The Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka

(study guide)
Summary & Context 
Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up in his bed to find himself transformed
into a large insect. He looks around his room, which appears normal, and decides to
go back to sleep to forget about what has happened. He attempts to roll over, only to
discover that he cannot due to his new body—he is stuck on his hard, convex back. He
tries to scratch an itch on his stomach, but when he touches himself with one of his
many new legs, he is disgusted. He reflects on how dreary life as a traveling salesman
is and how he would quit if his parents and sister did not depend so much on his
income. He turns to the clock and sees that he has overslept and missed his train to
work.

Gregor’s mother knocks on the door, and when he answers her,  

Gregor finds that his voice has changed. His family suspects that he may be ill, so
they ask him to open the door, which he keeps locked out of habit. He tries to get out
of bed, but he cannot maneuver his transformed body. While struggling to move, he
hears his office manager come into the family’s apartment to find out why Gregor has
not shown up to work. He eventually rocks himself to the floor and calls out that he
will open the door momentarily.

Through the door, the office manager warns Gregor of the consequences of missing
work and hints that Gregor’s recent work has not been satisfactory. Gregor protests
and tells the office manager that he will be there shortly. Neither his family nor the
office manager can understand what Gregor says, and they suspect that something
may be seriously wrong with him. Gregor manages to unlock and open the door with
his mouth, since he has no hands. He begs the office manager’s forgiveness for his
late start. Horrified by Gregor’s appearance, the office manager bolts from the
apartment. Gregor tries to catch up with the fleeing office manager, but his father
drives him back into the bedroom with a cane and a rolled newspaper. Gregor injures
himself squeezing back through the doorway, and his father slams the door shut.
Gregor, exhausted, falls asleep.

Gregor wakes and sees that someone has put milk and bread in his room. Initially
excited, he quickly discovers that he has no taste for milk, once one of his favorite
foods. He settles himself under a couch and listens to the quiet apartment. The next
morning, his sister Grete comes in, sees that he has not touched the milk, and replaces
it with rotting food scraps, which Gregor happily eats. This begins a routine in which
his sister feeds him and cleans up while he hides under the couch, afraid that his
appearance will frighten her. Gregor spends his time listening through the wall to his
family members talking. They often discuss the difficult financial situation they find
themselves in now that Gregor can’t provide for them. Gregor also learns that his
mother wants to visit him, but his sister and father will not let her.

Gregor grows more comfortable with his changed body. He begins climbing the walls
and ceiling for amusement. Discovering Gregor’s new pastime, Grete decides to
remove some of the furniture to give Gregor more space. She and her mother begin
taking furniture away, but Gregor finds their actions deeply distressing. He tries to
save a picture on the wall of a woman wearing a fur hat, fur scarf, and a fur muff.
Gregor’s mother sees him hanging on the wall and passes out. Grete calls out to
Gregor—the first time anyone has spoken directly to him since his transformation.
Gregor runs out of the room and into the kitchen. His father returns from his new job,
and misunderstanding the situation, believes Gregor has tried to attack the mother.
The father throws apples at Gregor, and one sinks into his back and remains lodged
there. Gregor manages to get back into his bedroom but is severely injured.

Gregor’s family begins leaving the bedroom door open for a few hours each evening
so he can watch them. He sees his family wearing down as a result of his
transformation and their new poverty. Even Grete seems to resent Gregor now,
feeding him and cleaning up with a minimum of effort. The family replaces their maid
with a cheap cleaning lady who tolerates Gregor’s appearance and speaks to him
occasionally. They also take on three boarders, requiring them to move excess
furniture into Gregor’s room, which distresses Gregor. Gregor has also lost his taste
for the food Grete brings and he almost entirely ceases eating.

One evening, the cleaning lady leaves Gregor’s door open while the boarders lounge
about the living room. Grete has been asked to play the violin for them, and Gregor
creeps out of his bedroom to listen. The boarders, who initially seemed interested in
Grete, grow bored with her performance, but Gregor is transfixed by it. One of the
boarders spots Gregor and they become alarmed. Gregor’s father tries to shove the
boarders back into their rooms, but the three men protest and announce that they will
move out immediately without paying rent because of the disgusting conditions in the
apartment.

Grete tells her parents that they must get rid of Gregor or they will all be ruined. Her
father agrees, wishing Gregor could understand them and would leave of his own
accord. Gregor does in fact understand and slowly moves back to the bedroom. There,
determined to rid his family of his presence, Gregor dies.

Upon discovering that Gregor is dead, the family feels a great sense of relief. The
father kicks out the boarders and decides to fire the cleaning lady, who has disposed
of Gregor’s body. The family takes a trolley ride out to the countryside, during which
they consider their finances. Months of spare living as a result of Gregor’s condition
have left them with substantial savings. They decide to move to a better apartment.
Grete appears to have her strength and beauty back, which leads her parents to think
about finding her a husband.
Summary and Analysis of Full Chapters

Summary of Part 1 
Gregor Samsa wakes in his bed and discovers he has transformed into a giant bug.
Wondering what has happened, he looks around his small room, where everything
appears normal. He sees the fabric samples that he uses in his job as a traveling
salesman, a picture of a woman in furs that he tore out of a magazine and framed, and
the rain dripping down outside his window. He tries to roll over and go back to sleep
in order to forget about what has happened, but because of the shape of his back, he
can only rock from side to side.
Feeling sore from his effort, Gregor thinks about what a difficult job he has and the
fact that his constant traveling prevents him from making any lasting friendships. He
thinks that he would leave his overbearing employer but he has to work off a debt that
his parents incurred. He suddenly realizes that he has overslept and does not have a
good excuse to give his boss.

Gregor’s mother reminds him that he has to catch his train to work. When Gregor
responds, he finds his voice has changed. His father and Grete, his sister, join his
mother at the door, urging him to get up and unlock it. Gregor twists and rocks,
managing to turn sideways and dangle off the bed. Then the doorbell rings. It is the
office manager, come to check on Gregor. Gregor rocks his body violently and finally
tumbles to the floor. His family and the office manager come to the door to inquire if
he is all right.

Gregor’s mother pleads with the office manager, telling him what a devoted worker
Gregor is, while Grete cries in the next room. The office manager calls through the
door and demands an explanation. He hints that Gregor’s recent work has not been
satisfactory and that Gregor’s current behavior looks very bad, especially in light of
rumors that Gregor may have stolen money from the company. Gregor claims that he
had a dizzy spell and asks the office manager to spare his parents any undue concern.
While Gregor tries to lift himself off the floor, the office manager and his family
discuss the strange change in his voice, and his sister leaves to fetch a doctor and a
locksmith.

Gregor reaches the door, turns the lock with his mouth, and slowly pulls open the
door. Seeing that Gregor is now a giant insect, the terrified office manager backs
away, the mother passes out, and the father cries. Gregor delivers a long speech
asking the office manager to put in a good word for him at work, since traveling
salesmen often become the subjects of negative gossip, but the office manager
continues to back out of the apartment. Gregor unsuccessfully tries to catch him as he
flees and discovers how easily he can crawl on his new legs. The father then picks up
a newspaper and the office manager’s cane and drives Gregor back into his bedroom.
Gregor injures himself when he becomes stuck in the doorway, but the father shoves
him through and slams the door.

Analysis of Part 1 
The opening line of The Metamorphosis, which reports Gregor’s discovery that he has
become a giant insect, sets the tone for the rest of the story. The line recounts the
bizarre event of Gregor’s transformation in a sober, straightforward manner, and this
contrast between an extraordinary situation and the ordinary terms used to describe it
creates the sense that the narrator expects the world in the story to be absurd and
chaotic, rather than rational and orderly. Gregor embodies this absurdist tone from the
very beginning. When he first recognizes his transformation, he doesn’t appear
significantly bothered by it, and treats it almost like any ordinary disturbance to his
sleep, as if it were not entirely out of the ordinary. As the story progresses, he remains
focused on largely ordinary concerns, such as losing his job, his physical comfort, and
his family’s financial situation, thus maintaining the story’s absurdist overtone
throughout.
In this section, we also begin to learn the details of Gregor’s human life, and we get
the first glimpses into his feeling of alienation from those around him. As Gregor lies
in bed, unable to get himself up, he begins thinking of his job as a traveling salesman,
and we learn that he only continues at it because of his parents’ debt. In fact, he
greatly dislikes the office manager, who has come to the house to check on him.
Furthermore, the friendships he makes because of his work are only casual and never
intimate, since he must always be traveling. The mother hints at Gregor’s lack of
friends when she tries to explain to the office manager what a good employee Gregor
is. She says Gregor never goes out in the evenings, but sits home reading a newspaper
or checking the train timetables, suggesting that Gregor already lives predominantly in
isolation. Now, Gregor is no longer even physically human. In his new form, he is
unable to go to work, and his voice is so altered that he can’t even communicate with
those around him. In addition, when he opens the door and the office manager and his
family members see him, they are horrified, and together these details foreshadow that
Gregor’s isolation from other people will only continue to grow.

The section also establishes the motif of money in the story, and hints at the major
role money plays in the Samsa family. Gregor’s greatest concern after discovering his
metamorphosis is that he will lose his job, which we quickly learn he only continues
at so he can pay off his parents’ debt. (We also know that debt is substantial since he
says it will take him five or six years to pay it off.) As the section continues, we
receive indications that, of the members of the Samsa family, only Gregor works, and
that the father stays at home. Though it remains unclear at this point why the family is
in so much debt, it is evident that they are not wealthy and that their debts hamper
them. Because he is responsible for paying these debts, Gregor feels trapped in his
job. Finally, the office manager also brings up money when he tells Gregor that the
chief suspects him of stealing from the company.

Summary of Part 2 
Gregor wakes in the evening. He sees that someone has put a bowl of milk and bread
in the room. Though milk had been his favorite drink, he finds he cannot stand the
taste now. Then he listens for his family, but the apartment is completely quiet. He
recalls the pride he felt at taking care of his family and wonders what will happen to
them now. Someone cracks the door open but shuts it immediately, and Gregor
eventually sees the light go off in the other room. He crawls under a small sofa and
drops into a fitful sleep, vowing that he will do everything he can to make his new
condition as small a burden on his family as possible.
In the morning, Grete opens the door but shuts it when she sees Gregor under the sofa.
She reopens it and steps into the room. Noticing that Gregor has not eaten, she brings
in various kitchen scraps and leaves Gregor to eat alone. He enjoys the moldiest food
but has no interest in the fresh vegetables. Grete returns a little while later and sweeps
up the scraps while Gregor watches her from beneath the sofa. A pattern thus begins,
with Grete feeding and cleaning up after Gregor and reporting to the mother and
father how much Gregor has eaten.

Gregor spends much of his time listening to the family through the door. He learns
that the money he regularly gave his parents has not all been spent, and he feels proud
of his contribution to their wellbeing. To avoid spending this savings, however, the
family members will need to find employment. Gregor feels embarrassed when he
hears them discuss this topic, as the father has become out of shape and clumsy and
the mother has asthma, so neither seems very capable of working. Gregor also reflects
on his relationship with his family, recalling how he and his parents had grown apart
but that he and Grete had remained close, so much so that he had planned to send her
to music school to study the violin.

Gregor slowly adapts to his new life. He begins to enjoy scurrying around his room
and climbing on a chair to look out the window. Though Grete continues to look after
Gregor, he notices that she cannot stand the sight of him, and he hides behind a sheet
draped over the sofa when she enters the room. The parents avoid coming in, though
they seem curious about his state. The mother in particular is eager to see him, but
Grete and the father urge her not to.

Grete sees that Gregor enjoys climbing up the walls and across the ceiling, so she
decides to remove the furniture from the room to give him more space. While the
father is out, Grete and the mother start taking out furniture. Gregor hides as usual, but
he grows anxious as he hears his mother worry that she and Grete might be doing him
a disservice by stripping the room of his possessions. Grete, however, considers
herself the expert on Gregor and overrules the mother’s objections. While Grete and
the mother talk in the living room, Gregor, panicked at the thought of losing all the
remnants of his human life, climbs the wall and covers the picture of the woman in
furs to prevent it from being taken away.

The mother spots Gregor on the wall, goes into a panic, and passes out. Grete yells at
Gregor as he lets go of the picture and scurries into the living room. Grete rushes out,
grabs medicine, and returns to Gregor’s room, shutting the door behind her. The father
returns and Grete tells him that Gregor broke out. He misunderstands Grete and thinks
Gregor attacked the mother, so he starts chasing Gregor around the room. Gregor
notices that his father has become a new man since getting a job as a bank attendant—
he stands straighter and looks cleaner and healthier. The father throws fruit at Gregor,
and eventually hits him with an apple that becomes lodged in Gregor’s back. The
mother bursts from the bedroom and Gregor rushes for the door, hearing his mother
beg his father to stop.

Analysis of Part 2 
The question of how much of Gregor’s humanity remains dominates the second
section of the story. As the members of the Samsa family adapt to the new situation
with Gregor, each one appears to develop a different perception of how much
humanity remains in him. At the beginning of the section, for instance, Grete leaves
milk for Gregor, apparently assuming that his preference for milk while he was human
continues now that he’s a bug. The assumption suggests that Grete believes, at least
initially, that some part of Gregor remains the same. But as she recognizes that
Gregor’s tastes in food have changed and that he now likes to crawl about the walls of
his room, Grete gradually begins to conceive of Gregor as an insect. In response, she
suggests taking all Gregor’s possessions out of his room to eliminate obstacles to his
crawling and to make the space more suitable to an insect. The mother, on the other
hand, protests that Gregor will want his things when he returns to his former self, and
earlier in the section she even refers to Gregor as her “unfortunate son,” implying she
still believes Gregor to be fundamentally the same despite his appearance. The father
gives no indication that he regards Gregor as the same, and attacks him as though he
were a wild animal when he escapes his room.
This confusion regarding Gregor’s humanity extends to Gregor himself, and much of
the section involves Gregor trying to reconcile his human emotions and history with
the physical urges of his new body. Gregor’s lingering humanity is most evident
through his thoughts and emotions. He continues to feel proud that he was able to help
his family financially in the past, he feels shame at being unable to help them now,
and he is determined to spare them any unnecessary suffering on his account. These
details show that he still feels connected to his human past and still considers himself
a part of the family. Physically, however, he feels more and more like an insect: his
food preferences have completely changed, he feels terrified of his room and safe only
under the sofa, and he takes great pleasure in scurrying up the walls and across the
ceiling. This tension between Gregor’s mind and body culminates when Grete and the
mother take the furniture out of his room. Initially, he feels he would prefer the room
to be empty because that would make it more physically comfortable for him. But his
ties to his possessions, which represent to him his past as a human, lead him to cling
desperately to the photograph of the woman in furs.
Of all the characters, Grete has by far the most interaction with Gregor in Part 2, and
over the course of the section their relationship changes dramatically. Though Grete
initially wants to care for Gregor and takes on all the burdens of doing so, she cannot
bear the sight of him. Notably, after noticing Gregor’s habit of moving the chair to
look out the window Grete kindly starts placing the chair by the window for him, but
when she inadvertently sees him standing on it later, she is overcome with horror.
Gradually, Grete’s disgust appears to wear down her sympathy for Gregor, and while
she continues to care for him, she does so evidently more from a sense of duty than
love. In fact, she appears to regard caring for Gregor as her role—and thus part of her
identity—in the family. She guards that role jealously against the mother, which
suggests that Grete performs these duties more for her own sake than for Gregor’s.
Gregor, meanwhile, begins to regard Grete’s presence in his room as an intrusion, and
he prefers to be entirely alone. By the end of the section, Grete’s and Gregor’s
affection for one another has faded completely. Grete appears to consider Gregor a
chore and inconvenience, while Gregor feels as alienated from Grete as he does
everyone else, making him even more isolated from others.

The reader learns a great deal more in this section about the family’s financial
situation, providing a greater understanding of how money shapes the relationships in
the Samsa family. Through Gregor’s reporting of the family’s conversations and his
own recollections, we learn that the father’s business failed five years earlier and that
subsequently the whole family fell into a state of despair. When Gregor first began
supporting the family with his income, his parents were extremely grateful, but as
they came to expect Gregor’s help, their gratitude diminished and Gregor began to
feel alienated from them. These details clarify why the father in particular is so
lethargic and unmotivated up to this point. It also explains why Gregor feels so distant
from the mother and especially from the father, who is the only member of the Samsa
family that Gregor never wishes to see. Moreover, because Gregor cannot work, he
acts as an additional burden to the family, possibly contributing to their diminishing
sympathy for him.

Summary of Part 3 
In the wake of Gregor’s injury, which limits his mobility, the family takes pity on him
and leaves the bedroom door open at night so Gregor can watch them. The father
dozes in his chair while the mother sews lingerie for a boutique and Grete studies
French and shorthand in hopes of moving up from her job as a sales clerk. The father
stops taking off his bank attendant uniform when he comes home, and the uniform
becomes increasingly filthy. Grete and the mother encourage the father to go to bed
early, but he stays up late every night, muttering about how sad his life has become.
Gregor learns that the family has been selling off jewelry to bring in money, and they
replace their regular maid with an elderly cleaning lady. He also realizes that they feel
trapped by his presence. Gregor stops sleeping and eating as he frets about the family
and the past, alternating between guilt over not helping them and outrage that they
have neglected him. Grete hardly takes care of him at all anymore. Despite this
apparent indifference to Gregor, she becomes extremely upset when the mother cleans
Gregor’s room and insists that Gregor is hers to look after.

The new cleaning lady, meanwhile, regularly talks to Gregor. She openly stares at
him, and even tries to sneak into the room to catch him off-guard. One day, Gregor,
tired of being peered at, attacks her, but the cleaning lady threatens him with a chair,
so he desists.

The family takes three boarders into the apartment. These men cannot stand mess and
disorder, so the family moves much of the furniture and the cleaning lady’s supplies
into Gregor’s room. Gregor enjoys crawling through the clutter, though doing so
leaves him exhausted.

One night, the cleaning lady accidentally leaves the door open while the boarders are
home. The boarders eat in the dining room while the family eats in the kitchen, and
Gregor notices the boarders being very picky about the food that his mother and sister
have cooked. Hearing Grete playing the violin, the boarders invite the family into the
parlor. The boarders initially stand very close to Grete as she plays, but they soon lose
interest. Gregor is entranced by the violin and slowly creeps out into the parlor. He
longs to take his sister back to his room and tell her about his plan to send her to
music school.

One of the boarders spots Gregor and cries out. The father rushes the boarders out of
the parlor as they declare they will move out and not pay rent. Grete tells her parents
that they have to stop believing that the bug is Gregor and says they must find a way
to get rid of it. The father wishes they could explain to Gregor why they need him to
leave, but Grete says that if he could understand them, he would have left long ago to
spare them any more pain. Gregor, feeling terrible, scuttles back to his room. He
remains motionless through the night, thinking to himself all the while that he must go
away to relieve them of their suffering. As dawn breaks, he dies.

The cleaning lady discovers Gregor’s body the next morning. The family gathers
around the corpse and Grete notices how skinny Gregor had become. The father kicks
the boarders out of the apartment. The family decides to take a walk, but first they
write letters to their bosses explaining why they aren’t coming into work. The
cleaning lady tells them that she got rid of the body, but the family seems uninterested
in her, and the father decides to fire her that night. Grete and her parents leave the
apartment and take a trolley ride to the countryside. They discuss their finances and
discover that they have much more money than they thought. They decide to move to
a smaller apartment in a better location. The parents notice what an attractive young
woman Grete has become and think they should find a husband for her soon. As they
reach their stop, Grete stands and stretches.

Analysis of Part 3 
The members of the Samsa family continue to struggle with their uncertainty
regarding Gregor’s humanity, all the way up to his death. In a show of kindness, they
begin leaving the door to Gregor’s room open in the evenings, providing Gregor with
at least a little contact with them. This action suggests that they continue to regard
Gregor, if only slightly, as a part of their family, and that they believe some of his
former humanity persists. After Gregor frightens away the boarders, however, Grete
comes to the conclusion that nothing of Gregor remains. The father appears to wrestle
with Grete’s assessment. He suggests if the bug could understand them maybe they
could work out a mutually agreeable situation, indicating that he holds out hope that
Gregor’s mind remains intact. But that hope is apparently minimal, as it takes Grete
very little effort to convince the father and mother that no remnant of Gregor, or any
humanity at all, exists in the insect.
Gregor’s confused feelings about his family and his own humanity appear again as he
listens to Grete play the violin to the boarders. Gregor has a strong reaction to the
music, so strong in fact it appears to make him feel distinctly like a bug, as he
wonders if his great attraction to the music derives from the fact that he is now an
animal. But his feelings for Grete point to lingering feelings from his human life, as
he still loves Grete and wants her to know it, leading him to imagine a tearful scene in
which he locks Grete in his room and tells her he had intended to send her to the
Conservatorium. The scene also suggests that Gregor still has the desire to take care
of his family financially. Notably, however, in his fantasy Gregor is still a bug while
he speaks to his sister, despite the fact that he has not been able to speak properly
since his transformation. This detail signals a conflict in Gregor’s sense of his own
identity, as he is not fully insect or human in his fantasy.

Gregor becomes even more isolated as the family loses interest in caring for him.
Grete, once the family member to spend the most time in contact with Gregor, stops
caring for him entirely, leaving the task instead to the new cleaning lady. By this
point, the family has also lost any concern for Gregor’s comfort, which is apparent in
the fact that they begin using Gregor’s room as a storage closet once the boarders
move in. Gregor simultaneously appears to lose all interest in his family. He prefers to
be by himself, and he even becomes angry when they leave his door open during an
argument and disturb him with the noise they make. With the arrival of the boarders,
Gregor’s presence becomes a liability rather than just a nuisance—he could scare the
boarders away and cost the family the rent money they would earn—and the family
essentially begins pretending he doesn’t exist. By this point, his only connection to his
family is that they live in the same apartment, and he lives in almost total isolation but
for the occasional intrusion by the cleaning lady.

The family’s sympathy for Gregor has steadily diminished over the course of the
story, and Gregor’s encounter with the boarders finally exhausts what little
compassion they have left. Although demanding, the boarders provide the family with
an additional source of income. Gregor, on the other hand, is a burden. He has to be
fed, he takes up a room that could be used for other purposes, and perhaps most
importantly, his presence in the house causes the family a great deal of stress. By
driving away the boarders, Gregor does, in fact, become a liability, and the family,
specifically Grete, can no longer tolerate his presence. By this time, Grete also doesn’t
think of the bug as her brother anymore, and since Gregor cannot speak, he’s not able
to convince her otherwise. Grete consequently demands they get rid of Gregor,
indicating that she has no sympathy remaining, and it takes her little effort to convince
the father and mother, which suggests their own sympathy for Gregor was minimal.

In contrast with the feeling of anxiety that dominates the story, the story’s final scene
has a hopeful tone, and it culminates in an image that suggests Grete’s own
metamorphosis into a woman is complete. As the family travels out to the
countryside, the narrator describes “warm sunshine” filling their train car, and this
image creates a marked contrast from confining image of the family’s small
apartment. The family also appears to have experienced a dramatic shift away from
the frequent worrying over money that has preoccupied them through much of the
story, as each family member realizes his or her current employment will likely lead
to better opportunities. Finally, they think they can now get a smaller, cheaper, and
better-located apartment, implying that it was Gregor who kept them in their current
home and that, with Gregor gone, they will now be able to move onto better things.
Together these details create a feeling of relief that the family’s ordeal with Gregor is
now over as well as a sense of hope for the future. This hope reaches its climax in the
final lines of the story. Looking at Grete, the mother and father realize she’s grown
into a pretty young woman and think of finding her a husband, signaling both that
Grete has undergone her own metamorphosis over the course of the story and that a
new chapter in her life is beginning. The story concludes with Grete stretching, an act
that suggests emerging after a long period of confinement, as if from a cocoon.  
A review on the 
Summary and Analysis “The Metamorphosis” 
(Die Verwandlung) 
Kafka wrote “The Metamorphosis” at the end of 1912, soon after he finished “The
judgment,” and it is worth noting that the two stories have much in common: a
businessman and bachelor like Georg Bendemann of “The judgment,” Gregor Samsa
is confronted with an absurd fate in the form of a “gigantic insect,” while Georg is
confronted by absurdity in the person of his father. Also both men are guilty: like
Georg in “The judgment,” Gregor Samsa (note the similarity of first names) is guilty
of having cut himself off from his true self — long before his actual metamorphosis
— and, to the extent he has done so, he is excluded from his family. His situation of
intensifying anxiety, already an unalterable fact at his awakening, corresponds to
Georg’s after his sentence. More so than Georg, however, who comes to accept his
judgment, out of proportion though it may be, Gregor is a puzzled victim brought
before the Absolute — here in the form of the chief clerk — which forever recedes
into the background. This element of receding, an important theme in Kafka’s works,
intensifies the gap between the hero and the unknown source of his condemnation.
Thus the reader finds himself confronted with Gregor’s horrible fate and is left in
doubt about the source of Gregor’s doom and the existence of enough personal guilt to
warrant such a harsh verdict. The selection of an ordinary individual as victim
heightens the impact of the absurd. Gregor is not an enchanted prince in a fairy tale,
yearning for deliverance from his animal state; instead, he is a rather average
salesman who awakens and finds himself transformed into an insect.
In a sense, Gregor is the archetype of many of Kafka’s male characters: he is a man
reluctant to act, fearful of possible mishaps, rather prone to exaggerated
contemplation, and given to juvenile, surrogate dealings with sex. For example, he
uses his whole body to anxiously guard the magazine clipping of a lady in a fur cape;
this is a good illustration of his pitiful preoccupation with sex. Though it would be
unfair to blame him for procrastinating, for not getting out of bed on the first morning
of his metamorphosis, we have every reason to assume that he has procrastinated long
before this — especially in regard to a decision about his unbearable situation at work.
Gregor has also put off sending his sister to the conservatory, although he promised to
do so. He craves love and understanding, but his prolonged inactivity gradually leads
him to feel ever more indifferent about everything. It is through all his failures to act,
then, rather than from specific irresponsible actions he commits, that Gregor is guilty.
The price his guilt exacts is that of agonizing loneliness.

Plays on words and obvious similarities of names point to the story’s highly
autobiographical character. The arrangement of the vowels in Samsa is the same as in
Kafka. More significantly yet, samsja means “being alone” in Czech. (In this
connection, it is noteworthy that in “Wedding Preparations in the Country,” an earlier
use of the metamorphosis motif, the hero’s name is Raban. The same arrangement of
the vowel a prevails, and there is also another play on words: Rabe is German for
raven, the Czech word for which is kavka; the raven, by the way, was the business
emblem of Kafka’s father.)

It is easy to view Gregor as an autobiographical study of Kafka himself. Gregor’s

father, his mother, and his sister also have their parallels with Kafka’s family. Gregor
feels that he has to appease his father, who “approaches with a grim face” toward him,
and it is his father’s bombardment with apples that causes his death. The two women,
on the other hand, have the best of intentions — his mother pleading for her son’s life,
believing that Gregor’s state is only some sort of temporary sickness; she even wants
to leave the furniture in his room the way it is “so that when he comes back to us he
will find everything as it was and will be able to forget what has happened all the
more easily.” And Grete, so eager to understand and help her brother at first, soon
changes; she does not want to forgo her “normal” life and is the first one to demand
the insect’s removal. These people simply do not understand, and the reason they do
not understand is that they are habitually too “preoccupied with their immediate
troubles.”

Gregor’s situation in his family is that of Kafka within his own family: he had a
tyrannical father who hated or, at best, ignored his son’s writing; a well-meaning
mother, who was not strong enough to cope with her husband’s brutality; and a sister,
Ottla, whom Kafka felt very close to. Shortly after completing “The Metamorphosis,”
Kafka wrote in his diary: “I am living with my family, the dearest people, and yet I
am more estranged from them than from a stranger.”

Returning to the subject of Gregor, what strikes one most immediately is the fact that
although he is outwardly equipped with all the features of an insect, he reacts like a
human being. Gregor never identifies himself with an insect. It is important to realize,
therefore, that Gregor’s metamorphosis actually takes place in his “uneasy dreams,”
which is something altogether different than saying it is the result of the lingering
impact of these dreams. An interpretation often advanced categorizes Gregor’s
metamorphosis as an attempt at escaping his deep-seated conflict between his true self
and the untenable situation at the company. He begs the chief clerk for precisely that
situation which has caused him to be so unhappy; he implores him to help him
maintain his position and, while doing so, completely forgets that he is a grotesquerie
standing in front of the chief clerk.
What bothers Gregor most about his situation at the company is that there is no human
dimension in what he is doing: “All the casual acquaintances never become intimate
friends.” If it were not for his parents’ debt to his chief, whom — typical of Kafka’s
predilection for the anonymity of top echelons — we never hear about in concrete
terms, Gregor would have quit working long ago. As will be shown later, he would
have had every reason to do so. As it turns out, he was, and still is, too weak. Even
now in his helpless condition, he continues to think of his life as a salesman in
“normal” terms; he plans the day ahead as if he could start it like every other day, and
he is upset only because of his clumsiness.

Although one might expect such a horrible fate to cause a maximum of intellectual
and emotional disturbance in a human being — and Gregor remains one inwardly
until his death — he stays surprisingly calm. His father shows the same incongruous
behavior when confronted with Gregor’s fate; he acts as if this fate were something to
be expected from his son. The maid treats him like a curious pet, and the three lodgers
are amused, rather than appalled, by the sight of the insect. The reason for the
astounding behavior of all these people is found in their incapacity to comprehend
disaster. This incapacity, in turn, is a concomitant symptom of their limitless
indifference toward everything happening to Gregor. Because they have maintained a
higher degree of sensitivity, the women in Gregor’s family respond differently at first,
Gregor’s mother even resorting to a fainting spell to escape having to identify the
insect with her son.

Gregor’s unbelievably stayed reaction to his horrible fate shows Kafka, the master
painter of the grotesque, at his best. In paragraphs bristling with the most meticulous
descriptions of the absurd, Kafka achieves the utmost in gallows humor and irony.
Gregor’s crawling up and down the wall, his delighting in dirt, and the fact that he
“takes food only as a pastime” — all these are described in detail and presented as
normal; at the same time, however, on the morning of his metamorphosis, Gregor
“catches at some kind of irrational hope” that nobody will open the door. The comical
effect of this reversal of the normal and the irrational is then further heightened by the
servant girl’s opening the door as usual.

Let us return to Gregor’s conflict. His professional and social considerations are
stronger than his desire to quit working for his company. In fact, he even toys with the
idea of sleeping and forgetting “all this nonsense.” This “nonsense” refers to his
transformation, which he does not want to accept because he sees it only as something
interfering with his daily routine. His insect appearance must not be real because it
does not suit Gregor the businessman. By ignoring or negating his state, he can, of
course, in no way eliminate it. The contrary seems to be the case: the more he wants
to ignore it, the more horrible its features become; finally be has to shut his eyes “to
keep from seeing his struggling legs.”

As a representative of the run-of-the-mill mentality of modern man, Gregor is

frustrated by his totally commercialized existence and yet does nothing about it, other
than try to escape by new calculations along purely commercial lines. He vows that
once he has sufficient money, he will quit, and yet he has no idea what he will do. He
does not really know his innermost self, which is surrounded by an abyss of
emptiness. This is why Kafka draws this “innermost self” as something strange and
threatening to Gregor’s commercialized existence.

The insect is Gregor’s “innermost self” It refuses to be further subjected to the

miserable life Gregor has led in his concern for money. At last it has intruded into
Gregor’s life and it is not going to be chased away like a ghost. Having emerged
under the cover of night, as also happens in “A Country Doctor,” this “self” seeks a
confrontation with the other parts of Gregor Samsa. Time and time again, Kafka
pictures the alienated “inner self” of his heroes in the form of animals — for instance,
in “Investigations of a Dog,” “The Burrow,” and “A Report to an Academy.”
Sometimes, too, Kafka uses absurd authorities of law to represent man’s suppressed
and estranged “self,” as in The Trial. In this connection, it is valuable to compare the
opening scenes of this novel and our story: Joseph K. was taken by surprise
immediately on awakening, just as Gregor is here. Both men were seized in the
morning, during the short period of consciousness between sleep and the beginning of
one’s daily routine. Joseph, too, did not hear the alarm, and he, like Gregor, was taken
prisoner. Both men try to shake off their fate by acting as if it did not really exist, but,
in both instances, the apparent delusion turns out to be terrifying reality.

The insect represents all the dimensions of Gregor’s existence which elude description
because they transcend rational and empirical categories. This is why Kafka was so
adamant about not having the insect reproduced in any conventional manner when the
story was published. He wrote his publisher that it would be wrong to draw the
likeness of the insect on the book cover because any literal representation would be
meaningless. Gregor — after his metamorphosis — can be depicted only to the extent
he can see and grasp himself — hence not at all or merely by implication. Here, as in
The Trial, the world is commensurate with the hero’s concept of it. The agreement
which Kafka and his publisher finally reached permitted illustrating the scene at the
beginning of the third part where Gregor, “lying in the darkness of his room, invisible
to his family, could see them all at the lamp-lit table and listen to their talk” through
the living room door.
It has been said that the story draws its title not from Gregor’s metamorphosis, which
is already an established fact at the beginning, but from the change which the
members of his family — especially Grete — undergo as his fate fulfills itself. Indeed,
in contrast to Gregor’s deterioration and ultimate death, Grete’s fortunes and those of
her family are steadily improving. In fact, it is through her eventually negative
reaction to Gregor’s misfortune that Grete finds a degree of self-assurance. Her father,
also as a result of Gregor’s incapacitating transformation, becomes active once more
and seemingly younger after years of letting his son take care of the family.

Of all the members of the family, Grete plays perhaps the most significant role in
Gregor’s life because with her “alone had he remained intimate.” He sleeps with his
face toward her room, he once promised to send her to the conservatory, and he
suffers more from the emotional wounds she inflicts upon him than from the apples
which his father throws at him — fatal and symbolic bullets of perniciousness though
they are. There is some evidence that his relationship with Grete has strong incestual
overtones, as will be shown later. This aspect of the story is also highly
autobiographical. Such lines as “he would never let her out of his room, at least not as
long as he lived” and “he would then raise himself to her shoulder and kiss her on the
neck” certainly appear in this light. Interestingly enough, Kafka wrote in his diary in
1912 that “the love between brother and sister is but a re-enactment of the love
between father and mother.” Be this as it may, as soon as Grete turns against Gregor,
he deteriorates rapidly. Once she convinces her family that they must get rid of the
“idea that this is Gregor,” they ignore him completely and eventually consult about
disposing of it, not him.

The most terrible insight which the story conveys is that even the most beautiful
relationships between individuals are based on delusions. No one knows what he or
anybody else really is: Gregor’s parents, for instance, have no idea of their son’s
serious conflict, much less of the extent of his sacrifice for them. As Kafka puts it,
“His parents did not understand this so well.” They have no idea that one’s nature can
be deformed by the continued degradation it suffers, but now that this deformation has
taken on such horrible proportions they are puzzled and look at Gregor as something
alien. Typically enough, “the words he uttered were no longer understandable.” The
concern they should have shown for him finds a perverted outlet in their
preoccupation with total strangers, the three lodgers who get an enormous amount of
attention simply because of the rent they pay. Finally, it is only consistent with their
way of thinking that Gregor’s parents should do away with the insect: pretense alone
makes the world go round. Put differently, truth and life are mutually exclusive.
Gregor, for example, is mistaken about his family. He has believed it was his duty to
help them pay their debts and secure a financially carefree life, and he has done this
by selling his soul to the company. The truth is that his father has far more money
than Gregor knows about; also, he was not nearly as sick as he has made Gregor
believe. Gregor’s self-chosen sacrifice has been senseless. Worse than that, the more
he has done for his family, the more “they had simply got used to it.” Gregor’s
relationship with the members of his family, and also their dealings among each other,
are determined solely by the contrived order they have set tip for themselves. Their
lives are based on ever-new compromises and calculations. In Gregor’s “uneasy
dreams,” the compromises and calculations finally rupture and, from them, truth rises
in the form of a “gigantic insect.”

As the maid sweeps out the dead insect, the Samsas have arrived at the threshold of
what looks like a bright future. The harmony between them seems to be the result of
their common fate of being drawn together by the misfortune that befell them. This
return of the family to a life unfettered by a tragedy like Gregor’s has often been seen
as proof of their hypocrisy, possibly foreshadowing the emergence of another “inner
insect” from one of them. The danger of this view is that it tends to see Gregor’s
transformation only as a sort of psychological mechanism, thus detracting from its
uniqueness and absurdity. The basic question here is this: who is to call another
person — in this case, the entire Samsa family — hypocritical simply because this
other person has the strength (and perhaps brutality) necessary to overcome tragedy?
Certainly not Kafka (See “A Hunger Artist”).

It has been argued that the epilogue is poor because it stands as a cheerful
counterpoint to the tragic and absurd metamorphosis of Gregor. No matter how
natural and, therefore, justifiable the family’s return to a “normal life” may be, so runs
the argument, it cannot possibly make up for the horror of what has happened. We
must ask ourselves, therefore, if Kafka intended this. Is it not exactly the naturalness
of the family’s reaction and their callousness accompanying this “healthy reaction”
that emphasizes the absurdity of Gregor’s fate?

The questions pertaining to Gregor’s identity are central to the story. The narrator
brings up this problem of identity when he asks: “Was he an animal, that music had
such an effect upon him?” Since only humans respond to music in the way the insect
responds to Grete’s playing the violin, we realize that he is indeed part human. The
violin playing is also a part of the countless allusions to Gregor’s repressed sexual
desires, particularly his longing for his sister. As Gregor lies in front of Grete and
listens to her music, he has only her on his mind. The confusion of violin playing and
player — and his inability to admit this to himself — are they part of Gregor’s guilt?
Did he originally want to send her to a conservatory as a kind of “messenger” to a
spiritual realm? Does it mean that he, too, once wanted to become a musician? His
utter loneliness illustrates the abyss into which all these questions lead. It is most clear
that Gregor responds to the music only now that he is not the traveling salesman he
used to be, even though he is, in part, an insect. Thus Gregor’s “animal state” seems to
be a precondition of his yearning for this “unknown food.” This food may very well
be physical — that is, sexual. The ambiguity about the nature of the food remains —
as does the uncertainty about whether Gregor is experiencing only a relapse into the
sphere of the animalistic or whether or not he has been lifted up to a higher plane. His
identity cannot be established from his reactions because whenever Gregor is
impaired as a human being, he reacts positively as an animal and vice versa. When the
women in his family clean out his room, for instance, he resents this as a human
being, not as an insect. By the same token, mention of his horrible appearance bothers
the human element in him, whereas it is the animal in him that is hurt when he is
ignored. The most plausible answer is that, although he is an insect, Gregor
nevertheless transcends his animal condition, craving spiritual and sexual food.
During his existence as a salesman, he certainly lacked both these aspects of life. (“A
Hunger Artist” is the most haunting treatment of this theme of the spiritual
nourishment which cannot be found on earth. Also, in “Investigations of a Dog,” the
central issue concerns making spiritual food available through music.) Man or animal:
maybe the answer cannot be answered here or in any of Kafka’s works. Despite their
different interpretations, all of Kafka’s animals the insect here, as well as the horses in
“A Country Doctor,” and the ape in “A Report to an Academy” — have one thing in
common: like Kafka’s human beings, they have lost the place which divine creation
originally assigned to them. Like all creatures, man or animal, Gregor has lost his
identity without, however, becoming a true insect. Perhaps Gregor is best identified as
belonging to the vast realm of the in-between. His (or its) agonizing anxiety reflects
his (or its) fate of belonging nowhere.

As an insect, Gregor cannot communicate with his family, but he does try “to return to
the human circle.” Through Grete’s music, he seems to accomplish this to an extent
which permits him to die at peace with himself, “thinking of his family with
tenderness and love.” The pretense is at an end when he finally takes his spiritual (and
sexual) component into account and does justice to it (them) by permitting himself to
become attuned to Grete’s playing (and to Grete herself).

Concerning the story’s formal aspects, a few observations should be made. It is

divided into three parts, each dealing with a different aspect of Gregor’s attempt to
break out of his imprisonment. The first one deals with his professional conflict, the
second deals primarily with his reaction to the increasingly tense alienation within his
family, and the last deals with Gregor’s death or, expressed positively, his liberation.
Throughout the story, Gregor’s deteriorating condition is in direct contrast to his
family’s slow but steady metamorphosis from sheer horror to self-satisfaction. In a
sense, the three parts correspond to the dramatic pattern of exposition, conflict, and
denouement.

Within the story’s three-part construction, Kafka also deals with the concept of time.
Awakening from his “uneasy dreams,” Gregor is fully conscious throughout the first
part — that is, for one hour, beginning at half past six. His consciousness sets in too
late, however, for his train left at five. A frequently used device in Kafka’s works, the
discrepancy between the time shown on the clock and the time as experienced by the
hero symbolizes his alienation. This is why Gregor’s sense of time begins to vanish in
the second part, when he wakes up “out of a deep sleep, more like a swoon than a
sleep.” Typically, time is expressed in rather general terms, such as “twilight” or
“long evening.” There is no longer the regular routine of the first day; Gregor spends
his time crawling up and down and around his room. Vague indications of time are
reflected in such terms as “soon,” “later,” and “often,” blurring the boundary lines
between what used to be precisely measurable units of time. At one point in the story,
the narrator tells us that “about a month” probably has elapsed; on another occasion,
Gregor mentions that “the lack of all direct human speech for the past two months”
has confused his mind. The lonely quality of Gregor’s bachelor existence assumes
ever more self-destructive features, of which he is fully aware.

Time being so related to movement, Gregor’s increasing lack of direction and

continuous crawling around in circles finally result in his total loss of a sense of time.
When his mother and sister remove the furniture from his room in the second part of
the story, he loses his “last guideline of direction.” Paradoxically, “The
Metamorphosis” is enacted outside the context of time, and because of this, time is
always frightfully present. As Kafka put it in an aphorism, “It is only our concept of
time which permits us to use the term ‘The Last judgment’; in reality, it is a
permanent judgment.”

Gregor is doomed without knowing the charges or the verdict, and all he can do is
bow to a powerful Unknown. And this is all the reader can do. Following the narrator,
he can view all angles of Gregor’s torment. Not one person within the story can do
that, Gregor included. They are all shut off from seeing any perspective other than
their own. This is their curse. There is no textual evidence in the story which
explicitly tells us the cause of Gregor’s fate. But because we too suffer from the sense
of aloneness that Gregor does and because Kafka calls on us to share Gregor’s
tribulations with him, we discover that his experiences are analogous to our own. 
Character List and Their Major Actions 
 
Major Characters
Gregor Samsa 
A traveling salesman who wakes up one morning and discovers he has turned into a
bug.
Mr. Samsa 
Gregor’s father, who is a tired old man. He depends on his son to support the family,
but is resentful and suspicious of Gregor. He eventually delivers his son’s fatal
wound.
Mrs. Samsa 
Gregor’s mother. She is a soft-spoken woman who is concerned about her son. She is
never able to come to terms with Gregor’s transformation and harbors a hope that he
will return to his normal state. Twice she makes a weak gesture to show her love for
Gregor: she stops his father from throwing more apples, and she reaches for the
cleaning lady’s broom as if to keep her from sweeping Gregor’s body away.
Grete Samsa 
Gregor’s sister. She is close to her brother and fearlessly takes up the abhorrent task of
caring for him. At the same time, her dislike of his new state seems to destroy Gregor
the most. When he hears her declare her wish that he go away, he hides in his room
and dies, as if her hatred is too much for him to live with.
Minor Characters

The Chief Clerk 

A mean-spirited, suspicious man who suggests that Gregor is missing work because
he has stolen from the company.
The three lodgers 
Temporary residents in the Samsa household. Arrogant and insensitive, they are
driven away by Gregor’s father after Gregor’s death.
The cleaning lady 
A maid in the Samsa household. She comes into Gregor’s room only to poke fun at
him and pile more trash around him. In the end, she sweeps his body into the trash.  
Analysis of Major Characters 
Gregor Samsa 
Despite his complete physical transformation into an insect at the beginning of the
story, Gregor changes very little as a character over the course of The Metamorphosis.
Most notably, both as a man and as an insect Gregor patiently accepts the hardships he
faces without complaint. When his father’s business failed, he readily accepted his
new role as the money-earner in the family without question, even though it meant
taking a job he disliked as a traveling salesman. Similarly, when he first realizes he
has transformed into an insect, he does not bemoan his condition, wonder about its
cause, or attempt to rectify it in any way. On the contrary, he quickly accepts that he
has become a bug and tries to go about his life as best he can in his new condition.
The narration in the story mirrors Gregor’s calm forbearance by never questioning or
explaining how or why this odd transformation occurred or remarking on its
strangeness. Instead, the story, much like Gregor, moves on quickly from the
metamorphosis itself and focuses on the consequences of Gregor’s change. For
Gregor, that primarily means becoming accustomed to his new body.
In fact reconciling his human thoughts and feelings with his new, insect body is the
chief conflict Gregor faces in the story. Despite having changed into an insect, Gregor
initially still wants to go to work so that he can provide for his family. It takes him
time to realize that he can no longer play that role in his family and that he can’t even
go outside in his current state. As the story continues, Gregor’s insect body has an
increasing influence on his psychology. He finds that he is at ease hiding in the dark
under the sofa in his room, like a bug would, even though his body won’t fit
comfortably. He also discovers that he enjoys crawling on the walls and ceiling. But
Gregor’s humanity never disappears entirely. He still feels human emotions and has
strong memories of his human life. As a result, even though he knows he would feel
more physically comfortable if his room were emptied of furniture, allowing him to
crawl anywhere he pleased, Gregor panics when Grete and his mother are taking out
the furniture, such as the writing desk he remembers doing all his assignments at as a
boy. In a desperate attempt to hold onto the few reminders he has of his humanity, he
clings to the picture of the woman muffled in fur so that no one will take it away.
Ultimately he’s unable to fully adapt to his new body or to find a new role within his
family, which is disgusted by him and ashamed of his presence in the house. Toward
the end of the story, he even feels haunted by the thought that he might be able to take
control of the family’s affairs again and resume his role as the family’s money-earner.
Despite these hopes, he decides it would be best for the family if he were to disappear
entirely, and so he dies much as he lived: accepting his fate without complaint and
thinking of his family’s best interests.
Grete Samsa 
Apart from her brother Gregor, Grete is the only other character addressed by name in
the story, a distinction that reflects her relative importance. Grete is also the only
character to show pity for Gregor through most of the novella (his mother also
exhibits pity for him later in the story), apparently owing to the great affection Grete
and Gregor had for each other before Gregor’s transformation. Consequently, she
becomes Gregor’s primary caretaker. She brings him food, cleans his room, places his
chair by the window so he can see out to the street, and comes up with the idea of
removing his furniture so he has more room to scurry and climb. In this role as
caretaker she serves as Gregor’s only real human contact for most of the story, and
she acts as Gregor’s only strong emotional tie to his family—and indeed to the rest of
humanity.
Grete, however, changes more than any other character in the story—in essence
undergoing her own metamorphosis from a girl into a woman—and that change
occurs while her pity for Gregor slowly diminishes. While at first Grete takes care of
her brother out of kindness, eventually she comes to regard the job as a duty. She
doesn’t always enjoy it, but it serves to define her position in the family, and she
becomes territorial about caring for Gregor, not wanting her mother to be involved.
As she matures and takes on more adult responsibilities, most notably getting a job to
help provide for her family financially, her commitment to Gregor diminishes.
Eventually she comes to resent the role, and it is Grete who decides they must get rid
of Gregor. The story ends with the parents recognizing that Grete has become a pretty
young woman and thinking that it may be time to find her a husband, suggesting Grete
has completed her own transformation into an adult.

The father 
The reader predominantly sees Gregor’s father from Gregor’s point of view in the
story, and for the most part, he appears as a hopeless and unkind man, concerned
primarily with money, who isn’t particularly close to his son. We learn, for example,
that he had a business that failed, and since its failure he has lost his motivation and
essentially given up working, forcing Gregor to provide for the family and work to
pay off the father’s debts. Yet despite Gregor’s help, the father has no sympathy for
Gregor after Gregor undergoes his metamorphosis. On the day of Gregor’s change,
the father only seems concerned about the family’s finances, and in the two instances
when he interacts directly with Gregor in the story, he attacks Gregor in some way,
first when he beats Gregor back into his room at the beginning and later when he
throws the fruit at him.
These details suggest an estrangement between Gregor and his father (Kafka’s
strained relationship with his own father, whom he viewed as alien and overbearing,
certainly gives weight to such an interpretation). Gregor never explicitly says he
resents his father, but it’s clear that he only works as a traveling salesman to make up
for his father’s failure in business, suggesting he feels trapped by his father’s failings.
Moreover, Gregor never displays the same affection for his father that he displays,
albeit rarely, toward his mother and sister, as when he longs to see his mother before
she and Grete begin moving the furniture out of his room. Adding to this sense of
estrangement is the way the father is referred to in the story. The narrator does not
name him beyond calling him “Mr. Samsa,” and in Gregor’s thoughts he almost
always appears as “the father.”

The mother
 Gregor’s mother. Frail and distressed, the mother is torn between her love for Gregor
and her horror at Gregor’s new state. Grete and Gregor’s father seek to protect her
from the full reality of her son’s transformation.
The charwoman – An elderly widow and the Samsa family’s cleaning
lady. Taken on by the Samsas after their regular maid quits because of Gregor, she is a
blunt, honest woman who faces the reality of Gregor’s state without fear or disgust.
The office manager - Gregor’s boss. Distrustful and overbearing,
the office manager insinuates that Gregor has been doing a poor job at work. He flees
in terror upon seeing Gregor.
The boarders – Three temporary boarders in the Samsas’ house. The
boarders greatly value order and cleanliness, and thus become horrified when they
discover Gregor.
The maid - The Samsas’ original maid. She is terrified by Gregor and begs
the family to fire her.
About The Author and His Life 
FRANZ KAFKA
Franz Kafka was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1883, to an upper middle-class
Jewish family. His father, Hermann Kafka, and his mother, Julie Lowry, came from
different socio-economic backgrounds and had a tumultuous marriage; his coarse
father spent his life trying to shed his impoverished background and to become
worthy of his wife’s wealthy family. The friction in the family caused by the parental
differences was exacerbated by Hermann’s tyrannical rule over everyone. As a result
of the family’s problems, Franz was raised mostly by a nurse and his beloved sister,
Ottla.
Kafka as a young man was plagued by a sense of inferiority, largely produced by the
family conflicts. Academically, however, Franz was a good student. He attended
college, where he began to write. As early as 1905, he was expressing his skepticism
about the existence of a stable world, as evidenced in “Description of a Fight.” Kafka
received his doctorate in Jurisprudence in 1906 and became a lawyer at the Workers’
Insurance Company. He continued to write in his spare time, an exercise his father
abhorred and criticized. Interestingly, many of Kafka’s works reflect his feelings
about both his father and his sister. His short story, “The Judgement” (1912) clearly
expresses his fear of his father. Later in his life, he wrote a “Letter to His Father,” 100
pages in length, in which the author confronted his dad about the intimidation and
abuse he had received as a son.

Although he lived alone in some degree of self-imposed isolation for much of his life,
Kafka did have many interests. He studied Einstein’s theory of relativity and Freud’s
writings on psychoanalysis. He was also interested in politics, particularly those that
related to the role of the Czechs in the Austrian Empire. He followed the events of
World War I, and in 1914, he wrote “In the Penal Colony,” which expresses his
disgust with the politicians in charge during wartime. In 1919 he published “The
Imperial Message,” which shows how important messages written at the top never get
to the lowly people at the bottom, who could have been saved by the messages.

Kafka was not active in literary circles, nor was he particularly aggressive in his
writing career. Had it not been for his life-long friend, Max Brod, Kafka might never
have been remembered as a writer. Brod, however, made every attempt to bring Kafka
out of his inherent fears and humble attitude. He introduced Kafka to his literary
friends in Germany and the rest of Europe and insisted that he read some of his
writing to them. Kafka also met his first girlfriend, Felice Bauer, to whom he was
twice engaged, at Max Brod’s place. Later he had other loves, including Julie
Wohryzek and Milena Jesenska, but none of his love affairs developed; he never even
knew he had an illegitimate son. Kafka’s unhappy love life, his indecision about
marrying, his indifference towards his father, his own inflexible honesty, his intense
self-analysis, and his tremendous sensitivity affected his health. In 1917 he discovered
that he had tuberculosis. Treatment was unsuccessful, and he died at the age of forty-
one, in 1924; at the time he was known only to a small literary circle.

Only seven of Kafka’s works, all of them short stories, were published while he was
alive. “The Metamorphosis” was published in 1912. His unpublished manuscripts,
including his three novels, were left to his friend Max Brod, whom he asked to
destroy them. Instead, Brod eventually edited and published most of Kafka’s
manuscripts, including The Trial, Amerika, The Castle, and The Great Wall of China.
After his death, there was much interest in Kafka’s writings, which are highly
imaginative and filled with anxiety; sometimes they border on surrealism or
existentialism. Much of his fiction centers on dreams, fantasies, or nightmares, which
are described by the author in realistic detail. His works also present a world in which
man is deprived of security, frustrated in the pursuit of his dreams, and tortured by
loneliness and alienation.

Analysis on Literary Elements

Themes of The Metamorphosis

The Absurdity of Life 

Beginning with its first sentence, The Metamorphosis deals with an absurd, or wildly
irrational, event, which in itself suggests that the story operates in a random, chaotic
universe. The absurd event is Gregor’s waking up to discover he has turned into a
giant insect, and since it’s so far beyond the boundaries of a natural occurrence—it’s
not just unlikely to happen, it’s physically impossible—Gregor’s metamorphosis takes
on a supernatural significance. Also notable is the fact that the story never explains
Gregor’s transformation. It never implies, for instance, that Gregor’s change is the
result of any particular cause, such as punishment for some misbehavior. On the
contrary, by all evidence Gregor has been a good son and brother, taking a job he
dislikes so that he can provide for them and planning to pay for his sister to study
music at the conservatory. There is no indication that Gregor deserves his fate. Rather,
the story and all the members of the Samsa family treat the event as a random
occurrence, like catching an illness. All these elements together give the story a
distinct overtone of absurdity and suggest a universe that functions without any
governing system of order and justice.
The responses of the various characters add to this sense of absurdity, specifically
because they seem almost as absurd as Gregor’s transformation itself. The characters
are unusually calm and unquestioning, and most don’t act particularly surprised by the
event. (The notable exception is the Samsas’ first maid, who begs to be fired.) Even
Gregor panics only at the thought of getting in trouble at work, not at the realization
that he is physically altered, and he makes no efforts to determine what caused the
change or how to fix it. He worries instead about commonplace problems, like what
makes him feel physically comfortable. In fact, the other characters in the story
generally treat the metamorphosis as something unusual and disgusting, but not
exceptionally horrifying or impossible, and they mostly focusing on adapting to it
rather than fleeing from Gregor or trying to cure him. Gregor’s family, for example,
doesn’t seek out any help or advice, and they appear to feel more ashamed and
disgusted than shocked. Their second maid also shows no surprise when she discovers
Gregor, and when the boarders staying with the family see Gregor they are mostly
upset that Gregor is unclean and disturbs the sense of order they desire in the house.
These unusual reactions contribute to the absurdity of the story, but they also imply
that the characters to some degree expect, or at least are not surprised by, absurdity in
their world.

The Disconnect Between Mind and Body 

Gregor’s transformation completely alters his outward appearance, but it leaves his
mind unchanged, creating a discord, or lack of harmony, between his mind and body.
When he first gets out of his bed after waking, for instance, he tries to stand upright,
even though his body is not suited to being upright. He also thinks of going to work,
despite the fact that he can’t by any means do so, and when Grete leaves him the milk
at the beginning of Part 2, he is surprised to find he doesn’t like it, even though milk
was a favorite drink when he was human. In essence, he continues to think with a
human mind, but because his body is no longer human, he is unable at first to
reconcile these two parts of himself.
As Gregor becomes accustomed to his new body, his mind begins to change in
accordance with his physical needs and desires. Yet he’s never able to fully bring his
mind and body into harmony. Gregor gradually behaves more and more like an insect,
not only craving different foods than he did when he was human, but also beginning
to prefer tight, dark spaces, like the area under his sofa, and enjoying crawling on the
walls and ceiling. (Through these details, the story suggests that our physical lives
shape and direct our mental lives, not the other way around.) But Gregor’s humanity
never disappears entirely, and he feels conflicted as a result. This conflict reaches its
climax when Grete and the mother move the furniture out of Gregor’s room. Gregor
initially approves of the idea because it will make his room more comfortable for him
physically. Without furniture, he’ll be able to crawl anywhere he pleases. But
realizing that his possessions, which represent to him his former life as a human,
provide him emotional comfort, he suddenly faces a choice: he can be physically
comfortable or emotionally comfortable, but not both. In other words, his mind and
body remain opposed to one another. Gregor, unable to relinquish his humanity,
chooses emotional comfort, leading him to desperately cling to the picture of the
woman in furs.

The Limits of Sympathy 

After Gregor’s metamorphosis, his family members struggle with feelings of both
sympathy and revulsion toward him. Grete and the mother in particular feel a great
deal of sympathy for Gregor after his change, apparently because they suspect some
aspect of his humanity remains despite his appearance. This sympathy leads Grete
initially to take on the role of Gregor’s caretaker—she even goes so far as to try to
discover what food he likes after his change—and it leads the mother to fight with
Grete over moving the furniture out of Gregor’s room since she holds out hope that he
will return to his human form. Even the father, who shows the least sympathy of the
family members toward Gregor and even attacks him twice, never suggests that they
kill him or force him out of the house. Instead, he implicitly shows compassion for
Gregor by allowing the family to care for him.
Eventually, however, the stresses caused by Gregor’s presence wear down the family
members’ sympathy, and even the most caring of them find that their sympathy has a
limit. One of those sources of stress is Gregor’s appearance. Grete is so upset and
revolted by the way he looks that she can hardly stand to be in the room with him, and
his mother is so horrified when she sees him as she and Grete are moving his furniture
that she faints. In addition, Gregor’s presence is never forgotten in the house, causing
the family members to feel constantly uncomfortable and leading them to speak to
each other mostly in whispers. Moreover, the fact that Gregor cannot communicate his
thoughts and feelings to them leaves them without any connection to his human side,
and consequently, they come to see him more and more as an actual insect. All these
factors combined steadily work against their sympathy, and the family reaches a point
where Gregor’s presence is too much to bear. Significantly, it is Grete, the character
to show the most sympathy toward Gregor, who decides they must get rid of him.

Alienation 
Perhaps the greatest consequence of Gregor’s metamorphosis is the psychological
distance it creates between Gregor and those around him. Gregor’s change makes him
literally and emotionally separate from his family members—indeed, from humanity
in general—and he even refers to it as his “imprisonment.” After his transformation he
stays almost exclusively in his room with his door closed and has almost no contact
with other people. At most, Grete spends a few minutes in the room with him, and
during this time Gregor always hides under the couch and has no interaction with her.
Furthermore, he is unable to speak, and consequently he has no way of
communicating with other people. Lastly, Gregor’s metamorphosis literally separates
him from the human race as it makes him no longer human. Essentially he has become
totally isolated from everyone around him, including those people he cares for like
Grete and his mother.
But as we learn over the course of the story, this feeling of estrangement actually
preceded his transformation. Shortly after waking and discovering that he has become
a bug, for example, Gregor reflects on his life as a traveling salesman, noting how
superficial and transitory his relationships have become as a result of his constant
traveling. Later, Gregor recalls how his initial pride at being able to support his family
faded once his parents began to expect that support, and how he felt emotionally
distant from them as a result. There is also no mention in the story of any close friends
or intimate relationships outside his family. In fact, the alienation caused by Gregor’s
metamorphosis can be viewed as an extension of the alienation he already felt as a
person.

Major Themes 
The key theme of the story is man’s isolation. After Gregor’s transformation into an
insect, his entire family rejects him. Upon seeing the bug, Gregor’s boss runs away.
His father locks him in his room and later wounds him by chunking apples; his mother
faints at the sight of him; and even Grete tires of caring for him, wishing he would go
away. None of them think about how Gregor feels about his miserable transformation;
instead, they are worried about the affects of the metamorphosis on them personally,
especially since Gregor has been the sole breadwinner for the family. To add to his
sense of isolation, Gregor must stand by and watch what is happening to the family in
silence; he is powerless to speak, complain, or criticize.
Another main idea that Kafka discusses in The Metamorphosis is the enslavement of
modern man to the forces of materialism. By turning Gregor into a bug that can
observe his family from a different perspective, Kafka can show man’s preoccupation
with financial security. Before his transformation, Gregor is miserable at work, but he
cannot quit since he is the sole breadwinner for the Samsa family. Nothing at work
satisfies him, and his boss treats him worse than an animal, almost like a bug.

Unfortunately, Gregor does not have the courage to go out and find something better;
he accepts his miserable existence in order to have financial security. Then his
transformation occurs; he literally becomes an insect, the lowest form of life.
Symbolically, Kafka is portraying the level to which a human being can be reduced in
the modern world. It also symbolizes to what depths a man sometimes sinks before he
begins to reflect on the meaning of his existence. Ironically, only as an insect can
Gregor Samsa find the time or motivation to reflect on his own misery, to
acknowledge his own desire, and to see the selfishness of his family.

Minor Themes 
A minor theme in the story is man’s tendency to use other people. Gregor’s family has
always depended upon him for total support. When he becomes a bug and can no
longer work, the other family members change from lazy, shiftless people into
workers who support themselves.
An additional minor theme is man’s tendency towards unrealistic dreams. As a
worker, Gregor is miserable and dreams of a better life, but does nothing about it; as a
result of his low form of existence, Kafka turns him into a bug. His metamorphosis
forces the members of the Samsa family into the work force. After working for
awhile, they all start staying home from their jobs, aimlessly dreaming about a better
life. None of them, however, take any real steps toward improving their future. At the
end of the novel, it is implied that Grete, because of her lack of ambition and purpose,
will also become an insect, like her brother.

Man and the Natural World 

If human beings are traditionally distinguished from animals by their capacity for
thought, language, and social feeling, how do we categorize Gregor, who seems to
exhibit all of these human capacities but resides in the body of an insect? The
Metamorphosis shows Gregor questioning his own humanity as he grows more
accustomed to the life of a bug. But it also casts doubt on the humanity of the other
characters by showing how they too mimic animal behavior. (Note: we’re sticking to a
traditional way of looking at animals as not having consciousnesses or minds because
we’re looking at a work of literature from the early twentieth century. Whether
animals have consciousness is a question that biologists and philosophers are still
hammering out today.)
Life, Consciousness, and Existence 
Much of The Metamorphosis is spent in Gregor’s head as he struggles to come to
terms with his new form. At times he seems to be able to think abstractly about his
condition (as an insect) in ways that sound rational, even if his condition is totally
absurd. At other times, it seems that the instincts, drives, and pains of his new body
encroach upon his consciousness, influencing his mental life in ways that he can’t
even begin to understand. Many of the comic moments in Kafka’s story result from
the inevitable clash between Gregor’s pesky body and his beleaguered consciousness.
Morality and Ethics 
Forgive the short dip into Philosophy 101 here, but we promise – it’ll pay off in the
end.
A major German Enlightenment philosopher by the name of Immanuel Kant came up
with the ethical principle that you should act toward others as if your actions served as
a universal law applicable to everybody, including yourself This is called the
categorical imperative. It’s another way of saying that you should do unto others as
you would have them do unto you. But Kant also elaborated on this idea by saying
that you should always act toward others with respect for their humanity.

Why are we bringing up Kant here? Well, given that Kafka was an educated, German-
speaking Czech Jew, it’s not hard to see echoes of Enlightenment philosophy in his
works. But more importantly, Kafka puts a twist on this whole ethical tradition by
making the subject of ethical debate in The Metamorphosis a bug. And not just any
bug – a vermin, a pest. Gregor isn’t a cute little ladybug or even a motherly spider
named Charlotte, but the kind of disgusting bug that makes your skin crawl and stinks
when you squish it.

So what happens to ethics when the subject is a bug? Should we do unto vermin as we
would have vermin do unto us? What if we can’t determine what Gregor is exactly,
human-vermin hybrid that he is? Which laws apply to Gregor? These are the
questions that the story pursues under the key term “consideration”: both Gregor and
the family struggle to determine what it means to be considerate to one another and
what considerations they are ethically bound to give one another.

Transformation 
By starting out with Gregor’s metamorphosis into a bug, The Metamorphosis plays
around with some interesting questions as to the significance of transformation. We’re
never told exactly how or why Gregor got transformed into a vermin, although there
are hints that Gregor may have committed some sexual or financial misdeeds.
Moreover, Gregor seems to change in other ways during the course of the novella. His
metamorphoses have a rippling effect on the other characters as they modify their own
behavior in response to his new form. These transformations draw attention to the
ways that people change under pressure, not just physically but psychologically and
emotionally as well, to the point where they may no longer recognize themselves.
Identity 
Gregor’s transformation into a giant bug touches on larger issues of identity for
himself and his family. One way of approaching the identity issue is to consider
whether Gregor is still Gregor if he looks like a bug. Sure, we as readers of The
Metamorphosis have access to his thoughts, but his family doesn’t. So let’s put
another twist on the identity issue: is Gregor still Gregor if he has no way of
communicating his thoughts to others, if the others have no way of verifying that he is
indeed still Gregor? And the cleaning woman’s treatment of Gregor brings up yet
another issue: why is it that the cleaning woman, and not the family, is so willing to
ascribe to Gregor human qualities such as intelligence and intention? So let’s put yet
another twist on the identity issue: who has the right to say whether Gregor is Gregor
or not? Who gets to identify Gregor by name, and who gets to take his name away?
Isolation 
Early in The Metamorphosis, we learn that Gregor dearly wishes to quit his job and be
free of his family obligations. Being turned into a bug handily takes care of this
problem for Gregor – you could say it’s overkill. Gregor’s physical isolation from the
outside world in his room speaks to his general alienation from modern society, which
expects him to work hard and find a wife. Despite the fact that he’s finally gotten his
wish, Gregor is overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and shame at being – literally – a
parasite to his family. Gregor’s retreat from human society causes him just as much
unhappiness, if not more, than when he was a functioning member of society. In the
bleak world of the novella, happiness is impossible because the needs of the
individual and society are irreconcilable yet equally compelling.
Family 
Kafka’s Metamorphosis toys with the traditional family structure where the father is at
the head. Instead, the story begins with Gregor, the son, as the sole provider and the
father as a weak, physically debilitated dependent, on par with the mother and
daughter. Mr. Samsa returns to his position as the patriarch of the family as he asserts
his power more and more aggressively in his efforts to control Gregor. Yet the novella
questions the traditional family structure by showing the Samsas turning their backs
on their duty to Gregor as a member of their family. How “natural” is the family bond
if the family bond is so easy to ignore when things get tough?
Society and Class 
Kafka’s stories are known for their exploration of the nightmare of bureaucracy and
the dehumanizing effects of modern life – all of those things we think of when we use
the term “kafka-esque.” Ever had to deal with the DMV or the IRS? For many people,
such institutions exemplify the kafka-esque. These themes are given the light touch in
The Metamorphosis, which centers on the conflict between Gregor and his family. But
you can still see the kafka-esque working its dismal magic on Gregor’s attitude
toward his profession and the behavior of characters who are not members of the
family.
THEMES ANALYSIS of The
Metamorphosis 
The theme of “The Metamorphosis” is modern man’s sense of isolation. Driven to
work long hours in meaningless jobs around people who do not care about others, just
like Gregor, mankind seems to live a meaningless and ineffectual existence. Although
Gregor’s metamorphosis is actual and physical, Kafka implies through his change that
all too often mankind is forced into an insect-like existence, no better than the bugs at
the bottom of the natural order. When mankind tries to rise above their insect status
and connect with humanity, as Gregor did when he emerged from his room to see his
sister and listen to the violin, they are cruelly driven back into isolation and alienation.
Through Gregor, Kafka presents a totally tragic view of man’s existence.
Kafka also shows that mankind is driven by materialism, often to the exclusion of
developing human relationships. Modern life demands that a person have a job to earn
money to fulfill materialistic desires. The materialistic mind-set usually enslaves the
individual and transforms him into a beast or insect who does not have time to care for
others. Gregor is the perfect example. He hates his job as a salesman but endures it in
order to provide material things for his family. In order to have and give financial
security, he sacrifices a social life, companionship, pleasure, and dreams. His life is
miserable, and he counts the days until he can quit his job.

Ironically, the people that he supports and loves prove they have no depth of emotion
for him. Once he cannot financially care for them, they one by one desert him, adding
to his total misery. Gregor is literally left to climb the walls and die in total
alimentation. Through him, Kafka is warning modern society that it is being forced
into an existence similar to that of Gregor.

Economic effects on human relationships 

Gregor is enslaved by his family because he is the one who makes money. Thus, with
the possible exception of his sister, the family seems to treat him not as a member but
as a source of income. When Gregor is no longer able to work after his
metamorphosis, he is treated with revulsion and neglected. Once the family begins
working, they also find difficulty communicating with each other, eating dinner in
silence and fighting among themselves. The exhaustion of dehumanizing jobs and the
recognition that people are only valuable so long as they earn a salary keeps anyone
who works isolated from others and unable to establish human relations with them.
Family duty 
The theme of family and the duties of family members to each other drive the
interactions between Gregor and the others. His thoughts are almost entirely of the
need to support his parents and sending his sister to the Conservatory. Though Gregor
hates his job, he follows the call of duty to his family and goes far beyond simple
duty. The family, on the other hand, takes care of Gregor after his metamorphosis
only so far as duty seems to necessitate. He is kept locked in his room and brought
food. In the end, his room is barely cleaned and his sister no longer cares about what
food she brings him. Her actions are routine, as she only wants to do enough that she
can claim she has fulfilled her duty. When she decides she has had enough, she insists
that their duty to him has been fulfilled: “I don’t think anyone could reproach us in the
slightest,” she says as she suggests that they need to get rid of him.
Freedom and escapism 
Gregor is trapped in his job by his duty to his family, but he dreams of the day when
he can finally pay off their debts and quit his job. His need for freedom from the
restrictive demands of work is expressed in his metamorphosis, by means of which he
escapes. This escape, however, fails to bring Gregor freedom, for he is now
imprisoned by his family in his room. Thus, when Gregor works, he is enslaved by his
job and, when he doesn’t work, he is enslaved by his family. There is no way of
balancing out freedom and duty, and in the end one is always a slave. The only means
of escape turns out to be death.
Guilt 
Guilt stems from family duty, and is Gregor’s most powerful emotion. When he is
transformed into an insect, Gregor is made unable to work by circumstances beyond
his control. Despite the fact that his metamorphosis is not his fault, however, he is
racked by guilt every time that the family mentions money or that he thinks about the
pain that he has inadvertently inflicted on them by losing the ability to support them.
Guilt, it turns out, is deadly, as Gregor realizes at the end that his life is the only thing
keeping the family from a better life. He dies for them just as he lived for them: out of
guilt.
Personal identity 
Alone in his room, Gregor tries to rebuild the self-identity that he had lost by living
entirely for others and ignoring his own needs. He cannot, however, escape from what
he sees as his family duty, and continues to act only to serve his family by doing his
best not to inconvenience them. Gregor’s comments about his family’s behavior are
often tinged with resentment at the way they treat him, but he will not allow himself
to recognize his bitterness. Gregor manages to escape his self-effacing sense of duty
only in the last chapter, when he asserts himself in realizing that his family has been
neglecting him. Gregor’s search for his identity seems hopeless, however, because he
never had an identity to start with. He finds his humanity only at the end, when his
sister’s playing reminds him of his love for his family. This love, coupled with his
freedom, is the final ingredient he needs to establish his identity.
Motifs of The Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis 
The Metamorphosis depicts multiple transformations, with the most significant and
obvious example being Gregor’s metamorphosis into an insect. Though Gregor’s
physical change is complete when the story begins, he also undergoes a related
change, a psychological transformation as he adapts to his new body. Grete
experiences her own transformation in the story as she develops from a child into an
adult. (In fact, in zoology the word metamorphosis refers to a stage in insect and
amphibian development during which an immature form of the animal undergoes a
physical transformation to become an adult.) At the beginning of the work, she is
essentially still a girl, but as she begins to take on adult duties, such as caring for
Gregor and then getting a job to help support her family, she steadily matures. In the
story’s closing scene, her parents realize she has grown into a pretty young woman
and think of finding her a husband. The scene signals that she is now an adult
emotionally and also physically, as it describes the change her body has undergone
and echoes Gregor’s own physical change.
The family as a whole also undergoes a metamorphosis as well. Initially, the members
of the Samsa family appear hopeless and static, owing to the difficulties resulting
from Gregor’s transformation as well as their financial predicament. But over time
they are able to overcome their money problems, and when Gregor finally dies and
the family no longer has to deal with his presence, all the family members are
reinvigorated. As the story closes, they have completed an emotional transformation
and their hope is revitalized.

Sleep and Rest 

References to sleep and rest, as well as the lack of sleep and rest, recur throughout
The Metamorphosis. The story opens, for instance, with Gregor waking from sleep to
discover his transformation, and Part 2 of the story begins with Gregor waking a
second time, in this instance late in the day after the incident in which his father drove
him back into his room. He quickly crawls under the sofa in his room to rest, and he
spends a great deal of the story beneath the sofa either resting quietly or anxious and
unable to rest. Moreover, Gregor describes how his father used to while away the day
in bed or dozing in his armchair, and after the father resumes working, he often
refuses to go to bed in the evenings and instead falls asleep in uniform in his chair.
Toward the end of the work, as Gregor’s health declines he stops sleeping almost
entirely until finally he dies.
Money 
Because of the failure of the father’s business and the debts that resulted, money is a
chief concern for the Samsa family, and consequently it appears as a frequent topic in
Gregor’s thoughts and in the conversations of the family members. Gregor’s chief
concern after discovering he’s become an insect is that he’ll lose his job, which we
quickly learn he took solely as a means of earning money for his family. The office
manager also implies while checking on Gregor that Gregor’s boss suspects him of
stealing money from the firm. Then, shortly after Gregor awakes at the beginning of
Part 2, he overhears the father explaining the family’s financial situation in detail to
the mother and Grete. Later, the father and Grete both take jobs to make up for the
loss of Gregor’s income, and the family even takes in a few borders as a means of
bringing in extra money, which results in an argument about money after the borders
discover Gregor.
Symbols of The Metamorphosis
The Picture of the Woman in Furs 
Mentioned right at the outset of the story, the picture of the woman in furs serves as a
symbol of Gregor’s former humanity. Exactly why the picture, which shows a woman
wearing a fur hat, a fur boa, and a thick fur muff that covers her arms, originally
attracted Gregor is never made clear (though it could be that it embodied Gregor’s
desires—the presumably attractive woman may be sexually alluring while the furs she
wears could signal wealth to Gregor). But Gregor’s strong attachment to it does not
derive from the content of the picture so much as from the fact that he put it on his
wall when he was still human. He clings to it in panic when Grete and the mother are
clearing out his room because, as he looks around the room in desperation, he sees it
as one object from his former life that he can save. The content of the picture is
irrelevant at that moment. It acts foremost as a reminder that a human lived there and
chose that object to frame and display.
The Father’s Uniform 
The uniform the father wears for his job symbolizes the father’s dignity, as well as
Gregor’s shifting feelings of pity and respect for him. Throughout the story, we see
the father primarily from Gregor’s point of view. We learn about the failure of the
father’s business, for example, from Gregor’s thoughts as he overhears the father
explaining the family’s financial situation, and through Gregor we gain a picture of
the father as a shiftless and depressed man whom Gregor appears to feel sorry for but
not necessarily respect. But when Gregor runs out of his room in Part 2 and sees the
father for the first time in weeks, Gregor’s opinion of the father changes. This shift is
most evident through Gregor’s description of the father’s uniform, which gives the
father an air of dignity: Gregor notices the “smart blue uniform with gold buttons,”
and thinks the father looks to be “in fine shape,” suggesting the father’s self-respect
has been restored, and with it Gregor’s respect for him.
As the story continues, however, the father again declines—apparently from the
pressure of living with Gregor—and in the evenings Gregor watches him sleep in his
uniform, now dirty and covered with grease spots. As a result, the dignity the uniform
conveyed to the father deteriorates, and Gregor again looks at him with pity. (Notably,
there is also a picture in the house of Gregor in uniform. It is an army uniform, and in
the picture Gregor smiles, “inviting one to respect his uniform and military bearing.”)

Food 
Food represents the way the members of the Samsa family feel toward Gregor.
Notably, it is Grete, the family member Gregor feels closest to, who feeds Gregor for
most of the story. At the beginning of Part 2, she leaves milk and bread for him,
showing sympathy and consideration for him after his transformation, particularly as
milk was one of his favorite foods when he was human. When she sees he hasn’t
drank the milk, she goes so far as to leave a tray of various foods out in order to
discover what he now likes. Eventually, however, the work suggests that the family
loses interest in feeding Gregor. One night, after the borders have moved in, the
charwoman leaves his door open, and able to see everyone gathered, he watches as his
mother feeds the borders. The scene causes Gregor to feel a great deal of resentment,
and he thinks that he is starving while the borders stuff themselves, suggesting that as
the members of the Samsa family have lost their sympathy for Gregor, they have
stopped taking the same interest in feeding him. Significantly, the father inflicts the
injury in Gregor’s back with an apple, and this wound appears to weaken Gregor and
contribute to his death.
SETTING of The Metamorphosis 
The Metamorphosis is set in a small working-class neighborhood in the early 1900′s.
The events take place entirely in the Samsa home where Gregor lives with his teenage
sister Grete, his timid mother, and his surly and resentful father. With the exception of
three scenes where Gregor escapes to the hallway, every other moment takes place in
his bedroom until his death. The final scenes of the story take place on a train bound
for the countryside, after Gregor is dead.
PLOT STRUCTURE ANALYSIS 
of The Metamorphosis 
The story opens with a startling revelation–Gregor has turned into a bug. Once that
premise is established, the story is divided into three sections, each with its own rising
action and mini-climax. In section one, Gregor is developed as a character. Kafka
reveals his love for and dedication to his family; however, they do not seem to fully
appreciate him, even though he is their sole breadwinner. He is also not appreciated at
his company, where he works as a salesman in a job that he hates. When Gregor
realizes his metamorphosis, he does not seem particularly horrified at his bug body;
instead, he worries about not going to work and being able to support the family.
When he is finally brave enough to present himself, he is sure that his parents and
sister will react to him with understanding and patience; instead, he is greeted by his
family with shock and horror and, ultimately, rejection. Mr. Samsa quickly gets
Gregor back into his room by poking him with a walking stick. It is the beginning of
his total alimentation from the family and humanity.
In section two, Gregor begins to adjust to his life as a bug, hiding in dark corners and
climbing on the walls and ceilings to pass the time. He is almost completely
transformed at the time when his mother tries to remove his furniture, giving him
more space. He panics at the thought that his last bit of being human will depart with
the furniture. Mrs. Samsa has never adjusted to the idea that her son is a bug.
When she actually sees him, it causes her to faint. When Mr. Samsa comes in and
finds the house in an uproar, he blames Gregor and chunks apples at him for
punishment. Gregor is again driven into the isolation of his room, this time with an
apple lodged in his back; unfortunately, he cannot remove it since he does not have
hands.

In section three, Gregor thinks he has gained some acceptance from the family
because the door to his room is sometimes left open; the Samsas obviously feel bad
that he has been injured, but they will not come close enough to him to remove the
imbedded apple, which festers on his back. But because he can see and hear his
parents and his sister, Gregor is fooled into thinking he belongs and is accepted by the
family. When he hears Grete play her violin for the boarders, he almost forgets that he
is a bug and goes out into the living room. Grete is shocked, horrified, and upset. She
expresses her hatred for him and her desire that he would just go away. Crushed by
her negative, almost violent, emotions, Gregor goes back into his room, feeling totally
alienated from his family and humanity. The next day he dies.

Kafka has unified his story in several ways. Several metamorphoses occur in the
novel, and they are all related and serve to unify the action. The most obvious
metamorphosis is Gregor’s change into an insect. But this physical change causes him
to experience an emotional metamorphosis as well. Additionally, the entire family
goes through a metamorphosis, learning how to support themselves since Gregor can
no longer support them. Finally, Grete goes through a dramatic metamorphosis as she
changes her attitude from kindness and acceptance to total revulsion.

The plot is also held together by the structure of the sections; each ends with a new,
more serious, and dramatic tragedy for Gregor, and the repetition binds the action.
The plot is also held together by time, place, and character. The entire story occurs
over a few days time, and the entire action takes place in the Samsa household. There
are also few characters, and all of the central ones belong to the same family. The plot
is also unified by an irony that runs throughout the story; the more Gregor calms
down and accepts his insect image, the more his family becomes repulsed by his
presence.

Although the story of Gregor and his metamorphosis is bizarre, it is developed in a

conventional manner. The story opens with an introduction, where each member of
the Samsa family is presented and described. The rising action comes through
Gregor’s tragic experiences, developed and repeated within the three sections. The
climax occurs when Grete expresses her hatred of her brother; learning of her
animosity, Gregor realizes he has nothing to live for. The falling action reveals that
Gregor dies and is swept out by the maid. His parents and sister feel only relief, no
sorrow. The conclusion comes when the Samsas, no longer burdened by Gregor, plan
and take a trip to the country, almost as if they have totally forgotten the giant bug.

CONFLICT
Protagonist 
The protagonist in the story is Gregor Samsa. He is a traveling salesman who is
transformed into an insect. A selflessly committed individual working to support his
family, he is gradually neglected and rejected by his family. He dies alone in his room
after learning that no one wants him around. Gregor’s metamorphosis from provider
to burden symbolizes the aloneness of man even among those to whom he is closest.

Antagonist 
The antagonists in the story are the people who reject Gregor and force him into
isolation after his metamorphosis. Upon seeing Gregor as a bug, his boss runs away,
and his father locks him in his room. As time passes, Gregor’s father becomes more
and more antagonistic to him, even becoming aggressive and wounding him by
throwing apples. Even Grete eventually transforms from a devoted sister into a selfish
and resentful young woman who states she hates the bug. After being totally rejected
by all of humanity, Gregor goes into his room and dies.

Climax 
The story has three peaks, each occurring at the end of a section. Section one climaxes
when Gregor leaves his room and exposes himself to his family as a bug, receiving the
first of his physical injuries and rejections.

The second climax, at the end of part two, occurs when Gregor’s father delivers a
physical blow to Gregor, showing his hatred and disgust by throwing apples and
driving Gregor from the family circle. The third and final climax comes when Grete
totally rejects Gregor, delivering a fatal wound, though not a physical one.

Each climax is precipitated by an attempt from the protagonist to join the family and
consequently humanity; at each stage he is totally rejected. Grete’s rejection hurts
Gregor the most and is the ultimate climax of the story.

Outcome 
The story ends in tragedy. Gregor dies and his body is swept out in the trash by the
maid.
MOOD 
At first the mood of this short novel is bizarre and fantastic, created by Gregor’s
shocking transformation. Soon, however, the calm acceptance of his new state
undermines the strangeness of it, and the mood becomes settled. Eventually, the
remaining fantastic aspects of the tale give way to a sense of tragedy. Gregor is
helpless and must simply sit back and watch the sad metamorphosis of his family as
they turn against him in his new state. The tragedy is intensified by the fact that he
must watch in silence, unable to speak and defend himself. In the end, he dies isolated
and alone in his room and is swept out by the maid. There is an overwhelming sense
of injustice about what has happened to Gregor and a scathing criticism of his
uncaring, selfish family. Both add to the overall tr

Tone 
The tone of the novel is objective and serious. But the attentive reader will notice that
dark, subtle humor creeps into the narrative like a clown tiptoeing into a funeral.

Absurdity 
Life sometimes confers on a human being an absurd destiny that he is powerless to
escape. Kafka makes this point with a fantasy about a man who wakes up one
morning with the body of a gigantic bug. Preposterous? Of course. But, as Kafka
seems to suggest, many men and women do wake up without knowing their purpose
in life and without any sense of control over the course of their life.

The Plight of the Workingman 

After Gregor discovers that he has become a giant bug, one would expect him to
exhibit sheer fright at his condition and to devote all his energies to finding a way to
restore himself. Instead, he worries about being late for work. When the chief clerk
arrives at the Samsa apartment, Gregor—who is locked in his room—wonders why he
has to be

condemned to work for a company where they immediately became highly suspicious
at the slightest shortcoming? Were all employees, every one of them, louts . . . ? Was
it really not enough to let one of the trainees make enquiries—assuming enquiries
were even necessary? Did the chief clerk have to come himself, and did they have to
show the whole, innocent family that this was so suspicious that only the chief clerk
could be trusted to have the wisdom to investigate it? …….Gregor’s parents tell the
chief clerk that their son is apparently unwell. But instead of exhibiting sympathy, the
clerk says (through the door), “I must say that if we
people in commerce ever become slightly unwell then, fortunately or unfortunately as
you like, we simply have to overcome it because of business considerations.” He also
tells Gregor that his job is not secure. Kafka here seems to be calling attention to
unjust treatment of the workingman.

Inherited Sin and Suffering 

After Adam and Eve fell, they passed to their progeny sin, suffering, and death. Kafka
may be alluding to this religious tenet when he mysteriously “inherits” the body of an
ugly creature (sin) and when his father (an Adam figure) throws apples at Gregor. One
of them lodges in his body and causes painful festering and ulceration. Eventually,
Gregor dies.

Generosity of Spirit 
Gregor suffers indignities from the chief clerk and his family. Yet he returns only
goodwill. For example, he treats the chief clerk courteously even though the clerk
implies that Gregor has misused company money and hints that Gregor’s job may be
in jeopardy. Moreover, Gregor remains faithful to his family members and even feels
guilty that he can no longer provide for them. He does not complain. And he does not
give up on his father, mother, and sister until they give up on him.

Taking People for Granted 

In a job he did not like, Gregor supported himself, his parents, and his sister. Not until
he turns into vermin do his parents and Grete lift a hand to support themselves. They
had taken Gregor for granted. After a time, they neglect Gregor. When he dies, they
are relieved.

Irony 
Gregor is ugly on the outside. But the other characters are just as ugly—in fact, more
ugly—on the inside. One can argue that they are the real vermin in the story.

Humor 
The Metamorphosis is at times hilarious in its absurdity. But the humor is subtle and
disciplined, never calling attention to itself. In fact, the story maintains a deadly
serious tone throughout. The humor relies in part on Gregor’s unexpected reaction
reaction to his situation. One would expect him to go into a panic when he wakes up
and finds out that he is a giant bug. Instead, he calmly thinks about going back to
sleep.

“How about if I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense”, he thought, but
that was something he was unable to do because he was used to sleeping on his right,
and in his present state couldn’t get into that position. However hard he threw himself
onto his right, he always rolled back to where he was. He must have tried it a hundred
times, shut his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to look at the floundering legs, and only
stopped when he began to feel a mild, dull pain there that he had never felt
before……..Then, after realizing that he had overslept, Gregor starts thinking about
getting to work as fast as possible to avoid problems with his boss. What should he do
now? The next train went at seven; if he were to catch that he would have to rush like
mad and the collection of samples was still not packed, and he did not at all feel
particularly fresh and lively. And even if he did catch the train he would not avoid his
boss’s anger as the office assistant would have been there to see the five o’clock train
go, he would have put in his report about Gregor’s not being there a long time ago.At
no time does Gregor seem to be concerned about boarding a train—or showing up at
work—as a gigantic bug.

Metaphor Analysis
The Doors 
There are numerous references to doors in “The Metamorphosis,” but the three doors
that surround Gregor Samsa’s bedroom are particularly pertinent. Indeed, they
metaphorically make clear that Gregor is a prisoner of his family. Three of the four
walls that make up his room have doors; there is one double door that leads into the
sitting room and two side doors. The fourth wall has a window facing a hospital, but it
never occurs to the Samsas to take their son there.
The first person to knock on one of Gregor’s doors is his sister Grete who chides him
gently for not getting out of bed. She needs him to get up so she can continue to have
an easy life, with her violin lessons paid for. At the beginning she seems to care about
Gregor by feeding and cleaning up after him, but when it seems her brother cannot
ever again be useful to her and the family, she disregards him. The mother is next to
knock on the door, pleading with Gregor to get up and go to work and covering up for
him when the Chief Clerk comes knocking at yet another door. The father stands
outside the third door ordering his son to get up. Gregor, however, has taken to
locking all the doors at night. And although this might seem like a powerful act, it
simply means that Gregor lives in a locked box, with his family outside waiting for
him to go to work and support them.
Escape
Gregor Samsa lives like a prisoner in his bedroom imprisoned by his own family. He
is trapped not just physically but also emotionally. There never has been anything
stopping Gregor from escaping the life forced upon him by his family. Indeed, he
travels by train all the time. Why not just sit still and escape to whereever the train
goes and start a new life? But for Gregor Samsa escape proves impossible because he
doesn’t seem to realize he is imprisoned. He loves his family and does everything in
his power to provide a pleasant life for them, sacrificing himself in this effort. After
his transformation, he thinks only of them and panics when he thinks of how they will
support themselves. Even when Gregor finds out that his father withheld money that
could have been used to alleviate Gregor’s burdens, he cannot feel anger. How then,
can Gregor escape the horror that has become his life? When Gregor transmutes into a
gigantic insect, he does manage to escape his job. Now his family has to support
themselves. However, how then is Gregor going to escape the family that fails to care
for him in turn? The only real way for Gregor to escape is in death.
LITERARY/HISTORICAL
INFORMATION 
of The Metamorphosis 
Although in modern times Kafka is considered one of the most important members of
the Prague Circle of writers, in his day he felt he did not belong anywhere. The
Czechs considered him a German, since his parents were German speaking, and the
Germans labeled him a Czech and a Jew. The author himself felt he was a social
outcast. Had it not been for the efforts of his friend, Max Brod, Kafka would never
have become known as a writer. Brod, however, introduced him to his literary friends
in Prague and throughout Europe; he also insisted that Kafka read his writings to
them. Kafka’s early writings clearly reflect his skepticism and the pain he feels from
his social and parental isolation. In fact, most of Kafka’s writing is filled with anxiety,
largely caused by his tyrannical father and his uncertainty about his bachelorhood.
In 1913, Kafka was introduced to the writings of Soren Kierkegaard, who was radical,
skeptical, and religious, like Kafka. Both men were interested in the analysis of
human integrity and morality, man’s search for himself, and God’s guidance; both
have been called existentialists. Kierkegarrd, however, comes to faith in his writings;
while Kafka comes to despair.

References of The Critics 

Critical Essays On Various Aspects 
 
Understanding Kafka’s Writing 
A major problem confronting readers of Kafka’s short stories is to find a way through
the increasingly dense thicket of interpretations. Among the many approaches one
encounters is that of the autobiographical approach. This interpretation claims that
Kafka’s works are little more than reflections of his lifelong tension between
bachelorhood and marriage or, on another level, between his skepticism and his
religious nature. While it is probably true that few writers have ever been moved to
exclaim, “My writing was about you [his father]. In it, I merely poured out the sorrow
I could not sigh out at your breast” [Letter to His Father], it is nevertheless dangerous
to regard the anxieties permeating his work solely in these terms. Kafka’s
disenchantment with and eventual hatred of his father were a stimulus to write, but
they neither explain the fascination of his writing nor tell us why he wrote at all.
The psychological or psychoanalytical approach to Kafka largely ignores the content
of his works and uses the “findings” of the diagnosis as the master key to puzzling out
Kafka’s world. We know Kafka was familiar with the teachings of Sigmund Freud (he
says so explicitly in his diary, after he finished writing “The judgment” in 1912) and
that he tried to express his problems through symbols in the Freudian sense. One may
therefore read Kafka with Freud’s teachings in mind. As soon as this becomes more
than one among many aids to understanding, however, one is likely to read not Kafka,
but a text on applied psychoanalysis or Freudian symbology. Freud himself often
pointed out that the analysis of artistic values is not within the scope of the analytical
methods he taught.

There is the sociological interpretation, according to which Kafka’s work is but a

mirror of the historical-sociological situation in which he lived. For the critic arguing
this way, the question is not what Kafka really says but the reasons why he
supposedly said it. What the sociological and the psychological interpretations have in
common is the false assumption that the discovery of the social or psychological
sources of the artist’s experience invalidate the meaning expressed by his art.

Within the sociological type of interpretation, one of the most popular methods of
criticism judges Kafka’s art by whether or not it has contributed anything toward the
progress of society. Following the Marxist-Leninist dictum that art must function as a
tool toward the realization of the classless society, this kind of interpretation is
prevalent not merely in Communist countries, but also among the New Left critics this
side of the Iron and Bamboo Curtains. Marxist criticism of Kafka has shifted back and
forth between outright condemnation of Kafka’s failing to draw the consequences of
his own victimization by the bourgeoisie and between acclarnations stressing the pro-
proletarian fighting quality of his heroes. That Kafka was the propagator of the
working class as the revolutionary class has been maintained not only by official
Communist criticism, but also by Western “progressives.” And it is true that Kafka
did compose a pamphlet lamenting the plight of workers. Yet in a conversation with
his friend Janouch, he spoke highly of the Russian Revolution, and he expressed his
fear that its religious overtones might lead to a type of modern crusade with a
terrifying toll of lives. Surely a writer of Kafka’s caliber can describe the terror of a
slowly emerging totalitarian regime (Nazi Germany) without being a precursor of
communism, as Communist criticism as often claimed. One can also read The Trial as
the story of Joseph K.’s victimization by the Nazis (three of Kafka’s sisters died in a
concentration camp); it is indeed one of the greatest tributes one can pay to Kafka
today that he succeeded in painting the then still latent horror of Nazism so
convincingly. But one must not neglect or ignore the fact that Kafka was, above all, a
poet; and to be a poet means to give artistic expression to the many levels and nuances
of our kaleidoscopic human condition. To see Kafka as a social or political
revolutionary because his country doctor, for instance, or the land surveyor of The
Castle seeks to change his fate through voluntary involvement rather than outside
pressure is tantamount to distorting Kafka’s universal quality in order to fit him into
an ideological framework.

Closely connected with the quasi-religious quality of Marxist interpretations of

Kafka’s stories are the countless philosophical and religious attempts at deciphering
the make-up of his world. They range from sophisticated theological argumentation
all the way to pure speculation. Although Kafka’s religious nature is a subject
complex and controversial enough to warrant separate mention, the critics arguing
along these lines are also incapable, as are their sociological and psychological
colleagues, of considering Kafka simply as an artist. What they all have in common is
the belief that Kafka’s “real meaning” lies beyond his parables and symbols, and can
therefore be better expressed in ways he himself avoided for one reason or another.
The presumptuousness of this particular approach lies in the belief that the artist
depends on the philosopher for a translation of his ambiguous modes of expression
into logical, abstract terms. All this is not to dispute Kafka’s philosophical-religious
cast of mind and his preoccupation with the ultimate questions of human existence. It
is just that he lived, thought, and wrote in images and not in “coded” conceptual
structures. Kafka himself thought of his stories merely as points of crystallization of
his problems: Bendemann, Samsa, Gracchus, the hunger artist, the country doctor,
Josef K., and K. of The Castle — all these men are close intellectual and artistic
relatives of Kafka, yet it will not do to reduce his deliberately open-ended images to a
collection of data.

Interpretations are always a touchy matter and, in Kafka’s case, perhaps more so than
in others. The reason for this is that his works are 1) essentially outcries against the
inexplicable laws that govern our lives; 2) portrayals of the human drama running its
course on several loosely interwoven levels, thus imparting a universal quality to his
work; and 3) very much imbued with his high degree of sensitivity which responded
differently to similar situations at different times. Particularly this last aspect suggests
incohesion and paradox to the mind which insists on prodding Kafka’s stories to their
oftentimes irrational core. Kafka’s pictures stand, as Max Brod never tired of pointing
out, not merely for themselves but also for something beyond themselves.

These difficulties have prompted many a scholar to claim that Kafka rarely thought of
anything specific in his stories. From this view, it is but a short step to the relativistic
attitude that every interpretation of Kafka is as good as every other one. To this, one
may reply that “to think of nothing specific” is by no means the same thing as “to
think of many things at the same time. “Kafka’s art is, most of all, capable of doing
the latter to perfection. Paradoxical though it may seem at first, viewing Kafka’s work
from a number of vantage points is not an invitation to total relativism, but a certain
guarantee that one will be aware of the many levels of his work.

Despite the many differences in approaching Kafka’s writings, all of them must
finally deal with a rather hermetically sealed — off world. Whatever Kafka expresses
is a reflection of his own complex self amidst a concrete social and political
constellation, but it is a reflection broken and distorted by the sharp edges of his
analytical mind. Thus the people whom his heroes meet and whom we see through
their eyes are not “real” in a psychological sense, not “true” in an empirical sense, and
are not “natural” in a biological sense. Their one distinctive mark is that of being
something created. Kafka once remarked to his friend Janouch, “I did not draw men. I
told a story. These are pictures, only pictures.” That he succeeded in endowing them
with enough plausibility to raise them to the level of living symbols and parables is
the secret of his art.

Kafka’s stories should not tempt us to analyze them along the lines of fantasy versus
reality. An unchangeable and alienated world unfolds before us, a world governed by
its own laws and developing its own logic. This world is our world and yet it is not.
“Its pictures and symbols are taken from our world of phenomena, but they also
appear to belong somewhere else. We sense that we encounter people we know and
situations we have lived through in our own everyday lives, and yet these people and
situations appear somehow estranged. They are real and physical, and yet they are
also grotesque and abstract. They use a sober language devoid of luster in order to
assure meaningful communication among each other, and yet they fail, passing one
another like boats in an impenetrable fog. Yet even this fog, the realm of the surreal
(super-real), has something convincing about it. We therefore have the exciting
feeling that Kafka’s people say things of preeminent significance but that it is, at the
same time, impossible for us to comprehend.

Finally, the reader seems to be left with two choices of how to “read” Kafka. One is to
see Kafka’s world as full of parables and symbols, magnified and fantastically
distorted (and therefore infinitely more real), a world confronting us with a dream
vision of our own condition. The other choice is to forego any claim of even trying to
understand his world and to expose oneself to its atmosphere of haunting anxiety,
visionary bizarreness, and — occasionally — faint promises of hope. 
 

Kafka’s Jewish Influence 

Prague was steeped in the atmosphere of Jewish learning and writing until the social
and political turmoil of the collapsing Austrian Empire put an end to its traditional
character. The first Jews had come to Prague in the tenth century, and the earliest
written document about what the city looked like was by a Jewish traveler. According
to him, Prague was a cultural crossroads even then. Pulsating with life, the city
produced many a lingering myth during the subsequent centuries, and they, in turn,
added to its cultural fertility. The myth of the golem is probably its most well known:
golem (“clay” in Hebrew) was the first chunk of inanimate matter that the famed
Rabbi Loew, known for his learnedness as well as his alchernistic pursuits,
supposedly awakened to actual life in the late sixteenth century. This myth fathered a
whole genre of literature written in the haunting, semi-mystical atmosphere of
Prague’s Jewish ghetto. It is this background, medieval originally, but with several
layers of subsequent cultural impulses superimposed on it, that pervades the world of
Franz Kafka, supplying it with a very “real” setting of what is generally and
misleadingly known as “Kafkaesque unrealness.”
One of the unresolved tensions that is characteristic of Kafka’s work occurs between
his early (and growing) awareness of his Jewish heritage and the realization that
modern Central European Jewry had become almost wholly assimilated. This tension
remained alive in him quite apart from his situation as a prominent member of the
Jewish-German intelligentsia of Prague. The problem concerned him all the more
directly because his family clung to Jewish traditions only in a superficial way.
Although perhaps of a more orthodox background than her husband — and therefore
not quite so eager to attain total assimilation into gentile society — even Kafka’s
mother made no great effort to cherish Jewish ways. On one level, then, Kafka’s
animosity toward his father and his entire family may be explained by his mounting
interest in his Jewish heritage which they did not share.

Kafka felt drawn to Jews who had maintained their cultural identity, among them the
leader of a Yiddish acting group from Poland. He attended their performances in
1911, organized evenings of reading Yiddish literature, and was drawn into fierce
arguments about this subject with his father, who despised traveling actors, as did the
Jewish establishment of Prague. It was at that time that Kafka began to study Hebrew.
As late as 1921, however, he still complained about having no firm knowledge of
Jewish history and religion.

What fascinated Kafka about the various members of this group was their firmness of
faith and their resistance to being absorbed into the culture of their gentile
environment. There are numerous letters and diary entries which point to Kafka’s
awareness of the essential difference between Western and Eastern Jews concerning
this matter. Kafka felt a great affinity with the Chassidic tradition (Chassidic means
“pious” in Hebrew; it was an old conservative movement within Judaism which came
to flower again in the eighteenth century in eastern Europe). Kafka admired very
much their ardent, this-worldly faith, their veneration of ancestry, and their cherishing
of native customs. He developed a powerful contempt for Jewish artists who, in his
estimation, too willingly succumbed to assimilation and secularization.

Kafka was particularly interested in Zionism, the movement founded by Theodor

Herzl (The Jewish State, 1890) to terminate the dissemination of Jews all over the
world by promoting their settlement in Palestine. Zionism preached the ancient Jewish
belief that the Messiah would arrive with the re-establishment of the Jewish state, and
Kafka’s desire for such a Jewish state and his willingness to emigrate should be noted.
Kafka published in a Zionist magazine, planned several trips to Palestine (which never
materialized because of his deteriorating health), and was most enthusiastic about the
solidarity, the sense of community, and the simplicity of the new kibbuzim.

While it is true that Kafka’s friend Max Brod influenced him in supporting the ideals
of Zionism, it is incorrect to say that without Brod’s influence Kafka would never
have developed an interest in the movement. His Hebrew teacher Thieberger, a friend
and student of Martin Buber, was also a major influence on Kafka. Thieberger
emphasized Jewish responsibility for the whole world and believed that everybody is
witness to everybody else. Oddly enough, Kafka’s father’s steady exhortations to
“lead an active life” may have added to his growing esteem for the Jewish pioneer
ideal. Another source of Kafka’s growing interest in Jewish tradition was, of course,
his sickness, the very sickness that kept him from carrying out his plans to emigrate to
Palestine and live there as a simple artisan. The more Kafka became aware of his
approaching end, the more he delved into the study of his identity. A year before his
death, he started attending the Berlin Academy of Jewish Studies, and it was during
that same year, 1923, that he met Dora Dymant, who was of Chassidic background
and further accented his search and love for his Jewish roots.

It is clear that Kafka’s interest and love for the various aspects of Jewry are not
merely an attempt on his part to make up for past omissions in this matter. They are,
above all, the result of his religious concerns — “religious” in the wider sense of the
word — that is, religious by temperament, religious in the sense of ceaselessly
searching and longing for grace.

Kafka — A “Religious” Writer? 

To know Kafka is to grapple with this problem: was Kafka primarily a “religious”
writer? The answer seems to depend on the views one brings to the reading of his
stories rather than on even the best analyses. Because so much of Kafka’s world
remains ultimately inaccessible to us, any such labeling will reveal more about the
reader than about Kafka or his works. He himself would most likely have refused to
be forced into any such either/or proposition.
Perhaps one of the keys to this question is Kafka’s confession that, to him, “writing is
a form of prayer.” Everything we know about him suggests that he probably could not
have chosen any other form of expressing himself but writing. Considering the
tremendous sacrifices he made to his writing, it is only fair to say that he would have
abandoned his art had he felt the need to get his ideas across in some philosophical or
theological system. At the same time, one feels that what Kafka wanted to convey
actually transcended literature and that, inside, art alone must have seemed shallow to
him — or at least inadequate when measured against the gigantic task he set for
himself — that is, inching his way toward at least approximations of the nature of
truth. Each of Kafka’s lines is charged with multiple meanings of allusions,
daydreams, illusions and reflections — all indicating a realm whose “realness” we are
convinced of, but whose nature Kafka could not quite grasp with his art. He remained
tragically aware of this discrepancy throughout his life.

This does not contradict the opinion that Kafka was a “philosopher groping for a form
rather than a novelist groping for a theme.” “Philosopher” refers here to a
temperament, a cast of mind, rather than to a man’s systematic, abstract school of
thought. Whatever one may think of Kafka’s success or failure in explaining his
world, there is no doubt that he always deals with the profoundest themes of man’s
fate. The irrational and the horrible are never introduced for the sake of literary effect;
on the contrary, they are introduced to express a depth of reality. And if there is one
hallmark of Kafka’s prose, it is the complete lack of any contrived language or
artificial structure.

Essentially, Kafka desired to “extinguish his self” by writing, as he himself put it. In
terms of craftsmanship, this means that much of his writing is too unorganized, open-
ended, and obscure. Even allowing for the fact that he was concerned with a realm
into which only symbols and parables can shed some light (rather than, say,
metaphors and similes which would have tied his stories to the more concrete and
definitive), it is doubtful whether Kafka can be called an “accomplished writer” in the
sense that Thomas Mann, for instance, can.

Kafka was, then, a major writer, but not a good “craftsman.” And he was a major
thinker and seer in the sense that he registered, reflected, and even warned against the
sickness of a whole age when contemporaries with a less acute consciousness still felt
secure.

The question of Kafka’s being a religious writer has been going on for decades, but
has often been meaningless because of the failure of critics or readers to explain what
they mean by “religious.” It is essential to differentiate between those who call Kafka
and Kafka’s works religious in the wider sense of the term — that is, religious by
temperament or mentality — and those who assert that his stories reflect Kafka as a
believer in the traditional Judaic-Christian sense of the word. Of this latter group, his
lifelong friend and editor Max Brod was the first and probably most influential. A
considerable number of critics and readers have followed Brod’s “religious”
interpretations — particularly, Edwin Muir, Kafka’s principal English translator.
However, for some time now, Kafka criticism has not investigated the “religious”
aspect. This is so partly because the psychoanalytical approach and the sociological
approach have been more popular and fashionable (especially in the United States),
and also because critics and biographers have proven beyond doubt that Brod
committed certain errors while editing and commenting on Kafka. While the original
attitude toward Brod was one of absolute reverence (after all, he saw Kafka daily for
over twenty years, listened to his friend’s stories, and advised him on changes), the
consensus of opinion has more recently been that, although we owe him a great deal
as far as Kafka and his work are concerned, he was a poor researcher. He was simply
too self-conscious about his close friendship with Kafka and therefore too subjective:
he would never admit the obviously neurotic streak in Kafka’s personality. While we
may trust Brod when he claims that Kafka’s aphorisms are much more optimistic and
life-asserting than his fiction, it is difficult to consider Kafka primarily as a believer in
the “indestructible core of the universe” or more pronouncedly Jewish-Christian
tenets. His famous remark, striking the characteristic tone of self-pity, “Sometimes I
feel I understand the Fall of Man better than anyone,” is more to the point. We have
no reason to doubt Brod’s judgment about Kafka’s personally charming, calm, and
even humorous ways. It is that in Kafka’s fiction, calmness is too often overshadowed
by fear and anxiety, and the rare touches of humor are little more than convulsions of
what in German is known as Galgenhumor (“gallows humor”) — that is, the frantic
giggle before one’s execution.
In summary, one can argue in circles about Kafka’s work being “religious,” but one
thing is clear: Kafka’s stories inevitably concern the desperate attempts of people to
do right. And as noted elsewhere, Kafka and his protagonists are identical to an
amazing extent. This means that the main characters who try to do right but are
continuously baffled, thwarted, and confused as to what it really means to do right are
also Kafka himself. Viewed in this way, Kafka becomes a religious writer par
excellence: he and his protagonists are classical examples of the man in whose value
system the sense of duty and of responsibility and the inevitability of moral
commandments have survived the particular and traditional code of a religious system
— hence Kafka’s yearning for a frame of reference which would impart meaning to
his distinct sense of “shalt” and “shalt not.” If one takes this all-permeating desire for
salvation as the main criterion for Kafka’s “religiousness” rather than the grace of
faith which he never found, how could anyone not see Kafka as a major religious
writer? “He was God-drunk,” a critic wrote, “but in his intoxication his subtle and
powerful intellect did not stop working.”

Kafka and Existentialism 

Kafka’s stories suggest meanings which are accessible only after several readings. If
their endings, or lack of endings, seem to make sense at all, they will not do so
immediately and not in unequivocal language. The reason for this is that the stories
offer a wide variety of possible meanings without confirming any particular one of
them. This, in turn, is the result of Kafka’s view — which he shares with many
twentieth-century writers — that his own self is a parcel of perennially interacting
forces lacking a stable core; if he should attain an approximation of objectivity, this
can come about only by describing the world in symbolic language and from a
number of different vantage points. Thus a total view must inevitably remain
inaccessible to him. Such a universe about which nothing can be said that cannot at
the same time — and just as plausibly — be contradicted has a certain ironic quality
about it — ironic in the sense that each possible viewpoint becomes relativized. Yet
the overriding response one has is one of tragedy rather than irony as one watches
Kafka’s heroes trying to piece together the debris of their universe.
Kafka’s world is essentially chaotic, and this is why it is impossible to derive a
specific philosophical or religious code from it — even one acknowledging chaos and
paradox as does much existential thought. Only the events themselves can reveal the
basic absurdity of things. To reduce Kafka’s symbols to their “real” meanings and to
pigeonhole his world-view as some “ism” or other is to obscure his writing with just
the kind of meaningless experience from which he liberated himself through his art.

Expressionism is one of the literary movements frequently mentioned in connection

with Kafka, possibly because its vogue in literature coincided with Kafka’s mature
writing, between 1912 and his death in 1924. Of course, Kafka does have certain
characteristics in common with expressionists, such as his criticism of the blindly
scientific-technological world-view, for instance. However, if we consider what he
thought of some of the leading expressionists of his day, he certainly cannot be
associated with the movement: he repeatedly confessed that the works of the
expressionists made him sad; of a series of illustrations by Kokoschka, one of the
most distinguished representatives of the movement, Kafka said: “I don’t understand.
To me, it merely proves the painter’s inner chaos.” What he rejected in expressionism
is the overstatement of feeling and the seeming lack of craftsmanship. While Kafka
was perhaps not the great craftsman in the sense that Flaubert was, he admired this
faculty in others. In terms of content, Kafka was highly skeptical and even inimical
toward the expressionist demand for the “new man.” This moralistic-didactic
sledgehammer method repulsed him.

Kafka’s relationship with existentialism is much more complex, mainly because the
label “existentialist” by itself is rather meaningless. Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and
Kierkegaard all have a certain existentialist dimension in their writings, as do Camus,
Sartre, Jaspers and Heidegger, with whose works the term existentialism has been
more or less equated since World War H. These various people have rather little in
common concerning their religious, philosophical, or political views, but they
nevertheless share certain characteristic tenets present in Kafka.

Kafka certainly remained fascinated and overwhelmed by the major theme of all
varieties of existentialist thinking, namely the difficulty of responsible commitment in
the face of an absurd universe. Deprived of all metaphysical guidelines, a man is
nevertheless obligated to act morally in a world where death renders everything
meaningless. He alone must determine what constitutes a moral action although he
can never foresee the consequences of his actions. As a result, he comes to regard his
total freedom of choice as a curse. The guilt of existentialist heroes, as of Kafka’s, lies
in their failure to choose and to commit themselves in the face of too many
possibilities — none of which appears more legitimate or worthwhile than any other
one. Like Camus’ Sisyphus, who is doomed to hauling a rock uphill only to watch it
roll down the other side, they find themselves faced with the fate of trying to wring a
measure of dignity for themselves in an absurd world. Unlike Sisyphus, however,
Kafka’s heroes remain drifters in the unlikely landscape they have helped create.
Ulrich in Musil’s The Man Without Quality and Mersault in Camus’ The Stranger —
these men are really contemporaries of Kafka’s “heroes,” drifters in a world devoid of
metaphysical anchoring and suffering from the demons of absurdity and alienation.
And in this sense, they are all modern-day relatives of that great hesitator Hamlet, the
victim of his exaggerated consciousness and overly rigorous conscience.
The absurdity which Kafka portrays in his nightmarish stories was, to him, the
quintessence of the whole human condition. The utter incompatibility of the “divine
law” and the human law, and Kafka’s inability to solve the discrepancy are the roots
of the sense of estrangement from which his protagonists suffer. No matter how hard
Kafka’s heroes strive to come to terms with the universe, they are hopelessly caught,
not only in a mechanism of their own contriving, but also in a network of accidents
and incidents, the least of which may lead to the gravest consequences. Absurdity
results in estrangement, and to the extent that Kafka deals with this basic calamity, he
deals with all eminently existentialist theme.

Kafka’s protagonists are lonely because they are caught midway between a notion of
good and evil, whose scope they cannot determine and whose contradiction they
cannot resolve. Deprived of any common reference and impaled upon their own
limited vision of “the law,” they cease to be heard, much less understood, by the
world around them. They are isolated to the point where meaningful communication
fails them. When the typical Kafka hero, confronted with a question as to his identity,
cannot give a clear-cut answer, Kafka does more than indicate difficulties of verbal
expression: he says that his hero stands between two worlds — between a vanished
one to which he once belonged and between a present world to which he does not
belong. This is consistent with Kafka’s world, which consists not of clearly delineated
opposites, but of an endless series of possibilities. These are never more than
temporary expressions, never quite conveying what they really ought to convey —
hence the temporary, fragmentary quality of Kafka’s stories. In the sense that Kafka is
aware of the limitations which language imposes upon him and tests the limits of
literature, he is a “modern” writer. In the sense that he does not destroy the
grammatical, syntactical, and semantic components of his texts, he remains
traditional. Kafka has refrained from such destructive aspirations because he is
interested in tracing the human reasoning process in great detail up to the point where
it fails. He remains indebted to the empirical approach and is at his best when he
depicts his protagonists desperately trying to comprehend the world by following the
“normal” way.

Because they cannot make themselves heard, much less understood, Kafka’s
protagonists are involved in adventures which no one else knows about. The reader
tends to have the feeling that he is privy to the protagonist’s fate and, therefore, finds
it rather easy to identify with him. Since there is usually nobody else within the story
to whom the protagonist can communicate his fate, he tends to reflect on his own
problems over and over again. This solipsistic quality Kafka shares with many an
existential writer, although existentialist terminology has come to refer to it as “self-
realization.”
Kafka was thoroughly familiar with the writings of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky, and
it pays to ponder the similarities and differences between their respective views. The
most obvious similarity between Kafka and Kierkegaard, their complex relationships
with their respective fiancées and their failures to marry, also points up an essential
difference between them. When Kafka talks of bachelorhood and a hermit’s existence,
he sees these as negative. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, was an enthusiastic
bachelor who saw a divine commandment in his renunciation of women. For Kafka,
bachelorhood was a symbol of alienation from communal happiness, and he thought
of all individualism in this manner. This makes him a poor existentialist.

Unlike Kierkegaard, who mastered his anguish through a deliberate “leap into faith,”
leaving behind all intellectual speculation, Kafka and his heroes never succeed in
conquering this basic anguish: Kafka remained bound by his powerful, probing
intellect, trying to solve things rationally and empirically. Kafka does not conceive of
the transcendental universe he seeks to describe in its paradoxical and
noncommunicable terms; instead, he sets to describing it rationally and, therefore,
inadequately. It is as if he were forced to explain something which he himself does not
understand — nor is really supposed to understand. Kafka was not the type who could
will the act of belief. Nor was he a man of flesh and bones who could venture the
decisive step toward action and the “totality of experience,” as did Camus, for
instance, who fought in the French Underground against the Nazi terror. Kafka never
really went beyond accepting this world in a way that remains outside of any specific
religion. He tended to oppose Kierkegaard’s transcendental mysticism, although it
might be too harsh to argue that he gave up all faith in the “indestructible nature” of
the universe, as he called it. Perhaps this is what Kafka means when he says, “One
cannot say that we are lacking faith. The simple fact in itself that we live is
inexhaustible in its value of faith.”

In the case of Dostoevsky, the parallels with Kafka include merciless consciousness
and the rigorous conscience issuing from it. just as characters in Dostoevsky’s works
live in rooms anonymous and unadorned, for example, so the walls of the hunger
artist’s cage, the animal’s maze, and Gregor Samsa’s bedroom are nothing but the
narrow, inexorable and perpetual prison walls of their respective consciences. The
most tragic awakening in Kafka’s stories is always that of consciousness and
conscience. Kafka surpasses Dostoevsky in this respect because that which is
represented as dramatic relation — between, say, Raskolnikov and Porfiry in Crime
and Punishment — becomes the desperate monologue of a soil in Kafka’s pieces.

Kafka’s philosophical basis, then, is an open system: it is one of human experiences

about the world and not so much the particular Weltanschauung of a thinker. Kafka’s
protagonists confront a secularized deity whose only visible aspects are mysterious
and anonymous. Yet despite being continually faced with the essential absurdity of all
their experiences, these men nevertheless do not cease trying to puzzle them out. To
this end, Kafka uses his writing as a code of the transcendental, a language of the
unknown. It is important to understand that this code is not an escape from reality, but
the exact opposite — the instrument through which he seeks to comprehend the world
in its totality without ever being able to say to what extent he may have succeeded. 

 Important Quotations Explained

For Academic Exam
1. One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found
himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin. 
This quotation, one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature, introduces
the subject matter of The Metamorphosis and indicates how that subject matter will be
treated throughout the story. The line has a notably flat, matter-of-fact tone that
doesn’t remark on the oddness of the incident. On the contrary, the line treats
Gregor’s change as though it were an ordinary event, and it never raises the issue of
how or why Gregor undergoes his metamorphosis, implying that the change has
occurred without any particular cause or for any particular reason. In doing so, it
creates a sense that the world we see in the story is inherently purposeless and
random, rather than rational and ordered, and that such events are to some degree to
be expected. Thus the opening line exemplifies the idea of absurdism, which asserts
that humans exist in an irrational, chaotic universe beyond our full understanding.

Although the opening line is narrated in the third person, it also reflects Gregor’s own
attitude toward his change. Gregor never attempts to determine why or how he
transformed into a bug. Instead, he appears to accept the change as an unfortunate
incident, like an accident or illness, and doesn’t get particularly upset about it. In fact,
after his transformation he continues to think about relatively normal subjects, like his
family’s financial situation and his own physical comfort. Consequently, Gregor
himself embodies this absurdist point of view exemplified in the opening line. He is
the victim of an evidently purposeless and random metamorphosis, which he treats as
though it were not completely unusual, suggesting he at least somewhat expects the
world he lives in to be an irrational and chaotic place.

2. At that time Gregor’s sole desire was to do his utmost to help the family to forget
as soon as possible the catastrophe that had overwhelmed the business and thrown
them all into a state of complete despair. 
The narrator recounts these details about Gregor and the family in Part 2, as Gregor
overhears the father explaining the family’s financial situation to Grete and the
mother. The failure of the father’s business five years earlier essentially created the
family dynamic that we see at the beginning of the story and explains Gregor’s vital
role in the family. Because the business failed, the father no longer works, and he
appears depressed and lethargic. One early image we have of the father comes from
Gregor, who thinks of him lingering for hours over his breakfast and dozing off
during the day. Gregor, meanwhile, feels responsible for the family’s wellbeing as its
only source of income. This fact explains why his greatest concern after his
transformation is whether he will be punished or fired for not going to work on time,
despite the fact that he greatly dislikes his job.

These circumstances play a significant role in Gregor’s feelings of alienation. Because

of his job, which requires that he travel constantly, Gregor cannot develop
relationships, and so he has no close friends. As the mother tells the office manager
when he comes to check on Gregor, Gregor spends most evenings in the house
reading the newspaper or checking the train timetables. Moreover, Gregor feelings of
alienation from his parents also stem from the family’s financial circumstances. When
he first started earning money to support the family, his parents showed a great deal of
gratitude, which Gregor enjoyed. But as Gregor and the parents became accustomed
to the new family dynamic in which Gregor was now the breadwinner, the parents
gratitude gradually diminished and Gregor no longer felt the same feeling of joy in
providing for them. The text says he only remained intimate with Grete, suggesting
that he and his parents grew apart as a result.

3. Did he really want the warm room, so cozily appointed with heirlooms,
transformed into a lair, where he might, of course, be able to creep, unimpeded, in
any direction, though forgetting his human past swiftly and totally? 
This quotation, which occurs in Part 2 as Grete and the mother empty Gregor’s room
of furniture, marks the climax of Gregor’s struggle to reconcile his human past with
his new life and physical form. Gregor’s transformation alters his body, but it leaves
his thoughts and feelings intact. But shortly after the metamorphosis, Gregor’s
thoughts and feelings start to change according to the physical demands and urges of
his new body. Gregor finds that he feels comfortable in the cramped, dark space
beneath his sofa, for instance, and he enjoys crawling on the ceiling. These changes
imply that his mind is adapting to his new body, and that he is becoming an insect
psychologically as well.

But Gregor still retains his human memories and emotions, such as his desire to take
care of his family. As a result, he feels pulled in opposing directions by the insect and
human sides of himself, and this inner conflict reaches its height when he is forced to
choose whether he wants his room emptied of furniture. On the one hand, not having
furniture would allow Gregor much more freedom to crawl over the floors and walls,
which would make him physically more comfortable. On the other hand, his
possessions serve as physical reminders of his human life, and keeping them would
allow him to preserve what humanity he has left, making him feel more comfortable
psychologically. In other words, Gregor must choose between appeasing his insect
side or his human side. Gregor decides to appease his human side, and he clings to the
picture of the woman in furs as a reminder of his human life.

4. “He must go,” cried Gregor’s sister, “that’s the only solution, Father. You must
just try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we’ve believed it for so
long is the root of all our trouble.” 
Grete says these words to the father toward the end of Part 3 after Gregor
inadvertently reveals himself to the boarders, and the quotation marks a turning point
in the family’s view of Gregor’s humanity as well as in the level of sympathy they
feel for him. To this point in the story, the Samsa family has struggled to determine
how much of Gregor’s humanity remains. Physically Gregor has changed completely,
and since he is unable to speak, the family has no way of knowing whether his mind
remains intact. The mother, most notably, has held onto the belief that Gregor will
eventually return to his old self, and she uses this reasoning to argue against moving
all the furniture out of Gregor’s room. The father appears to be uncertain one way or
another. He feels pity for the bug after attacking it, but when Grete says they must get
rid of it, he mostly questions whether the bug might be able to understand them,
suggesting he is unsure of his own feelings on the matter. Grete, however, has
gradually lost faith that any humanity remains in the bug at all, and she indicates that
she no longer thinks of it as Gregor.

Moreover, the family has lost sympathy for the bug as they have become less certain
that anything of Gregor remains and as the bug has become a greater burden to them.
While Grete initially took care of Gregor just after his transformation, even taking his
feelings into account in trying to determine what food he likes and moving the chair to
the window for him, she has stopped caring for Gregor entirely by this point. In fact,
the family begins using his room as a storage closet without any concern for Gregor’s
comfort, suggesting they have hardly any sympathy remaining for Gregor at all. When
Gregor reveals himself to the boarders, causing the boarders to say they’re leaving
without paying rent, Grete finally decides they must get rid of Gregor. Without any
faith that the bug is still Gregor, and with Gregor now costing the family more money,
her sympathy runs out. The parents weakly object, but with only a little effort Grete
appears to convince them of her point of view, indicating that they also feel little
sympathy for Gregor by this point.
5. Lapsing into silence and communicating almost unconsciously with their eyes,
they reflected that it was high time they found a decent husband for her. And it was
like a confirmation of their new dreams and good intentions that at the end of their
ride the daughter was the first to get up, stretching her young body. 
These final lines of the work suggest that the two other notable metamorphoses we see
besides Gregor’s—that is, the family’s change from despairing to hopeful and Grete’s
change from a girl into a woman—are complete. The family as a whole undergoes a
drastic psychological change in the story, indicated in the “new dreams” mentioned in
the final line. Because of the failure of the father’s business, the family appears
hopeless and hampered by debt at the beginning of the work. But as the family
members must find employment after Gregor’s transformation, they begin to save
money and create opportunities for themselves. They appear not to realize that their
lives are improving until the end of the story, when they talk on the train as they head
out to the countryside. At that point, each recognizes that he or she has a job that will
likely lead to better opportunities in the future, and they realize that with Gregor dead,
they can move into a smaller apartment, which will save them money. In the final
lines of the story, they become a genuinely hopeful and happy family.

The other notable transformation referred to in the quotation is Grete’s change from a
girl into a woman. Grete begins the work basically still a child with no
responsibilities. But as she begins caring for Gregor and working to help earn money
for the family, she matures psychologically. She becomes more outspoken within her
family, for instance, and she has the responsibilities of an adult. The last lines of the
story, in which her parents realize that she’s grown into a pretty young woman and
think of finding her a husband, signal that she is now physically mature as well. In
other words, she has become an adult, and she embodies the hopes of her parents as
she begins this new stage of her life. The last image of the story is Grete stretching,
suggesting that she is emerging after a period of confinement, much like an insect
emerging from a cocoon after its metamorphosis into a mature adult.

More Important Quotations Explained 

For Academic Exam
“It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a
heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.” (p. 2)
This framed picture is an important item in Gregor’s room that’s mentioned early in
the story. It demonstrates Gregor’s desire for the romantic relationship he is unable to
pursue because of his overwhelming misplaced responsibility for his family.
“What a strenuous career it is that I’ve chosen! Travelling day in and day out.” (p.
2)
This is ironic because Gregor never did choose this alienating career. He was forced
by his father, who was indebted to his boss, to take on the job as traveling salesman to
pay off his father’s financial obligations.

“That was the voice of an animal.” (p. 8)

The Chief Clerk says this after rushing to the Samsa family’s apartment after the boss
notices Gregor is late for work. Gregor attempts to make his excuses but all that
comes out of his mouth is garbled insect sounds. In the modern world, people work
without appreciation like machines, or animals.

“The washing up from breakfast lay on the table; there was so much of it because,
for Gregor’s father, breakfast was the most important meal of the day and he would
stretch it out for several hours as he sat reading a number of different newspapers.”
(p. 9)
The many dishes illustrate how much time Gregor’s father, who is perfectly healthy,
spends sitting around eating breakfast and reading various newspapers while his
lonely son works to support the entire family.

“He isn’t well, please believe me. Why else would Gregor have missed a train! The
lad only ever thinks about the business. It nearly makes me cross the way he never
goes out in the evenings; he’s been in town for a week now but stayed home every
evening. He sits with us in the kitchen and just reads the paper or studies train
timetables.” (p. 6)
Mrs. Samsa makes Gregor’s excuses to the Chief Clerk after he arrives in the family
apartment the morning Gregor is transformed into a giant insect. It demonstrates the
way Gregor lives while supporting his undeserving family.

“He sallied out, changed direction four times not knowing what he should save first
before his attention was suddenly caught by the picture on the wall – which was
already denuded of everything else that had been on it – of the lady dressed in
copious fur. He hurried up onto the picture and pressed himself against its glass, it
held him firmly and felt good on his hot belly. This picture at least, now totally
covered by Gregor, would certainly be taken away by no-one.” (p. 19)
When Mrs. Samsa and Grete enter Gregor’s room to remove the furniture so he can
have more room to move around, Gregor becomes upset because he sees this as the
removal of the last vestiges of his humanity, especially the removal of the picture of
the female he sexually admires.
“It seemed remarkable to Gregor that above all the various noises of eating their
chewing teeth could still be heard, as if they had wanted to show Gregor that you
need teeth in order to eat and it was not possible to perform anything with jaws that
are toothless however nice they might be. ‘I’d like to eat something,’ said Gregor
anxiously, ‘but not anything like they’re eating. They do feed themselves. And here
I am, dying!’” (p. 26)
Near the end of the novella, the charwoman is the only person who pays much
attention to Gregor. Gregor’s sister Grete refuses to feed or clean up after him any
more. He is starving to death and finally beginning to get angry.

“He watched as it slowly began to get light everywhere outside the window too.
Then, without his willing it, his head sank down completely, and his last breath
flowed weakly from his nostrils.” (p. 29)
This is Gregor’s death scene. He dies after being rejected by his sister, alienated from
his family, indeed from any human being after his usefulness to everyone runs out.

“At first she would call to him as she did so with words that she probably
considered friendly, such as ‘come on then, you old dung-beetle!’, or ‘look at the
old dung-beetle there’!” (p. 24)
Near the end of the novel, the only person Gregor impresses anymore is the old
charwoman who is hired to do the heavier chores after the maid is fired. She teases
him, by calling him a “dung-beetle,” which we can interpret as a particularly low life
form. She is the one who finds Gregor after he dies and disposes of him so his family
doesn’t have to.

“Just from each other’s glance and almost without knowing it they agreed that it
would soon be time to find a good man for her. And, as if in confirmation of their
new dreams and good intentions, as soon as they reached their destination Grete
was the first to get up and stretch out her young body. (p. 33)
This is the final scene in the novella in which the Samsas’ celebrate Gregor’s death
with a trip to the country. Things are looking up for them now that they all have jobs.
They can move to smaller quarters and save money; they don’t have to bother with the
giant insect in the next room anymore. From the look the parents exchange it appears
they might have found a new “cash cow” to support them in the manner of Gregor.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

“What am I doing here in this endless winter?”

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is
happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the
unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”

“He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he
would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’s. He remained
in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in
the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow
light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his
nostrils streamed his last weak breath.”

“He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”

“His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound
to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the
doors. But that would have to be risked.”

“What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at
once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch
of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he
wasted only an hour or so of the firm’s time in the morning, was so tormented by
conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his
bed?”

“But Gregor understood easily that it was not only consideration for him which
prevented their moving, for he could easily have been transported in a suitable crate
with a few air holes; what mainly prevented the family from moving was their
complete hopelessness and the thought that they had been struck by a misfortune as
none of their relatives and acquaintances had ever been hit.”

“What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream.”

“If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be
calm. But if they took everything calmly, he he, too, had no reason to get excited
and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o’clock.”
“Away in the distance, a train appeared behind the trees, all its compartments were
lit, the windows were sure to be open. One of us started singing a ballad, but we all
wanted to sing. We sang far quicker than the speed of the train, we swung our arms
because our voices weren’t enough, our voices got into a tangle where we felt
happy. If you mix your voice with others’ voices, you feel as though you’re caught
on a hook. (trans. Michael Hofmann)”

“Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich
in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.”

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the
custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he

discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug…”

“If I didn’t have my parents to think about I’d have given in my notice a long time
ago, I’d have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything
I would, let him know just what I feel. He’d fall right off his desk! And it’s a funny
sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your
subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because
the boss is hard of hearing.”

“Over the table, on which an unpacked line of fabric samples was all spread out —
Samsa was a traveling salesman — hung the picture which he had recently cut out
of a glossy magazine and lodged in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady done up in
a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and raising up against the viewer a heavy
fur muff in which her whole forearm had disappeared.”

“He slid back again into his earlier position. “This getting up early,” he thought,
“makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep. Other travelling salesmen
live like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the inn during the
course of the morning to write up the necessary orders, these gentlemen are just
sitting down to breakfast. If I were to try that with my boss, I’d be thrown out on the
spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn’t be really good for me? If I didn’t hold
back for my parents’ sake, I’d have quit ages ago. I would’ve gone to the boss and
told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart. He would’ve fallen right off
his desk! How weird it is to sit up at that desk and talk down to the employee from
way up there. The boss has trouble hearing, so the employee has to step up quite
close to him. Anyway, I haven’t completely given up that hope yet. Once I’ve got
together the money to pay off my parents’ debt to him—that should take another
five or six years—I’ll do it for sure. Then I’ll make the big break. In any case, right
now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o’clock”

“É bom quando nossa consciência sofre grandes ferimentos, pois isso a torna mais
sensível a cada estímulo. Penso que devemos ler apenas livros que nos ferem, que
nos afligem. Se o livro que estamos lendo não nos desperta como um soco no
crânio, por que perder tempo lendo-o? Para que ele nos torne felizes, como você
diz? Oh Deus, nós seríamos felizes do mesmo modo se esses livros não existissem.
Livros que nos fazem felizes poderíamos escrever nós mesmos num piscar de olhos.
Precisamos de livros que nos atinjam como a mais dolorosa desventura, que nos
assolem profundamente – como a morte de alguém que amávamos mais do que a
nós mesmos –, que nos façam sentir que fomos banidos para o ermo, para longe de
qualquer presença humana – como um suicídio. Um livro deve ser um machado
para o mar congelado que há dentro de nós”

“Gregor, open up, I’m pleading with you.’ But Gregor had absolutely no intention
of opening the door and complimented himself instead on the precaution he had
adopted from his business trips of locking all the doors during the night even at
home.”

“He had always believed that his father had not been able to save a penny from the
business, at least his father had never told him anything to the contrary, and
Gregor, for his part, had never asked him any questions. In those days Gregor’s
sole concern had been to do everything in his power to make the family forget as
quickly as possible the business disaster which had plunged everyone into a state of
total despair. And so he had begun to work with special ardor and had risen almost
overnight from stock clerk to traveling salesman, which of course had opened up
very different money-making possibilities, and in no time his successes on the job
were transformed, by means of commissions, into hard cash that could be plunked
down on the table at home in front of his astonished and delighted family. Those
had been the wonderful times, and they had never returned, at least not with the
same glory, although later on Gregor earned enough money to meet the expenses of
the entire family and actually did so. They had just gotten used to it, the family as
well as Gregor, the money was received with thanks and given with pleasure, but no
special feeling of warmth went with it any more. ”

“It was half past six and the hands were quietly moving forwards.”
“seven o’clock. To catch that one, he would have to go in a mad rush. The sample
collection wasn’t packed up yet, and he really didn’t feel particularly fresh and
active. And even if he caught the train, there w”

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself
transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”

“What am I doing here in this endless winter?”

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is

happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the
unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”

“He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he
would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister’s. He remained
in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in
the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow
light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his
nostrils streamed his last weak breath.”

“He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”

“His biggest misgiving came from his concern about the loud crash that was bound
to occur and would probably create, if not terror, at least anxiety behind all the
doors. But that would have to be risked.”

“What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at
once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch
of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he
wasted only an hour or so of the firm’s time in the morning, was so tormented by
conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his
bed?”

“But Gregor understood easily that it was not only consideration for him which
prevented their moving, for he could easily have been transported in a suitable crate
with a few air holes; what mainly prevented the family from moving was their
complete hopelessness and the thought that they had been struck by a misfortune as
none of their relatives and acquaintances had ever been hit.”

“What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream.”

“If they were shocked, then Gregor had no further responsibility and could be
calm. But if they took everything calmly, he he, too, had no reason to get excited
and could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight o’clock.”

“Away in the distance, a train appeared behind the trees, all its compartments were
lit, the windows were sure to be open. One of us started singing a ballad, but we all
wanted to sing. We sang far quicker than the speed of the train, we swung our arms
because our voices weren’t enough, our voices got into a tangle where we felt
happy. If you mix your voice with others’ voices, you feel as though you’re caught
on a hook. (trans. Michael Hofmann)”

“Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich
in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.”

“The door could not be heard slamming; they had probably left it open, as is the
custom in homes where a great misfortune has occurred.”

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he

discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous bug…”

“If I didn’t have my parents to think about I’d have given in my notice a long time
ago, I’d have gone up to the boss and told him just what I think, tell him everything
I would, let him know just what I feel. He’d fall right off his desk! And it’s a funny
sort of business to be sitting up there at your desk, talking down at your
subordinates from up there, especially when you have to go right up close because
the boss is hard of hearing.”

“Over the table, on which an unpacked line of fabric samples was all spread out —
Samsa was a traveling salesman — hung the picture which he had recently cut out
of a glossy magazine and lodged in a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady done up in
a fur hat and a fur boa, sitting upright and raising up against the viewer a heavy
fur muff in which her whole forearm had disappeared.”
“He slid back again into his earlier position. “This getting up early,” he thought,
“makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep. Other travelling salesmen
live like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the inn during the
course of the morning to write up the necessary orders, these gentlemen are just
sitting down to breakfast. If I were to try that with my boss, I’d be thrown out on the
spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn’t be really good for me? If I didn’t hold
back for my parents’ sake, I’d have quit ages ago. I would’ve gone to the boss and
told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart. He would’ve fallen right off
his desk! How weird it is to sit up at that desk and talk down to the employee from
way up there. The boss has trouble hearing, so the employee has to step up quite
close to him. Anyway, I haven’t completely given up that hope yet. Once I’ve got
together the money to pay off my parents’ debt to him—that should take another
five or six years—I’ll do it for sure. Then I’ll make the big break. In any case, right
now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o’clock”

“É bom quando nossa consciência sofre grandes ferimentos, pois isso a torna mais
sensível a cada estímulo. Penso que devemos ler apenas livros que nos ferem, que
nos afligem. Se o livro que estamos lendo não nos desperta como um soco no
crânio, por que perder tempo lendo-o? Para que ele nos torne felizes, como você
diz? Oh Deus, nós seríamos felizes do mesmo modo se esses livros não existissem.
Livros que nos fazem felizes poderíamos escrever nós mesmos num piscar de olhos.
Precisamos de livros que nos atinjam como a mais dolorosa desventura, que nos
assolem profundamente – como a morte de alguém que amávamos mais do que a
nós mesmos –, que nos façam sentir que fomos banidos para o ermo, para longe de
qualquer presença humana – como um suicídio. Um livro deve ser um machado
para o mar congelado que há dentro de nós”

“Gregor, open up, I’m pleading with you.’ But Gregor had absolutely no intention
of opening the door and complimented himself instead on the precaution he had
adopted from his business trips of locking all the doors during the night even at
home.”

“He had always believed that his father had not been able to save a penny from the
business, at least his father had never told him anything to the contrary, and
Gregor, for his part, had never asked him any questions. In those days Gregor’s
sole concern had been to do everything in his power to make the family forget as
quickly as possible the business disaster which had plunged everyone into a state of
total despair. And so he had begun to work with special ardor and had risen almost
overnight from stock clerk to traveling salesman, which of course had opened up
very different money-making possibilities, and in no time his successes on the job
were transformed, by means of commissions, into hard cash that could be plunked
down on the table at home in front of his astonished and delighted family. Those
had been the wonderful times, and they had never returned, at least not with the
same glory, although later on Gregor earned enough money to meet the expenses of
the entire family and actually did so. They had just gotten used to it, the family as
well as Gregor, the money was received with thanks and given with pleasure, but no
special feeling of warmth went with it any more. ”

“It was half past six and the hands were quietly moving forwards.”

“seven o’clock. To catch that one, he would have to go in a mad rush. The sample
collection wasn’t packed up yet, and he really didn’t feel particularly fresh and
active. And even if he caught the train, there w”

Study Questions & Essay Topics 

For Academic Exam 
1. Besides providing money, what role does work play in the Samsa family? 
For the father, work plays a significant role in his sense of purpose and self-worth. At
the beginning of the story the father is shiftless and lethargic. He frequently lingers for
hours over his breakfast or spends the day sleeping, and he seems uninterested in
finding work, indicating that he has no sense of motivation. Eventually, we learn that
his loss of interest and apparent lack of self-worth resulted from the failure of his
business five years earlier, which implies that he had come to derive these things from
his business. While he regains some of his motivation and self-worth when he
resumes working, both quickly appear to fade again as he stops removing his uniform
in the evenings and allows it to become covered in grease spots. Though the story
doesn’t explain fully why the father behaves this way, it does seem clear that he
doesn’t find his new work satisfying, and as a result he falls back into his old
behavior.
Gregor has a similar relationship to work. He took his job as a traveling salesman in
order to earn money for the family, and consequently providing money for his family
became the focus of his life. It provides him both with a sense of purpose and it
created his identity as the money-earner of the family. After his metamorphosis,
Gregor struggles with the idea that he can’t work and that he no longer acts as the
family’s breadwinner. He continues to hope that he will suddenly turn back to his
former self and return to work. Even toward the end of the story he imagines telling
Grete of the plan he had to send her to the Conservatorium, indicating that he hasn’t
let go of the idea and that he still longs to play that role in his family. But unable to
work, Gregor finds himself in a position similar to that of the father, without any clear
sense of purpose or motivation. The great difference between them is that Gregor has
a greater struggle to overcome as he tries to reconcile his lingering human side with
his new body.

Work plays a distinctly different role in Grete’s life, as it serves to help her mature
and become an adult. At the beginning of the story, she is still a child. She has no real
responsibilities, and in fact Gregor describes her life as “dressing herself nicely,
sleeping long, helping in the housekeeping, going out to a few modest entertainments,
and above all playing the violin.” After finding work to help earn money, as well as
having the duty of caring for Gregor, Grete starts to become more mature. By the end
of the story, she is essentially an adult as she now has adult responsibilities and is
ready to marry.

2. How does Gregor’s personality change after his metamorphosis, and how does
it remain the same? 
Although at first Gregor is psychologically unaltered by his transformation, his
personality changes over the course of the story in accordance with his new physical
urges and desires. These changes primarily come about as he adapts to his new body
and learns what it finds comfortable. For instance, he begins to prefer cramped, dark
spaces, such as the space under his sofa, and he feels more comfortable resting on the
walls and ceiling of his room than he does lying in bed. He also begins to feel
disturbed by noise, such as the noise Grete makes when she enters his room to clean
it, and eventually he comes to prefer being left entirely alone, even considering any
human contact upsetting.

Many of Gregor’s desires from his human life remain essentially unchanged,
however. Even after he ceases to want to see his family members, he still wishes he
could provide for them financially, and he feels ashamed when he hears them
discussing their finances and the sacrifices they must now make to earn money, such
as selling their valuables. Notably, toward the end of the story Gregor fantasizes about
revealing to Grete his plan to pay for her to attend the Conservatorium for violin,
revealing that he continues to love his sister and to want to provide for her. This
tension between Gregor’s lingering desires and emotions from his human life and the
demands and restrictions of his new body leaves Gregor feeling deeply conflicted.

3. How does the meaning of the picture of the woman in furs change over the
course of the story? 
Although it is unclear what meaning the picture of the woman in furs initially held for
Gregor, as the story progresses the picture takes on a meaning totally unrelated to its
content. As we learn early in the story, Gregor cut the picture out of an illustrated
magazine and hung the picture on his wall in a gilt frame, but neither Gregor nor the
narrator specifies what drew Gregor to the picture. One interpretation is that the
picture represents Gregor’s desires. He could have presumably found the woman in
the picture to be physically attractive, and the many furs she wears in the image could
symbolize wealth to him. Gregor, who we learn later tried briefly to court a woman
without success, may have desired a relationship, perhaps a sexual relationship in
particular, as well as to have the wealth represented by the furs, since wealth would
allow him to care for his family as he wanted.

When Gregor clings to the picture as Grete and the mother are clearing the furniture
out of his room, however, he does so because the picture has taken on an entirely
different meaning. By that point, the picture is simply a token of Gregor’s human life
that reminds him of who he used to be. Notably, as he looks around the room in
desperation while Grete and the mother empty it out, he settles on the picture simply
because it’s an object he can save, not because of its content. In other words, the
picture lost whatever original meaning it had for him and took on a new meaning in
the situation.

4.How do the minor characters, the Chief Clerk and the three Lodgers, function
in “The Metamorphosis?”
Because all the action of the story takes place in one apartment, the Chief Clerk
represents the world of work that Gregor used to inhabit before his transformation.
His arrival at the front door a few hours after Gregor wakes us as an giant insect
portrays the type of scrutiny and stress Gregor found himself under on a daily basis:
“the chief clerk’s firm footsteps in his highly polished boots could now be heard in the
adjoining room.” Readers can only imagine what it would be like if a professor
showed up in the dorm if a student decided to sleep in and roust her out of bed, or if
any boss at any office showed up at one’s home for that matter. It’s preposterous. But
this is the world Gregor inhabits since his father lost his business and put the family’s
financial debt on his young son’s shoulders. In short, Gregor is enslaved.
The three Lodgers function as comic relief in a very bizarre, absurd, and increasingly
dark tale. Two of them follow their leader around in perfect harmony as if reading the
leader’s mind: “the gentlemen bent over the dishes set in front of them as if they
wanted to test the food before eating it, and the gentleman in the middle, who seemed
to count as an authority for the other two, did indeed cut off a piece of meat while it
was still in its dish, clearly wishing to establish whether it was sufficiently cooked or
whether it should be sent back to the kitchen.” These men also represent the outside
world and are hard taskmasters, arrogant and rude. When Mr. Samsa throws them out
of his home, he reclaims his earlier masculine vigor.
5.What role does the picture of the lady in the gilt frame play in “The
Metamorphosis?” 
The item of prominence in Gregor’s room at the beginning of “The Metamorphosis,”
is a “picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a
nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat
upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the
viewer.” Despite his enormously busy life, Gregor has taken the time to cut out this
sexually charged picture, place it in a gilt frame of his own making and hang it on the
wall of his bedroom in the manner perhaps of teenagers would hang up a picture of a
person to whom they were attracted.
The picture demonstrates that Gregor, a young man, desires a woman with whom he
can form a permanent relationship. As it is, he is in a hit and miss relationship with
one of the chambermaids in a hotel he frequents as a traveling salesman but it was
more miss than hit. However, his family’s dependence on him for financial support
has to remain the focus of his life, and his future as far as a love life is concerned is
bleak indeed.

6.In most short stories and novels, the protagonist undergoes a change of sorts
and evolves into a more fully formed character. Agree or disagree with this
statement in regards to Gregor in “The Metamorphosis?” 
As a character, Gregor fails to grow and evolve. In fact he devolves. While
“traditional” multifaceted fictive characters start out on one level, undergo conflict,
resolution and end up at a higher level, more evolved as a person, Gregor begins to
devolve in the very opening line of the story: “One morning, when Gregor Samsa
woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic
insect.” He is no longer what humans consider the highest form of life, but has
transmuted into what various translators call a beetle, a cockroach or what the
charwoman refers to as a “dung beetle;” regardless, a much lower life form.
His devolution doesn’t stop there, and Gregor degenerates even further the longer he
remains an insect. He lives at night, eats spoiled food and enjoys tightly closed in
spaces: “He had been reduced to the condition of an ancient invalid and it took him
long, long minutes to crawl across his room-crawling over the ceiling was out of the
question.” Unlike most protagonists who experience growth of one sort or another,
throughout the story Gregor shows no growth whatsoever and continues to deteriorate
mentally and physically. When his last vestige of humanity, his love for music, is
shattered by his sister Grete he goes into his room where he dies alone. His death is
hardly given a second thought.

7.Critics maintain that Gregor finds freedom only in death because there was no
other way out. Agree or disagree. 
Gregor Samsa feels enslaved by life. Through no real choice of his own he is forced to
maintain his family lavishly after his father’s business failed. He also shouldered his
father’s debts to his boss and works as a sort of indentured servant as a traveling
textiles salesman. He gets up at four in the morning to catch a five o’clock train and
lives most of his life in hotel rooms with free time only to read railway timetables. In
short, to use today’s cliche, Gregor needs to get a life.
When he began supporting his family, Gregor enjoyed the attention and appreciation,
but over time “they had even got used to it, both Gregor and the family, they took the
money with gratitude and he was glad to provide it, although there was no longer
much warm affection given in return.” Now they employ a maid and sit around all day
while Gregor works himself to death. It would seem then, that if Gregor’s family is
made up of healthy adults-they manage to support themselves very well after he
becomes incapacitated-that he should quit his job, form a relationship and leave his
parents’ home.
However, Gregor is even more enslaved emotionally. He is so overwhelmed with guilt
that he can’t get out of bed for the first time in years. After Gregor finds out that his
father had withheld money after his business failed (and thus didn’t really have to take
on the financial burden at all) instead of being angry he says it was a good thing his
father lied, given how things turned out.
He feels guilty for upsetting their lives, guilty for the way he looks and so forth and so
on. Gregor tries to escape his life by transforming into a giant insect, but death, it
seems, is the only real way to gain his freedom.

8.The dictionary defines “metamorphosis” in terms of change, physical, emotion

or spiritual. Beyond the evident change in Gregor at the beginning, where else
does a metamorphic change occur? 
At the beginning of “The Metamorphosis,” Gregor clearly undergoes a change of
major proportions. However, the tale could also be interpreted as the true
metamorphosis occurring within the Samsa family. At the beginning, Mr. Samsa
spends half the day eating breakfast and reading a variety of newspapers. He is
overweight and needs to use a cane but otherwise remains healthy. Mrs. Samsa has
asthma and needs to look out the window on occasion for air but other then this there
is nothing stopping her from retaining gainful employment. Their daughter Grete likes
to sleep late and play the violin. They are all completely dependent upon their son and
brother for their livelihood and panic one morning when he fails to get out to bed to
go to work. Each of them stands at a separate door entreating, cajoling and ordering
him to get up to catch the train to work.
However, after Gregor’s transformation, each member of the family is forced to
undergo a metamorphosis themselves. Mr. Samsa takes a job at a bank as a doorman:
“He was standing up straight enough now; dressed in a smart blue uniform with gold
buttons, the sort worn by the employees at the banking institute.” Clearly he has
regained his earlier masculine vigor and it seems that all the while his son was
supporting him he could have been working. Mrs. Gregor, similarly, takes in sewing
for fancy ladies shops, a job she can perform despite her asthma. She too could have
all the while been helping in the support of the family. Grete also, who was not doing
much of anything, goes to work in a shop and studies at night so she can get a better
paying job.
Truly, by the end of the story, all of the Samsas have been transformed from a highly
dependent group of slackers into a self-sustaining functioning family. They have
undergone a complete metamorphosis.