The characters in the novella The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, each contribute certain values to the ironic story. The story focuses mainly on Gregor Samsa, Grete's brother, who experiences being converted into a bug. Grete, like Gregor, is also especially important to the story. Grete is thematically significant to the story The Metamorphosis because of her participating role in the transformation and the death of Gregor, her own metamorphosis that occurs throughout the story, and how the conclusion is symbolic of what will take place in her future.
             In the second section of the novella The Metamorphosis, Kafka provides evidence that Grete contributed to the metamorphosis of her brother Gregor. Grete, like her parents, relied on Gregor financially which allowed Grete to have the wealthy lifestyle that she desired. Before Gregor's transformation, his family could afford certain extremities such as the servant girl Anna, who is a year younger than Grete. Kafka makes it clear that Grete enjoyed a trouble-free, lazy life before Gregor transformed into a bug: "she who was still a child of seventeen and whose life hitherto had been so pleasant, consisting as it did in dressing herself nicely, sleeping long, helping in the housekeeping, going out to a few modest entertainments and above all playing the violin?" (974). If Grete was not quite so lazy with doing the housework, than Gregor would not have had to
            
             work so hard in order to provide insignificant things such as the servant girl, and may not have transformed into a bug. Gregor was also working long hours in order to save money to send Grete away to receive music lessons. Kafka shows Gregor's devotion to this goal when he writes, "it was a secret plan of his that she, who loved music, unlike himself, and could play movingly on...