How many times have we wished we could change something about ourselves? Our hair, our eyes, our nose, our personality...? Sometimes change is forced upon you. Loosing your job, moving to a different state...becoming a bug. And sometimes change is voluntary. You chose whether to change your eating habits, your excercise habits, your way of dressing...sometimes you even change for other people.
Franz Kafka's The Metamophosis does not itially come across as a love story. The appearance of a giant bug kinda gives it that sort of nightmarish feel. However, I read it as one of the greatest pleas for love: a son begging for acceptance from his father.
Just like Gregor, Kafka felt belittled in his fathers eyes. No bigger than a bug. I can only imagine how he must have struggled for his father's affection, sacrificing bits and pieces of who he was, hoping to attain some kind of recognition from the most important figure in a young man's life.
Similarly Gregor hated his job. He hated the work. He hated the pay. He hated what it turned him into (a bug, an insignificant part of the universe), yet he was proud of his work. Proud that he could provide for his parents and sister. Proud that he could prove his love for them. Yet, once he couldn't, their love disappeared. He changed for them and it wasn't good enough.
The next question then becomes did he sacrifice himself for the right reasons? Does love and affirmation from someone or something qualify as a legitimate reason to sacrifice yourself--who you are, what you stand for...can sacrifice as a form of love go too far? Can love ever go wrong?
Is this be one of the boundaries between love and sacrifice?
