A frog in his throat

          Why is it that in The Metamorphosis when Gregor first gets up and his mother yells at him, he is able to reply in a relatively normal-sounding voice, but later on when he tries to speak no one can understand a word he's saying?
          A thought I had was that maybe has something to do with everyone's growing concern for Gregor and not necessarily the physical state of his vocal chords. The first time that Gregor speaks after he's been transformed, no one is aware that anything at all is amiss. Gregor is somewhat late in getting up but it hasn't quite yet turned into a huge crisis. He reassures his mother that he's getting up in a mostly human-sounding although slightly gravelly voice that is completely understandable. The next time he tries to speak, no one has actually seen his new body yet, but the manager has come to the house and everyone is suspecting that something must be seriously wrong with Gregor, either physically or mentally, that he would be so adamant about staying in his room. Maybe the change in mood somehow prohibited them from understanding Gregor's speech. At first nothing is really the matter, they don't expect there to be any serious problems, so they have no trouble understanding Gregor. But once they realize something's seriously the matter and once they expect something to be the matter, then they panic and are unable to comprehend Gregor's speech.
          Another possible theory is that the fault isn't in Gregor's audience, but rather in Gregor himself. When he first speaks, he makes it clear that he was trying to speak slowly and enunciate every syllable so that he could be understood clearly. He isn't totally panicking at that point, he's maybe just somewhat surprised about his transformation and worried about getting to work. All he's trying to communicate at that point is reassuring his mother that he's getting up. But the next time he speaks he's very flustered and anxious about losing his job. His boss has threatened that he hasn't been a good employee of late, and Gregor is hastily trying to defend himself. He isn't careful in enunciating his words and he isn't speaking as calmly or slowly as he was before. Maybe no one could understand him because he'd stopped being careful about his speech. Just a thought that is somewhat irrelevant, but interesting; this possibly is an example of Gregor losing his humanity. He quickly loses his resolve to carefully make his speech understandable to those around him.

Debt

          One thing that struck me when reading the first part of Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis was the absurdity of the Samsa's financial situation. Let's examine it bit by bit, shall we?

          First, we learn that Gregor has a job as a travelling salesman. This seems fair enough, as most grown people aspire to have jobs. What is somewhat odd, however is that Gregor has a job but lives with his parents and sister. But at this point in the novel we can, perhaps give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he hasn't been at this very long and doesn't have the funds to buy his own place. 

          The next morsel of information regarding Gregor's work situation is that doesn't enjoy his job, and the only reason he hasn't quit is for his parents' sake. Gregor tells us (indirectly) that his parents owe his boss a large debt and he probably still has 5 or 6 more years of working until it's paid off. This raises the obvious question: why is Gregor working at a job he hates to pay off his parents' debt? Shouldn't they pay it off themselves? We don't really find out. 

          We do learn, however, that Gregor has already been working at his job for 5 years, so his parents' debt must be quite large, indeed. The question of why he's living with his parents is therefore answered, because obviously if all the money he makes is going towards paying off this debt, then there wouldn't be any for him to save to buy his own apartment. 

          Gregor mentions taking the train to work every morning. Taking the train costs money. This is probably the first sign we get that the Samsas are not so poor that they are living on the streets or some other extreme case like that. It is possible that the company pays for him to take the train, but if Gregor's family owes the company money then I don't think they'd extend that courtesy. 

          Another telling sign is that Gregor and his sister each have their own rooms. If the family was scraping to get by, one would think that they would've downsized to a smaller apartment and that Gregor and his sister would share a room. But they seem to have plenty of living space so, again, why is Gregor working to pay off this debt? Why does the debt exist in the first place?

         The family also has a maid, where generally poor, indebted families, don't splurge on a luxury such as that. They also are perfectly willing to call a blacksmith and a doctor when Gregor won't come out of his room, where poorer people would be more careful about such expenses. One gets the feeling that Mr. and Mrs. Samsa aren't really doing their best to get this debt paid off as soon as possible. If they wanted the debt paid off fast so that Gregor didn't have to keep at this job for so long, they could have cut their costs by a lot and would therefore be able to put much more of Gregor's paycheck towards the debt. This would have saved Gregor a lot of trouble, but Gregor's parents don't seem to think of his well-being very much, especially since they're making him pay the debt instead of doing it themselves. This is not what I would call good parenting.