Marxist Lens Analysis of Metamorphosis by Alyssa Chacon Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis is a short story that follows the story of Gregor Samsa who, one day, wakes up like an insect. On the surface, it's just the story of a man who turned into an insect; but, when analyzed more deeply, one comes to understand that this is a man who has always been an insect in conflict with his identity in a class struggle between what is known as the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Kafka's work was written in a historical period in which class struggles were becoming more defined due to the advent of industrialization and other changing social structures. This story is best interpreted through a Marxist lens. In Kafka's Metamorphosis, his Marxist ideology emerges in the way the characters represent the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeois classes at the turn of the century. Work. His socioeconomic status matches that of the Samsa. Kafka had a German-speaking Jewish family. They were middle class and lived in Prague, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. Where Kafka lived there was disunity between the Czechs and the Germans. The Jewish community found itself stuck in the middle, which likely left Kafka searching for an identity considering he was fluent in both languages. Gregor had a similar experience when his father was no longer able to work and he had to support the family. They went from being upper middle class to lower middle class and maybe even poor. The family was in conflict with the transition from the bourgeois to the proletarian class. The prolet...... in the center of the sheet ......the quotes from The Metamorphosis follow the format: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph). If you don't know where the quote comes from, it is cited as (Kafka). The Communist Manifesto is cited with the page number. Works Cited: Bourgeois. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. 06 April 2014. .Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. New York: Bantam, 1986.Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. "The Communist Manifesto". The Norton anthology of theory and criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: Norton, 2001. 769-773.Proletariat. Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random House, Inc. April 6, 2014. .Reese, Robert J. “Marxist Theory in Metamorphosis.” CaSaWoMo. Np, 2004. Web. 01 April. 2014. .