Masculinity in crisis: Reading kafka's the metamorphosis

Abstract

Franz kafka, in its essential ground, brings forth the masculinity crisis in his work. The Metamorphosis. protagonist, Gregor Samsa, metamorphosed into a bug due to his inability to hold masculine identity burdened by patriarchal society. Sasma is a salesman. He has burden to run daily affairs of his family. As a son he has to pay back his father's business debt and as brother he has to educate his sister and after all he has sole responsibility to tackle the problem, generate income and look after the matter of whole family affairs. He is not satisfied with his present job even though he is struggling to hold the masculine identity being afraid of the society, his family and eventually of himself. Their remains the genuine gap between the demand set by the patriarchal society in order to hold up mescaline identity and the capacity of Samsa to hold it up for long. In reality, Samsa's failureness to hold the masculine identity more creates his metamorphosed into a bug, thus his masculinity is in crisis.