Kafka himself experienced the loneliness and isolation that he ascribes to Gregor in The Metamorphosis. His parents, busy running their fashion business, were too occupied to devote much time to Kafka, who was the oldest of six children (two of whom died in infancy). His three sisters would die in the Holocaust after his death (which occurred before World War II). His relationship with his father was particularly distant.
Kafka felt distanced from those around him. He considered himself repulsive, as reflected in Gregor's metamorphosis into a grotesque beetle, and he never married before dying at age 40 from tuberculosis. He was a German-speaking Jew in Prague, isolating him linguistically and religiously from the mainstream Czech population. Much of his life was drawn from inner sources, and he spent his time writing, even when employed as a lawyer at an insurance company. Like his character, Gregor, Kafka withdrew into his room, and he felt alone and isolated from the world around him.
Franz Kafka's and Gregor Samsa's lives have several similarities. In this story among others, he drew extensively on his own experience, including family, work, and creativity.
Both men have conflicted relationships with their fathers; both have sisters. Both men work in tedious, unfulfilling jobs.
Kafka stayed in his job and wrote in his off-work hours. His father was very hostile to the idea of his writing. He often wrote about father-son conflicts, both in his published fiction and his unpublished diaries.
In the story, Gregor is forced out of his job by his transformation and his boss. His father is both angry that Gregor cannot work to support the family and repulsed by his new physical appearance. The injury caused when his father throws and hits him with apples is one cause of his death.
Gregor mentions some advantages of not working, such as appreciating his sister play music. While not a musician himself, whereas Kafka was a writer, he is a sensitive person with creative interests.
Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" tells the story of a young salesman, Gregor Samsa, who wakes up one morning to find he has been fully transformed into a large insect. The themes of alienation, isolation and familial sacrifice that develop as Samsa begins to face his day as an insect can certainly be traced to Kafka's life experiences.
Kafka grew up in Prague, son of an upper middle class Jewish family in the late 1800s. He lost two brothers in their infancy, leaving him the only boy in a family that included three daughters (all of whom later die as a result of the Nazi rise to power). This places all of his parents hopes on him and his success. This is much the same pressure we see placed on Samsa in "The Metamorphosis." His parents and his sister depend on him as the sole breadwinner. It is implied in his parents' cold interactions with him in this new reality that their love is somewhat conditional.
We know Kafka had difficulty relating to his own parents: his mother was a homemaker who did not understand the depths of his thinking, and his father has been described as a tyrant who had little understanding of his son's desire to become a writer. Again, the isolation and alienation Samsa feels as an insect could be connected to Kafka's own sense of loneliness in his own home. Samsa's father's instinct is to attack the insect—almost becoming a monster himself. It is Samsa's mother who flings herself on her husband to stop him from hurting their son, though she does it almost ambivalently, not wanting necessarily to face her son or offer consolation herself.
Kafka's life experience seems to be, in some ways, dramatized in his novella, "The Metamorphosis." While the alienation, isolation, and family pressures that Samsa feels in the story can be seen in Kafka's own childhood, they can more generally be seen as products of modern life.
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