Assimilation In Kafka's Metamorphosis
The worry that pervades the Samsa apartment following Gregor’s metamorphosis reflects Kafka’s personal anxiety at the time. The Jews may have assimilated in efforts to integrate into Western society but the surge of anti-Semitism witnessed in the nineteenth century made it clear the Jews would always retain their denizen status. Kafka, like many Jews at the turn-of-the-century, realized the real loss suffered from assimilation to be that of their identity. Through assimilation Jews and non-Jews alike conditioned themselves to associate the idea of Jewish selfhood with their participation in secular society and the economy. The Jews, even within their own families, like Kafka in his bourgeois family or Samsa in his middle class family, were