This is very long, and can probably be cut down by 200 words... I leave it at this length because I'm not sure how to condense it more without losing meaning along the way.
“I have only made this letter longer because I have not had the time to make it shorter.” — Blaise Pascal


The incredibly simple plot of his transformation and subsequent decline felt almost subversive in that nothing changes and everything that can get worse gets worse, and everyone acts like cogs in a machine.

It's astoundingly depressing how Gregor's greatest gift and sacrifice to his family was one where his life unraveled and he died all alone and unmourned. His years toiling away in a sales job, with a boss and co-workers that he disliked and all seemed to dislike him back, meant nothing in the end. He spent no time for himself in the name of filial piety, but it was only after he was reduced to a dung beetle that his family started proactively bettering their lives, whereas before they all relied on Gregor and his silent, endless labor.

Interesting enough, it wasn't Gregor's transformation that started his dehumanization - it started long before that point, when Gregor stopped living for himself, and dedicated all his waking hours to be the ultimate family provider.

His family already never saw him much anyways, and so they were just used to it, I guess, assuming he was fine in his room and not trying to reach out to him much. And as Gregor casually dehumanized himself first, his family after multiple efforts became used to it and went along with it. Sure, he's human, but they no longer know each other - their hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, how they're doing, etc - and worse, they're not only strangers, but Gregor has subsumed himself so that his hopes and dreams is maximizing his use as a tool for his family's success. Even in the beginning, the family barely took his side when the chief clerk came, and after that day, Gregor stopped talking because his speech was already not distinguishable as human unless he spoke each... word... very... slowly... In that state, whatever he said was detrimental to his family, spooking the chief clerk away, and advocating for himself didn't align with serving his family, so he just... stopped.

Gregor dehumanized himself first, I think, and from there it became natural for his family to do it too, and when he lost the last steady contact with other humans (salesperson!!!) via his job, he fully stopped being human. The bug transformation was just the straw that broke the camel's back. Even if he had remained human, the same thing would've still played out, but the visual metaphor of the bug was the best way to express the themes.

His sister Grete cleaned his room and gave him his meals, and we see the hopes of some standard of living that could make Gregor's new life bearable to some extent despite how his previous life's mission has been made utterly impossible. But as the shock of her brother's new state wears off, she cares less and less until she (and their parents) outright say that if Gregor-the-human was still inside the giant bug he became, he would crawl off somewhere and die so they could "honor the memory of him," instead of still being alive and relatively healthy. The fact that the father's thrown apple - in a fit of rage after seeing him outside him room and shocking them all - is what lodged inside Gregor and rotted him alive...

If Gregor still reached out to his family, and vice versa, the bug thing could've been surmountable. Even in the moving conversation, Gregor notes that it wouldn't've been hard to move - just put him in a large box with air holes and that would be fine. But the total breakdown in communication is what did him in. Gregor not asserting his humanity through the stilted speech and trying to not inconvenience anyone still, Grete feeding him meals but caring less and less whether he ate anything by the end, their parents just never giving a fuck about Gregor the whole time through - the best the mother did was stop the father from throwing more things at him, but only after the apple had lodged into his back.

I think many people are afraid of becoming like Gregor - no communication, not much people to contact and inconvenience just because they're so scared of not preserving some ideal image and being afraid to be messy. What would they say that satisfies the ones they're reaching out to? How long are they going to wait for that "perfect" line that won't dissatisfy?

It's easy to start measuring our worth in usefulness - how much we provide for others and how much it doesn't serve us. We're subconsciously punishing ourselves for not naturally being ideal, and putting worth in our suffering itself, rather than the hard work we put in.

The last bit of actual humanity left in Gregor were the parts of himself that he suppressed all the time before he transformed.

Gregor had regrets too - not pursuing a different job, not wooing that one lady, not being able to save up and send Grete to the Conservatorium - one last ideal image he wanted to preserve.

Interesting how the people with the least investment in Gregor were most comfortable (in a sense) with his state. The charwoman trying to instigate contact, and Gregor didn't take the bait. The lodgers didn't really object to his presence, they just saw a potential money-saving opportunity. His family was distressed because that beetle was their son and brother, and the chief clerk was distressed because it's weird Gregor still worked for them I guess - it's an imperfect metaphor.

But people with the least investment have the least trouble reaching out - or at least not shrinking away - no matter the barriers because they don't give a fuck. They don't have anything to lose. But his family had so much to lose that they couldn't bear to witness him when he wasn't useful and at least a little frightening. They did lose that cushy do-nothing state, and they all had to get jobs that tired them out to the point where they couldn't do anything but work, not even leave the apartment for other reasons. But through that shared toil where they were supporting each other made them grow... and Gregor had been taking on all the toil and supporting everyone by himself. Making himself unsympathizable, really, because he wouldn't complain and therefore make himself "inconvenient."

But it's easier for people to be inconvenient and mean more to others because of it, if even just the fact that being flawed and vulnerable is relatable to other non-ideal people. Even in one-sided cases, it can at least produce some amount of sympathy before the sheer inconvenience breaks the relationship apart, like with Gregor and Grete. Grete being more in-tune with Gregor in the first place, cleaning his room, bringing his food - after a life of a mythical ideal older brother, the vulnerability and connection made her grow a little closer to him, before all the fear and lack of any new depth/detail in their bond only emphasized the inconvenience before she gave up in all but name.

What did the charwoman do to Gregor? Was he buried whole, at least? His family didn't care, they went on fucking vacation and were happy for the first time in a long while - not spitting on Gregor's sacrifices, but rather not even acknowledging them. In fact, they were better off without all his sacrifices, except for the one where he rotted alive and died in silence. He could've asked for help - maybe the charwoman could've indulged him and her curiosity. But even despite his conscience refusal to not care about inconveniencing anyone, it was still part of a long-ingrained subconscious habit for him to not have needs. His little rebellions against the charwoman and the lodgers were very passive, requiring inconsequential actions - don't move towards her, move towards them, nothing that asks others to do anything.

Asking someone to reach into his back and pull out the rotting apple and save his life was too much to ask for or even think of, judging by the narration, in his last few months. Whether he didn't want to be seen in so low a state, or acknowledge that he needed help, or face just how much he was "unideal", or risk facing rejection for this one, simple, life-saving request - it was better to be an "ideal" pest that stayed out of sight, never complaining, never seen or heard, despite all the anger he felt on the inside. Who fucking cared? He didn't even let anyone else know that there was something to care about. Months of starving and seething and he didn't complain to Grete. He got a few lines for that at the end, when his family saw him dead. ("Just see how thin he was. It's such a long time since he's eaten anything. The food came out again just as it went in." from only Grete, who put herself in charge of his meals and stopped bothering to notice and who Gregor never reminded) Was it worth it?

Some things that stick to me is:

Obviously the family was shitty to Gregor, but no one got reached that ending blameless. Their lives in those last few years was a Rube Goldberg machine they all contributed to that resulted in Gregor's death.

Being human is so hard, between doing what needs to be done to live, balancing listening to our instincts and shying away from them in right amounts to distinguish ourselves from animals and robots. We can keep improving society and making things better and safer but/and on some level we're all going to be only human. I guess there's a comfort in that no matter how far we go/how far we stray, we'll always see ourselves in people who came before and who'll come after. Someone somewhere will always recognize some part of us. Even with Gregor - if the journey mattered more than the ending, and I recognize in him what his family missed, even if that's a fucking pittance to what he deserved, that's still something. I saw him and felt seen by him across time and frankly, him not even being real. I recognize parts of Kafka through Gregor, and Kafka wrote his stories partly on some level to signal, to be seen. And I think that's the meaning of The Metamorphosis: The measure of closeness and humanity is effort put into it by everyone involved despite/because of the difficulty.