In the short story Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka accounts for the story of the transformation of Gregor Samsa into a bug and his eventual death after gradually being alienated by his family. There are multiple lenses through which one can interpret this story, and this article concentrates on the insights this novel brings to existential philosophy.
 
Gregor Samsa’s meaning of life is lost along with the exposure of his transformation, marking the beginning of his symbolic death. After Gregor wakes up and finds out about his new physical form as a bug, he is not concerned about this, but worries solely about his job instead. This indicates that, as a human, Gregor is living for working and supporting his family. His manager comes to his house after discovering that Gregor is a few hours late for work and warns him of his absence. Eager and anxious to save the job, Gregor muttered almost unceasingly to explain his situation, but the only response the manager give is, “Did you understand a single word?”, and “That’s an animal’s voice”.  Gregor’s further appearance as the bug confirmed the manager’s guess, and despite Gregor’s desperate actions to save the job, fires Gregor at once. At this moment, the only valuable action in life for Gregor — work — has been shattered, and he starts to lose his meaning in life. This is the start of the existential questions invoked by the story: can one live without faith? Nietzsche said, “God is dead”. The “God” here is not the god in any religion, but the simple faith, or meaning, that each one believes in. For Gregor, his God was working, but now, his transformation put him in the “God is dead” situation, or also, an absurd life. In addition to his loss of faith, his personal identity is cut off from his body, so to his family, the old Gregor is already dead. Thus, Gregor dies symbolically at the start of the story.
 
The memories of Gregor didn’t really fade in the minds of his family, until the furniture-moving incident, which marks his change of personal identity. Along and bored at home, Gregor finds crawling all over his room amusing to himself. Noticing his new habit, his sister, Grete, decides to change the format of his room so that he can climb more easily. Her decision is out of kindness, but for Gregor, this action is “a quick and complete forgetting of his human past”, that his family is no longer treating him as a human. After witnessing Grete remove his writing desk that he used for decades, Gregor finally decided to protest by covering a picture of a young lady he cherished as a human with his bug body. However, his sudden appearance scares Mrs. Samsa, his mother, and is misunderstood by Mr. Samsa as being malicious. Being attacked by Mr. Samsa using apples, Gregor has no choice but to return to his room and let his family lock the door from the outside. Gregor’s failure to protect the picture is, therefore, a failed action to maintain his human identity, reinforcing his struggles to find the new meaning in life.
 
The final endeavor to retrieve meaning failed, marked by Gregor’s physical death. After Gregor can no longer work to support the family, the spare rooms of Gregor’s house are rented. One night, when Grete is playing the violin to the lodgers and receives negative comments, Gregor can’t help but climb out of his room to show his support towards his sister. However, angry at his sudden and inappropriate appearance, Grete goes mad at once and exclaims to get rid of Gregor at once. Sad but lacking any way to show his real motive, Gregor can only return to his room and die alone with the love of his family. As a common symbol of the upper class, Gregor’s support for Grete’s violin-playing career symbolizes Gregor’s previous meaning of life of working to raise the family’s status. However, in his insect form, there’s no way for him to be understood and succeed. For an absurd and meaningless life, the approach would be to realize one’s meaning by revolting. But Gregor in his insect form is not even able to express himself to rebel against his fate. Hence, gradually losing himself, repelled by his own family for his loss of worth, Gregor can only embrace his tragic death.
 
In short, the story of Gregor Samsa, regardless of its extremely abnormal plot, represents the struggle of anyone who once lost their faith that makes life worth living. It presents the tragic nature of an alienated life in which one can hardly re-establish their faith, while giving readers power to re-examine and live through it.