John Yowan

Mr. Coate

November 7, 2004

Maturation in The Metamorphosis and The Red Badge of Courage

In both The Metamorphosis and The Red Badge of Courage the main focus is maturation. Henry Fleming deals with maturation by adapting and changing for the better while Gregor Samsa deals with maturation by going insane. Henry and Gregor have different behavioral responses to the difficulties poised by maturation.

The Red Badge of Courage is about Henry Fleming who goes to fight in the Civil War. At the beginning of the book Henry chooses to fight in the war so he will be considered a hero and fight in great battles. Even when his mother warns him that he could die he became “impatient” with it and still went. Henry thought of present battles like Ancient Greek battles. He believed “Secular and religious education had effaced the throat-grappling instinct…” and in battle he could still prove himself worthy. When Henry hears the rumor about his regiment going into battle the next day Henry becomes excited. He later Henry questions his own courage because he was not sure if he could endure the battle or if he would be too much of a coward.

In his first battle Henry did not run and felt proud of his actions. When the second battle started Henry once again felt afraid and when he started to see other members of his regiment running away, he ran too. To make himself feel better about running away he assured himself that anybody would have run from the battle.

When Henry rejoined the regiment he felt guilty about running and when he was asked where he was injured by another solider Henry hurries away in a panic. As Henry looked at the injured soldiers in his regiment he became envious of their injuries because he considered them as proof of bravery.

As Henry became more experienced with military life he began to mature. In the next major battle Henry refused to retreat and was aware of nothing but his own rage towards the enemy. Henry’s main change in his maturation was caused by the battles he fought in. He went from being a coward to having courage and he became more experienced with decision-making. Gregor matured by learning that war is not what he thought it was.

The Metamorphosis is about Gregor Samsa, who according to the story becomes an “enormous bug” When Gregor’s father lost his business, Gregor took over as the provider of money for the family and his father no longer saw any reason to go back to work. Over time Gregor slowly lost his sanity because he could not deal with the pressure on him Gregor did not indeed mature at all because of the pressures from society, work and family.

Gregor turning into a bug is really a symbol for showing that he went insane. When people come to the Samsa house and see Gregor they are not terrified of him like a person should be after seeing an “enormous bug.” This is because they are not seeing a bug, but instead an obviously mentally ill human. The only people who are afraid of Gregor are his family and the hired help that had known him for some time. This is because they knew what he was like before the change. When a newly hired cleaning woman calls Gregor an “old dung beetle” she is not actually saying that Gregor is a bug, and is instead referring to his uncleanliness.

In the story Gregor believes he can climb on the walls and ceiling but he never did any of this in front of anyone else and nobody ever saw evidence of him actually climbing the walls and ceiling. The reason Gregor’s speech was not understood most of the time was because he was thinking he was saying words when they were coming out as gibberish. This is another sign of Gregor loosing his sanity. When Gregor’s mother helps his sister, Greta, take the furniture out of his room she “was convinced that he did not understand her words.” This is probably because Gregor is insane and she assumed that since he was insane, he could not understand what she said. While his mother was talking at this point in the story she said, “and isn't it a fact that by removing the furniture we're showing that we're giving up all hope of an improvement and are leaving him to his own resources without any consideration? I think it would be best if we tried to keep the room exactly in the condition it was in before, so that, when Gregor returns to us, he finds everything unchanged and can forget the intervening time all the more easily." This is because she hoped Gregor would get better again.

Gregor’s Father throwing an apple into Gregor’s back was not the thing that killed Gregor. Instead the real cause of death was starvation. Most of the time Gregor did not eat. “…the sister now kicked some food or other very quickly into his room in the morning and at noon, before she ran off to her shop, and in the evening, quite indifferent to whether the food had perhaps only been tasted or, what happened most frequently, remained entirely undisturbed, she whisked it out with one sweep of her broom.” Towards the end of the book after Gregor died Grete who did not take her eyes off the corpse, said, “Look how thin he was. He had eaten nothing for such a long time. The meals which came in here came out again exactly the same.”

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