Later, Gregor's enraged father violently illustrates the old social maxim that appearances really do matter, by pelting his stubbornly-metamorphosed son with apples in a fury one day. Soon afterward, Gregor dies. In most cases, human beings are saddened when a son or brother dies, but in this case, the remaining Samsa family members, with the possible exception of little sister Grete, are actually relieved. Gregor's metamorphosis and subsequent death forces upon each of them a metamorphosis of his or her own: ironically, Gregor's physical metamorphosis forces each of them back into life, like butterflies finally emerging from especially stubborn cocoons. Here, Kafka is pointing out the fallacies and limitations of typical human assumptions about first (in Gregor's case) what one "should" do for others; and second, in the cases of his parents and sister, what...
Here, Kafka implicitly forces us to re-examine our own proscribed and automatic social roles, and our assumptions about our crucial importance to others, and/or others' crucial importance to us.
In Chekhov's short story, "The Lady with the Dog," our initial assumption, based on society's belief system, is that marriage is always good, and to be protected, and that something which threatens a marriage (e.g., adultery) is always bad. However, the "strange truth" of the story, especially considering the time and social milieu at and for which it was originally written, is that Anna and Gurov are both stuck in hopelessly loveless marriages. We know this when each tries, with an equal lack of success, to return home and be happy
