Character Essay - Eliot's Prufrock and Kafka's Gregor Samsa

Eliot's Prufrock and Kafka's Gregor Samsa are both men that experience obstacles throughout their journey of life. These obstacles are social and/or personal in nature, and affect the way Prufrock and Gregor believe that society will, or already does perceive them. Eventually the journey of both characters transforms them toward a state of clarification and improvement. Through great use of symbols, by way of objects and imagery, Eliot and Kafka both help classify their characters as isolated and struck with internal conflict.

Eliot's Prufrock is a balding, insecure middle-aged man. He leads a dull, uneventful, mediocre life as a result of his feelings of inadequacy and his fear of making decisions. Unable to seize opportunities or take risks, he believes he lives in a world that is unchanged day after day. Prufrock tries to make progress, but his timidity and fear of failure prevent him from doing anything. Similarly, Kafka's Gregor Samsa is a simple, uninteresting, and kind of middle-of-the-road traveling salesman. One morning his life is changed suddenly by a "metamorphosis" into a giant cockroach, which makes his day-to-day tasks and obligations impossible. He no longer can do his job because his boss finds him horrifying, and undoubtedly the customers would too.

From the beginning of the poem we learn Prufrock is a sad man whose anxieties and obsessions have made him isolated. He continually worries that he will make a fool of himself and that people will ridicule him for his clothes, his bald spot, and his overall physical appearance. He tries to convince himself that he has had plenty of experiences and that he still has plenty of time to have more: "There will be time, there will be time/To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"(26-27).

Different from Prufrock, when Gregor woke up as a giant cockroach, the Gregor on the inside had not changed; he did not begin to change on the inside until other people's perception towards him changed because of his outside appearance. Gregor's "metamorphosis" makes him question the assumptions of his daily life. Kafka also makes you as the reader consider these questions. Does success, appearance and social position matter? What if we appeared socially acceptable at one point and suddenly not at another, are we still ourselves? Obviously there is much more to life than just appearance. Gregor Samsa died later on in the story, not because of his physical "metamorphosis, "but because of people's cruelty to him.

Although Eliot's Prufrock and Kafka's Gregor Samsa differ, they both successfully make the reader question how they currently view themselves and others in society. As a society we time and again look at someone's physical appearance and beyond what a person looks like on the inside.

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