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A Priest and a Bug
by Aubrey Weese

An essay comparing the death of the priest in "Araby" by James Joyce to the death of Gregor in "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka.

In class we discussed the contrast of light and darkness in the story Araby by James Joyce. I think the death of the priest in that story adds to the "darkness" that the boy experiences when he is thinking about Mangan's sister, as contrasted with the light he experiences when he is actually in her presence.

It is interesting that the death of the priest does not become so "dark" until Mangan's sister is introduced. In the first scene where the boy visits the priest's old room, he rummages around and finds some treasures, including "paper-covered books," and "the late tenant's rusty bicycle pump." There is no sense of gloom here, in fact, the boy seems to be having fun exploring and discovering things, and reminisces about how the priest "had been a very charitable priest" in a rather disconnected way.

But later, after the boy's crush on Mangan's sister has been introduced, this dead priest's room takes on a very different character. This is the place where the boy retreats on a stormy night while his emotions are churning inside him. It is no longer a place to explore, but has taken on almost a "sacred" character. Here the boy experiences his most impassioned moment of "strange prayers and praises," pressing the palms of his hands together "until they trembled, murmuring: 'Oh Love! Oh Love!' many times." You can almost feel the presence of the dead priest in the room on this "dark rainy evening" as the boy is praying, in a way that you would not feel his presence if he were merely on vacation.

The fact that he has died here in this very room adds to the drama and it intensifies the boy's emotions. Maybe the boy was thinking that the priest was watching him from heaven and had some power to grant his prayer. Or maybe he just felt in general that there is some kind of supernatural power in a room where a priest has died. Whatever his reason was for going there, the element of the dead priest in this story definitely adds to the feeling that the boy's crush has taken on a religious significance. It also shows how the crush has changed the boy's outlook on life. The boy's friends and their games have become distant, his school work has become unimportant, and the dead priest's room has become much more than a place to play.

In The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, we have the strange circumstance that Gregor's death actually brings life to his family. One could say that Gregor actually "dies" twice in this story, once when he turns into a bug, and again when the bug dies. When Gregor turns into a bug he can do none of the things the old Gregor did, and the old Gregor essentially vanishes from the scene.

We are presented with the ironic situation that Gregor was working so hard for the benefit of his family, but they are actually better off when he is taken out of service. Gregor's father perks up and gets a job, and the whole family starts doing something with their lives only when Gregor stops doing it for them.

I think it begins to dawn on Gregor that he isn't really needed as he watches this happen, and this is a huge blow to him. The story says that Gregor got to the point where he "hardly slept by night or by day," and "was now eating hardly anything." At first Gregor thinks maybe isn't eating because of "chagrin over the state of his room." But I think it's a more general state of depression because of a lot of things: it's awful being a bug, his family has ceased to care for him, hiring a charwoman to do the unpleasant duty, and his family has stopped needing him.

Even in the face of all this suffering, Gregor still cares about his family's needs more than anything else. When he makes his final trip out of his room, he realizes that his family would be happier if he were dead. "Human beings can't live with such a creature," his sister says. "If he were really Gregor...he'd have gone away on his own accord. Then we wouldn't have any bother." I think Gregor decides he wants to show his family that he is really Gregor! He does really care about them! He is already on the brink of death because he hasn't been eating, so he simply decides to give in and let it take him. In this way, he feels he is doing the ultimate service to his family. "The decision that he must disappear was one that he held to even more strongly than his sister," the story says. And when he dies, the Mr. Samsa says, "now thanks be to God." Both of Gregor's "deaths" were really what the family needed to start living their own lives.

In this story the "deaths" of Gregor serve to make obvious where he really stands in the family, and what the real situation is. If he had not turned into a bug and ultimately died, neither he nor the family would have ever known that what he was doing for them wasn't really helping them. Gregor's deaths also showed that the family didn't really care that much about him, and weren't that grateful for his sacrifices. It brings out the contrast between what Gregor was willing to do for his family (die) and what his family was willing to do for him (not very much). They wanted to get rid of him once his condition started demanding too much from them.

Gregor's death turns him into a sort of tragic hero. If the story ended differently, I think readers would feel less sympathetic towards him.

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