Gregor Samsa

Alienation Through My Eyes: Child Labour

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.”

Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

My name is Gregor Samsa and I am a travelling salesman. Though I hate my job, I have no choice but to stay and keep it, simply because I have to provide for my family. Being the only person in my family with a job, I am the sole dependence of my family’s future. My dad, mom, and sister depend on me to earn a living to keep us alive, and also to pay whatever debt they have left. I was not happy with my life, but I just had to deal with it and move on for the sake of me and my family’s future. However, just when I thought my life couldn’t get any worse, I woke up one day to find myself transformed into a monstrous verminous bug. I was in shock. My whole human body was taken over by a bug, a literal bug. I couldn’t move, nor talk. It wasn’t too long after that my family and boss came banging onto my door, wondering why I was not up and on my way to work yet. Soon after opening the door, they saw me and immediately became aware of what I have become. It was bad enough that I am now a monstrous verminous bug, but this is also the time where my life started to deteriorate. This is where it began; my experiences with alienation. 

Alienation from a Life of Happiness & Content

   All throughout my life, I focused on my family’s needs and tending to them. Being the only person in my family who earns a living, I kept my job as a travelling salesman to provide for my family. Though I hated my job, I had no other choice but to keep it in order for me to earn money to support my family and pay off the remaining debts they had. I did not live my life the way I wanted to, and I worked against my own interests. This alienated me from a life of happiness and content.

Similarly, child labourers are also alienated from a happy and contented life. Just like me, child labourers are forced to go against their own will and start working at a very young age in environments that are dangerous and threatens their health, just to support their families. The root of child labour is said to be poverty, where parents of children are unemployed but are needing money in order to survive. Though child labourers are still young (under 12-17), they are forced to work in unfavourable environments, despite not wanting to, in order to earn a living and contribute to the family’s need of survival. 

Familial Alienation & The Reduction of Humanity

   After finding out that I had somehow morphed into a bug, my family started treating me differently. They imprisoned me inside my room and forbade me from stepping outside, giving me only garbage to feed off of. Furthermore, no one bothered to help me clean my room. I would have done it myself if I could, but my bug body just was not doing any good for me. As if my messy room wasn’t bad enough, my parents started to take my furniture out of my room, and then all of my possessions. My room was empty for awhile, but eventually, my family used my room as a storage room, dumping everything they didn’t need in there. This being said, they really degraded me, treating me as if I was truly no longer a human but just a worthless bug. I was isolated in my room, away from my family, the people who not too long ago depended on me and thought I played an important role in their life. Now, they see me as nothing but a pest, slowly pushing me out of their lives. It hurts to be separated from the people that means the most to me, but with how they think of me now, it is allowing alienation to grow between them and I. Through all this, not only did I experience familial alienation, but also the reduction of my humanity as well. 

Child labourers in fact also go through reduction of humanity and familial alienation. These children are treated very poorly within the labour industry. They are put in environments that are detrimental to their health and well-being. Some work in places where they are exposed to toxic chemicals, carry heavy loads, work with dangerous equipment with no safety precautions, and work at places that require them to be in uncomfortable and painful positions for long hours. Others, who are domestic workers, are abused by their employers. These factors all contribute to the child labourers’ reduction of humanity, and like me, are degraded each and every step of the way. Furthermore, these children are forced to work extremely long hours, ranging from 14 to over 43 hours per week, causing most of them to be isolated from their families. Especially for domestic workers, they are forced to live with their employers the majority of the time, which causes familial alienation to grow between them and their family. 

Social Alienation

   Not only was I alienated from my family, but I was also alienated from the community as a whole. I was not able to interact with my own family upon turning into a bug, let alone talking to anyone outside of my house. I was left to decay in my own room, with alienation as a wall between myself and everyone else. Similar to this, child labourers are forced to work long hours a day, minimizing the time they had to themselves, preventing them from attending school and making new friends, or even playing outside with other children. Due to the responsibility that is given to them at such a young age, these child labourers are alienated from a childhood that they deserve, which isolates them from their community and others.