On The Ending of The Metamorphosis

In the end of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, the protagonist and main character, Gregor Samsa, dies. Although this did not come as a surprise to me, it was still a bit of a let down, but I’ll get back to that later. Right from the beginning, you know someone turning in to a beetle in that time period (about 1910-1920) wasn’t going to end well.  If such a person/creature were to be discovered, and not killed outright, they would have likely been put in a zoo as something for the population to ogle for the rest of said beings life, which I imagine would have been a miserable one at that. However, much to my surprise, the initial reaction by the people wasn’t horror or shock, which did grant some hope to the ending, and therefore the eventual fate of Gregor.  So now having built up bit of hope for the fate Gregor in the reader, the author turns around and allows for Gregor to starve to death, and to top it all off have his family turn against him, (although not outright written it is implied when the author shows that the family is relieved once he has died). This, in my opinion is one of the cardinal sins of endings in literature, the anti-climax. An anti-climax is a blatant let down to the reader, especially if the author has teased them with hope for the protagonist, or not given the text an obvious climax yet. To sum up my opinion of the ending of The Metamorphosis, it is an anti-climactic let down.

In an odd piece of fate and a strange co-incidence, Franz Kafka’s immediate cause of death mirrors that of Gregor Samsa’s, in that he starves to death. Admittedly not because he turned into a giant beetle, but because he had tuberculosis, and it became too painful too eat.