When reading The Metamorphosis with World War I in mind, you quickly see multiple similar themes, such as the complete absurdity of both. In both, we see that normal people quickly adapt to extremely absurd situations. In most situations in life, people would not see a man being transformed into an insect as an average situation; however, in The Metamorphosis, the members of the family—and even Gregor himself – rapidly adapt to the situation. This is similar to the situation involving the war where average people would not normally be used to seeing thousands of men dead in a day, but after a short time on the front line, death and destruction almost become routine.

This is very closely related to an additional aspect affecting both: the containment of normal human emotions. This is represented in The Metamorphosis by the family as they build up in stress from working and resentment towards Gregor as he is allowed to live seemingly without stress. During the war, people also were forced to hold in their emotions for the “good of the country.” The emotional toll was often shown in the same way in both situations with an angry and emotion- filled release. At the end of The Metamorphosis, this culminated with the family joining together in the desire to rid themselves of Gregor. During the war, however, emotions culminated in different ways for different people: for soldier, it could come out as “shell shock” or other similar mental displays, and for the rest of the population, it came out resentment and anger towards the cause, the country, themselves or any number of other unrelated issues.