Theme Of Isolation In The Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Isolation from the world and other people, can sometimes be good for people. For those that choose to step back and take a break from the world, isolation can be a time of growth and self discovery. However, if a person is forced into isolation, like Gregor Samsa and the angel were, it has a completely different effect. For the angel in “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and Gregor Samsa in “The Metamorphosis” their isolation was physical as well as mental. The angel in “The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, was locked in a chicken coop for what seem to be several months, constantly being picked at and gawked at by townspeople who had paid to see him. He was a large man with enormous wings living in a tiny space with no meaningful human …show more content…
The family that had taken in the fallen angel, did not speak his language, so they could not ask him where he was from, who he was, or even what he was. He could not communicate back either and so he had no choice but to just stay in the coop, take the isolation, and wait until he was free. He was too frail and weak to break free, so he wasn’t able to use his words to help him get out of the situation he was in. Gregor had a similar struggle with communication. Once Gregor had turned into a bug, his voice had changed and became very squeaky and extremely hard to understand. Through the course of the story, he eventually lost all capacity to talk to his family. I feel as though turning into a bug was hard for Gregor, as it would for anybody, but loosing his ability to communicate was much harder. He wanted so bad to tell his family that he was still the same Gregor; that he was still in that bug body, but he couldn’t. He also really wanted to tell his sister that he had planned on putting her in music school for her violin but couldn’t do that either. Turning into a bug made Gregor not human physically, but not being able to voice his thoughts, ultimately made him loose his …show more content…
The women of the household felt as through he was everywhere and continually tried to come to the house and they were actually just waiting on him to die. When he finally started to look better and eventually fly away, they felt a big sigh of relief that burden of having him around would finally be lifted. Gregor being a bug, was also a large burden for his family. Since he could no longer work, he mother, father, and sister had to go to work. He took up room in the house and contributed nothing, he had to be cleaned up after, and he was also an emotional burden for his family. It was hard for them to loose their son and brother and also have a loss of income. They had come to terms with the loss of Gregor towards the end of the story and they realized that it was time for them to give up on thinking they would ever get him back. When he finally died, they were relieved and were able to move on and love a better, happier