesn't last very long.
"Did you understand a word?" the manager was asking his parents. "He isn't trying to make fools of us, is he?....that was the voice of an animal." (Kafka 10)
Still, I have to wonder, if communication really is that impossible for Gregor. It seems that if he talks really slowly, with very precise unmistakably and pronounciation, that his family can actually understand him. So why doesn't he just do that? Ok, I can understand talking like that can be a pain, and that maybe his family wouldn't stick around long enough to hear Gregor out, but there are still other ways to communicate!
Like, Gregor could've established some sort of communication with his sister at least. Since he can think, he could potentially maneuver his food around so that it forms messages, or come up with some other kind of system or code. It just strikes me that after he finds out his family doesn't understand him, he just gives up on communicating with them. Lots of issues could've been solved if he had just managed to reach them. I really think he should've spelled out something with his food, or written something on the wall or ceiling. Something!
Just because you're a giant cockroach doesn't mean you have to stop talking to people.
1 comment:
Interesting--and fully in keeping with my sense of how Kafka explores Gregor's psychology. He maybe *could* communicate, even if it's painstaking and awkward, at least enough for the basic assertion that it IS him in there, that this IS their son. But the fact that he so readily accepts his insectness, that he *participates* almost willingly in his own debasement, is quintessentially "Kafkaesque." It isn't something that's done *to* him; the alienated individual acquiesces to the universe's dismantling of his individuality. (Or, it's not just the nature of his labor that "dehumanizes" Gregor; he does it to himself.)
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