Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
Biography of Franz Kafka
Born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, capital of what is now the Czech Republic, writer Franz Kafka grew up in an upper middle-class Jewish family. After studying law at the University of Prague, he worked in insurance and wrote in the evenings. In 1923, he moved to Berlin to focus on writing, but died of tuberculosis shortly after. His friend Max Brod published most of his work posthumously, such as Amerika and The Castle.
the story plot
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 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.
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.
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.
interesting events
1) Gregor Samsa struggles to reconcile his humanity with his transformation into a giant bug.
2) Unable to bear the thought that all evidence of his human life will be removed from his room, he clings to the picture of the woman in furs, startling Grete and the mother and leading the father to attack him.
3) Gregor, injured in the father’s attack, slowly weakens, venturing out of his room once more to hear Grete play the violin and dying shortly thereafter