Kafka's "Metamorphosis" is a story of despair and futility in the life of Gregor Samsa. Samsa's sense of being a nonentity leads to his consequent alienation from his present existence to his transformation into an insignificant insect, capable of merely existing. From Samsa's internal feelings of failure comes the external manifestation, as being an insect gives evidence to the hopelessness of his situation. .
Samsa's repulsive appearance alienates and yet relieves the guilt of his family and his boss. At first, Samsa views his new form as an inconvenience to his family, not only to himself; however, he soon shows that he no longer cares by crying, "Am I less sensitive now?" (pg 91). The dependence that his family has upon him makes him feel trapped; "If I didn't have to hold my hand because of my parents, I"d have given notice long ago- (pg 69). Even his love life is problematic; there was a "cashier in a milliner's shop, whom he had wooed earnestly but too slowly" (pg 114). Having never lived for himself and always for others suggests that Kafka rejects the Christian tradition and ideal that insists upon being dead to self and having contempt for worldly things. Kafka's disassociated tone in this story (as well as his others) increases the horror and the isolated feeling.
Perhaps it is this tone that places Kafka's works among the fantastic, along with the reversal of motivation and resolution so prevalent in his tales. Kafka's imagination and skill in developing such close and powerful analyses of man and his psychology that is so near to reality make the jump into the fantastic hardly seem like a departure at all. .