Empathy for Gregor Samsa

            The idea of empathy in human beings, our existence, and life itself, is one of the hardest things to grasp and fully understand. Empathy is the feeling of sympathy, but to the highest, most difficult to reach, possible level. Unless you're apathetic and/or a Nihilist, it's common ground to say for example, that the murder of a human being is saddening on so many levels. The question is, does everyone feel empathetic, where you instantly feel total sorrow for the death of another being of our race. They may have been a complete stranger living across the country, but you can feel the human connection of a loss of another human being, and in a way, feel their pain through empathy. Certain people are, by fact, wired differently in their minds through difference in how their mirror neurons work, their emotional mindset, and literal capability of empathy in the mind. The period of modernism in art and literature, was a time of depressions everywhere, and because of that, the modernist writers of that time wanted to write in a style that is bound to make you feel the pain of others. Physical pain of the wound of someone else is of course impossible to feel through empathy, but through modernist writing, the writer can make one feel the emotional and mental pain of the wounded one. Empathetic people don't spiritually receive this pain from the injured souls, but rather create our own pain through our sorrow for the injured being. Existentialists are generally always empathetic, because embracing life, the existence of oneself, and trying to find the self in the life one gets makes them feel an intense empathy for others. No matter if they're Nihilists, if they're a human being and are in some pain, empathetic people feel their pain, because that's just how these people are wired, and how every human in this world should be. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa is a hard working soul, who is only trying to help his family get by, from suffering through his unhappy life. He works a stressing job to pay off his family's debt, only caring about them and not himself, when he could be living his own life, on his own. In return, his family gives him nothing back, no relation, no love, no respect, no attention. When Gregor wakes up as a bug, he only cares about how he is going to break the news to his parents, his sister, and his boss without them giving him a hard time back, instead of caring about his own situation. He is helpless, in pain, and is fearful of his own self. In his room there is nothing to look to, nothing outside, in his room, or from his own family, but only the stranger woman he framed on his wall, and other objects that actually have a connection to him. The one thing he can look to is his inner self, and find himself; become an existentialist in a sense. Kafka was brilliant when writing The Metamorphosis because as a modernist writer, he wrote the most empathy deriving story one can write in the most creative fashion. Not only is the story of Gregor's life and problems pain-staking, but the style of writing goes on and on with descriptions that create so much empathy for Gregor, it's impossible not to feel some of Gregor's pain! Of course this was on purpose, because the modernist writing style was created to try and bring the human race together through mutual empathy, as world literature is written to do the same thing in different ways.

            In Jeremy Rifkins video on empathy in its entirety, he explains how empathy is felt from one person for another, feeling the same pain on a different level, and how the minds of the human race that are wired right for empathy, very empathetic or not, can make a mutual connection between other human beings. Worldwide population of empathetic minds is something to be achieved, but probably never will, because some apathetic minds will never change, and some minds psychologically and neurologically cannot process empathy. It is safe to say, however, that throughout The Metamorphosis, the reader connects with the mindset and emotions of Gregor, and it is very hard, from Kafka's purposeful writing style included, to not feel some of Gregor's pain. The general population can feel sympathy, and more so than apathy, the average person can feel empathy. But empathy is something that has to be found through feeling rather than the simplified feelings of sympathetic reaction. There are many instances in the story where Kafka explains Gregor's feelings through symbolism or the literal aspects. The descriptions of dark versus light, how his bedroom changes, his size changing scene after scene, and more, all are symbols of how Gregor is at that point in the story. Gregor's thought processes, actions, and words that he says (but his family can't hear) all are literal ways Kafka explains Gregor's feelings. Even as a fictional character from a story, there is a connection between the reader and the character, sometimes stronger than others. Of course Gregor doesn't really exist, but Kafka's writing about him does, and that is what the reader interprets for themselves which creates the empathy for the character, ultimately making a connection with something non-existent. Because empathy is derived for Gregor, but he is non-existent, it makes one find out more of life and oneself from the empathy. This is a big way in how existentialism is tied in with empathy, and what it's all about. As a philosophy, existentialism needs something that people can feel, connect with, and believe in to embrace existence, nature and the self, and more, and that is why empathy is important. Empathy is and should be felt for Gregor, and if that's true, empathy should be felt by everyone in one way or the other throughout the world.