Gregor's obsession with money exposed in Franz Kafka's MetamorphosesIn his story The Metamorphoses, Franz Kafka tells us the story of Gregor Samsa , a young man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into an insect-like creature. Gregor, however, remains strangely indifferent to his situation, in a way that seems inhuman to most readers. This is not due to a lack of omniscience on the part of the narrator that silences indifference, nor even to a lack of observance on the part of Gregor to the point of not realizing that he has been transformed into an insect. Rather, Gregor doesn't pay much attention to his new insect form because his life as a human lacked many common human characteristics. In other words, Gregor was not mentally human even before his change in physical form. Soon after the metamorphosis, Gregor makes an important observation about his job as a traveling salesman: "Oh God," he thought, "what an exhausting job I have!" I chose! Day after day, on the go. The inconvenience of doing business is much worse than actual work in the home office, and on top of that, I have the torture of traveling, worrying about changing trains, eating unhappily. food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or become more intimate. To hell with all this!" (4) Most "normal" people would claim that meaningful relationships form the core of the human experience. But Gregor's concerns seem much more mundane. He begins by complaining about the day-to-day problems of his job and only he finally gets to what's really important - and then immediately goes on to think about his work. He is obsessed with work, «a tool of the boss, without a mind... half of paper... we could also interpret this phrase in the opposite sense, to state that Gregor is an animal due to his ability to feel. This is supported by Gregor's reflections on his plan to send Grete to the Conservatory: "...and it was his secret plan that she, unlike of him, he loved music and could play the violin in a moving way. ..." (27, emphasis added). Therefore Gregor as a human being could not derive pleasure from music, which indicates that he lived in a deprived emotional state, similar to that of an insect. As we have seen, Gregor's mental life was extremely limited even before his physical metamorphosis, perhaps Kafka intended this story as a means to point out that many people in an increasingly capitalist society, like Gregor, become more and more obsessed with money and therefore live a mechanical life, like an insect isolating itself from the pleasures of the soul.