'metamorphosis' Could Be Described as a Tragicomedy

QUESTION: 'Metamorphosis' could be described as a tragicomedy. What evidence can you find in the story of both kinds of genre, i.e. tragedy and comedy?

The short story Metamorphosis is unlikely with other novellas. It consists of funny and tragic incidents, shortly it is a tragicomedy. Deep in side the funny events, if we put ourselves in Gregor's shoes, we can figure out how sad and hard the situation is. That is what makes this story unique than others, I assume.

Gregor Samsa a young traveling salesman who hates his job. On a regular working day things unreasonably change for Gregor when he wakes up to find that he has been transformed into a giant bug. This situation is funny and reckless in the first place, but if we consider ourselves in that case, than we see that it is actually a terrible thing. His human wants and emotions thereafter struggle with his insect needs and the reality of his intractably horrible situation, but the reader does not realize these facts in the beginning of the story.

However, as the story progresses, such funny details as his tiny legs and silly voice starts to fade away and the pain that stands behind is exposed. The whiny voice is actually pretty sad, and I suppose it is kind of a symbol, how he could not commune with his family before he's turned into a bug.

Then Gregor plans to go to job, as an insect, and the reader will imagine a big cockroach as a travelling sales-bug! This seems funny, but in Gregor's case this is a horrible situation, because he is the only one who takes care of the family. Gregor goes into the business because his father, after the collapse of his business, owes his boss a large debt. Gregor becomes the family's sole breadwinner. As much as he hates the petty and degrading concern for which he works, he is proud of providing his mother, father, and his sister Grete, with a nice apartment and a fairly comfortable life. He secretly dreams of sending Grete to the conservatory to study violin. But now, all of them are gone. He cannot work in this condition and he feels guilty about it.

The lodgers are another comic element in this bizarre tale. They are drawn as caricatures: one martinet and his two marionettes. By kowtowing to this ludicrous threesome while in its own house, the family reaches the low-point of its misfortune. Yet the lingering presence of the insect son, the great burden, holds the family hostage. Only after Gregor's death does the liberation of their spirits occur, self-respect truly bloom, and the future become a bearable thought.

For most of the story, the narrating voice is closely linked to Gregor. It is not Gregor himself, for it maintains a detachment--a hint of humor in face of the absurd--that Gregor does not share. Yet the narrating voice has no more knowledge of the events of the story than does Gregor. It is confined with him in his room, it listens at the