by Ivan Remaj

Created on: November 19, 2009

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug. I hope you reed Kafka's "Metamorphosis". What's my point you ask? I will show you latter. First let me tell you about my thought process when I started writing this. I started to think what a human is. Obviously from a basic view we can tell that a human is a product of a lot of water and some other substances. i read somewhere that total human body composition is worth around five dollars give or take.

Now let's look from a biological point of view. Humans aren't the fastest, strongest, toughest or even the most adaptable species. Humans are a species that is characterized with high intelligence. In fact that high intelligence enables us to "rule" this planet.

In this stage I have started to think of a deeper meaning of this question. Sure I can point out the obvious or show you the difference from the other species but this question isn't related to any of this.

Modern society shows us a human that loves to communicate but is suspicious, a human that creates but destroys also. From this sentence we can see two points. Human are a sociable species and a species with many contrast. I'm sure we can all agree that humans can't survive without a company. I have even caught myself talking to a rock or a steering wheel in a car. This only shows how much we love company. Contrast is another very interesting thing in being a human. Our consciousness and intelligence allows us to think, suspect, ask a lot of questions including the unanswerable. This curiosity produces this contrast because different experiences create different individuals who has different opinions. Of course humans are a compassionate species but that comes from our need to form groups and feel secure.

Intelligence, curiosity, sociability, individuality and contrast. A list that has brought us closer to our answer. Now let's bring mister Samsa in this equation. Why have I mentioned this masterpiece of our literature? Because it shows clearly what it means to be a human. Also shows the brilliance of a human mind and even has a nice twist in a story. Here we can all see transformation real and metaphorical. Gregor literally transforms from a human to a bug. But he tries to hold onto his humanity as hard as he can. On the other hand we have his family. A perfectly normal humans that are faced with a extreme situation. They steadily transform trough the story from a normal human being to a abominable shadows of our species. In the end they became savage and more like an animal than an "advanced" human being.

We can see the animals in ourself by looking at Gregor's family but we can also see the desperate need to became something more trough Gregor's desperate effort. So in the end let's conclude. Humans are a mixture of physical, mental, sociable, spiritual factors and my favorite contrast.

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