Gregor's plight of waking up to find himself a bug is a fantastical and yet oddly relatable circumstance. I have more than once been startled to discover that I am not the person that I think that I am. Sometimes it's my reflection that seems unrecognizable. At other times I find myself incapable of physical feats that I was so certain that I could perform. On occasion, I discover my thoughts have gone dark paths that I did not intentionally plan to explore.
However, Gregor's situation is also a demonstration of how we often treat others. As much as I identify with Gregor, the truth is that I often act more like his family. They do little things to endure the creature that Gregor has become, but they never put in a real effort to truly help him. In the end, the come to loath him and the burden that he has placed on them, wishing that he would just disappear. In many ways, this is the plight of those in our society who are physically or mentally infirm. We have homeless camps even here in our area that are filled with people who have conditions that have long gone untreated, and as a society our primary desire is to move them to places where we don't have to think about them.
I'm looking forward to the conversations that my students are going to have.