The
Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
• 1883-1924
• Born in Prague (in what is now the
Czech Republic)
• Spoke and wrote in German
• Had a doctorate in law, but worked in
the insurance industry
2
Franz Kafka
• Kafka’s writings often deal with loneliness,
isolation, and alienation, all of which are
aggravated by the social and economic
systems that structure human relations.
• His style is stark – in spite of the strange
subject matter in many of his works, there
is no poetic or metaphoric language.
• The Metamorphosis (written in 1912,
published in 1915) is probably his most
famous work.
3
Franz Kafka
• Generically, The Metamorphosis is a
novella – a text that is longer than a
short story but not as long as a novel.
• Heart of Darkness, which we will be
looking at in the second term, falls
under the same category.
4
Setting the Scene
• The protagonist of the story is Gregor Samsa,
who is the son of middle-class parents in Prague.
• Gregor’s father lost most of his money about five
years earlier, causing Gregor to take a job with
one of his father's creditors as a travelling
salesman.
• Gregor provides the sole support for his family
(father, mother, and sister), and also found them
their current lodgings in Prague.
• When the story begins, Gregor is spending a night
at home before embarking upon another business
trip. And then. . .
5
Part I: A Famous Opening Line
• “As Gregor Samsa awoke one
morning from uneasy dreams he
found himself transformed in his bed
into a giant insect” (958).
• Compare with another famous
opening line . . .
6
Part I: A Famous Opening Line
• “It was a bright cold day in April and
the clocks were striking thirteen”
(Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 1).
• What do these two lines have in
common?
7
Compare the beginnings to the
endings:
• “As Gregor Samsa awoke one
morning from uneasy dreams he
found himself transformed in his bed
into a giant insect” (958).
• “It was a bright cold day in April and
the clocks were striking thirteen”
(Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four 1).
8
Both sentences make their points
through defamiliarization:
• They initially describe normal, everyday,
almost boring events, only to disrupt this
sense of normalcy at the very end.
• The disruption of readerly expectation is
sometimes called a defamiliarization effect
– in German, Verfremdungseffekt, which
translates as “alienation effect.” This term
is associated with the German playwright
Bertolt Brecht.
9
Lost in Translation?
• English translators have often sought to
render the word Ungeziefer as “insect,” but
this is not entirely accurate, as, in German,
Ungeziefer literally means “vermin” and is
sometimes used colloquially to mean
"bug,“ which is a much more vague term
than “insect.”
• Why might “vermin” actually be more
appropriate?
10
Lost in Translation?
• “Vermin” can either be defined as a
parasite feeding off the living (as is
Gregor's family feeding off him), or a
vulnerable entity that scurries away
upon another’s approach, as Gregor
does for most of the narrative after
his transformation.
11
Vladimir Nabokov's Drawings
12
Significance
• As with “Bartleby, the Scrivener,”
improbable or even impossible
events in fiction often ask us to
consider what the larger meaning of
these events may be.
• By disrupting our normal perspective
on reality, these unusual plotlines
force us to ask profound questions.
13
Significance
• Writers often use fantastic events to
signify additional levels of meaning
beyond the literal.
• Thus, we need to ask ourselves what
Gregor’s metamorphosis signifies in
terms of larger issues.
14
At first, Gregor refuses to
accept his changed state:
• He tries to get out of bed, get dressed,
plan his day, and so on, as though his
metamorphosis hadn’t actually happened.
• The long, detailed description of the
difficulties of getting out of bed (960-62)
reminds us of how dependent we are on
our bodies. Gregor’s normal sense of
corporeality – of himself – is thus
disrupted, or defamiliarized.
15
His Parents and the Clerk
• Gregor, still trapped in his room,
hears the arrival of the chief clerk
from his employer, who threatens
him.
• Nabokov, in his lecture on the
novella, notes that the conversation
in the hallway “is a little on the lines
of a Greek chorus,” with all parties
making demands upon Gregor.
16
His Parents and the Clerk
• When Gregor finally escapes from his
room, his appearance so horrifies all
onlookers (the chief clerk runs away,
and his mother screams and upsets a
pot of coffee) that his father beats
him back into the chamber, making
him bleed in the process.
17
His Parents and the Clerk
• So, Gregor goes full circle: he is
imprisoned in his body, and he is
once again imprisoned in his room.
• Thus ends Part I of the novella.
18
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• In Part II, we learn much more about
Gregor’s parents and sister, and their
responses to the transformed
situation in their household.
• We experience all of this from
Gregor’s perspective, as he listens to
his family through the door of his
room.
19
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Our access to his family, then, is, like
Gregor’s, limited, and filtered through
his perspective.
• What happens to Gregor during this
sequence?
20
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• At the beginning of Part II, an attempt
is made to feed Gregor, but the
human food that has been placed in
his room by his sister (bread and
milk) is wholly unappealing.
• Disappointed, Gregor spends the
remainder of the long evening trying
to hear his family in the living room.
21
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• He cannot hear much, however, and notes
“‛What a quiet life our family has been
leading,’ [. . .] and as he sat there
motionless staring into the darkness he felt
great pride in the fact that he had been
able to provide such a life for his parents
and sister in such a fine flat. But what if all
the quiet, the comfort, the contentment
were now to end in horror?” (970).
• What “horror” is Gregor referring to?
22
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Although the narrative goes on to note that
“[t]o keep himself from being lost in such
thoughts, Gregor took refuge in movement
and crawled up and down in the room,”
neither Gregor nor his family seem
particularly horrified by his transformation.
• The horror that Gregor suggests appears
to be poverty – the loss of the
respectability and comfort that his job
provided.
23
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Note that, as he hears his family steal up
the stairs to go to bed, Gregor starts to feel
uneasy, and “with a half-unconscious
action, not without a slight feeling of
shame, he scuttled under the sofa, where
he felt comfortable at once, although his
back was a little cramped and he could not
lift his head up, and his only regret was
that his body was too broad to get the
whole of it under the sofa . . .”
24
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “He stayed there all night, spending the
time partly in a light slumber, from which
his hunger kept waking him up with a start,
and partly worrying and sketching vague
hopes, which all led to the same
conclusion, that he must lie low for the
present and, by exercising patience and
the utmost consideration, help the family to
bear the inconvenience that he was bound
to cause them in his present condition”
(970).
25
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Gregor’s concern is for his family, and not
for himself. Are they equally concerned
with him?
• At first, they seem to be. Gregor’s sister
Grete brings him a selection of foods (he
chooses the ones that have rotted), and he
is pathetically grateful. Note, though, what
happens when she returns to the room . . .
26
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “[H]is sister turned the key slowly as a sign
for him to retreat. That roused him at
once, although he was nearly asleep, and
he hurried under the sofa again. But it
took considerable self-control for him to
stay under the sofa, even for the short time
his sister was in the room, since the large
meal had swollen his body somewhat and
he was so cramped he could hardly
breathe. . .”
27
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “Slight attacks of breathlessness afflicted
him and his eyes were starting a little out
of his head as he watched his
unsuspecting sister sweeping together
with a broom not the remains of what he
had eaten but even the things he had not
touched, as if these were now of no use to
anyone, and hastily shovelling it all into a
bucket, which she covered with a wooden
lid and carried away” (971).
• What is the significance of this passage?
28
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• In the first few days following Gregor’s
metamorphosis, almost all conversation
centres around him and what the family
will do now.
• We are told that, when Gregor began
working for his exploitative firm in an effort
to save his family’s fortunes, he was soon
“earn[ing] so much money that he was
able to meet the expenses of the whole
household and did so. They had simply got
used to it, both the family and Gregor”
(973).
29
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “With his sister alone had he remained
intimate, and it was a secret plan of his
that she, who loved music, unlike himself,
and could play movingly on the violin,
should be sent next year to study at the
School of Music, despite the great
expense that would entail, which must be
made up in some other way” (973).
• Gregor had intended to announce this
decision on Christmas Day.
30
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Gregor, knowing that he can do
nothing to help the family now, keeps
thinking about this situation, and
wondering what his family will do.
• What does he hear his father telling
the rest of the family about their
financial situation?
31
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “[A] certain amount of investments, a very small
amount it was true, had survived the wreck of
their fortunes and had even increased a little
because the dividends had not been touched
meanwhile. And besides that, the money Gregor
brought home every month—had never been
quite used up and now amounted to a small
capital sum. Behind the door Gregor nodded his
head eagerly, rejoiced at his evidence of
unexpected thrift and foresight. True, he could
really have paid off some more of his father's
debts to the boss with this extra money, and so
brought much nearer the day on which he could
quit his job, but doubtless it was better the way his
father had arranged it” (973-74).
32
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• What strikes you as significant in this
passage?
• Gregor’s family have been living off
his earnings while he slaves away at
a job that he hates, and, as the
description that follows suggests,
their behaviour seems particularly
parasitic given how clearly
unprepared they are to work:
33
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “Now, his father was still hale enough
but an old man, and he had done no
work for the past five years and could
not be expected to do much; during
these five years, the first years of
leisure in his laborious though
unsuccessful life, he had grown
rather fat and become sluggish . . .”
34
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “And Gregor’s old mother, how was
she to earn a living with her asthma,
which troubled her even when she
walked through the flat and kept her
lying on a sofa every other day
panting for breath beside an open
window? . . .”
35
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “And was his sister to earn her bread,
she who was still a child of seventeen
and whose life hitherto had been so
pleasant, consisting as it did in
dressing herself nicely, sleeping long,
helping in the housekeeping, going
out to a few modest entertainments
and above all playing the violin?”
(974).
36
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• There is a certain amount of irony in
the narrative voice here – while
Gregor feels a great deal of shame
for the perilous situation in which he
believes that he has left his family,
there’s a clear implication here that it
is they who are to blame.
37
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• When Gregor’s sister enters his room
one morning about a month after his
metamorphosis, she seems ill at ease
– as a result, Gregor spends four
hours dragging a sheet to the sofa so
that he can hide behind it and not be
seen, even though this is not very
comfortable for him (975).
38
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• His parents stay out of the room, but
eventually, Gregor’s mother enters.
• His sister suggests that, if they were to
take the furniture out of his room, Gregor
would have more space in which to crawl
about.
• Gregor’s mother, however, is not
convinced, believing that taking the
furniture away might be read as a sign that
the family has given up all hope (977).
39
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Note the extended passage on page
977, which shows Gregor as being
torn between two emotions, but
ultimately concluding that he wants
the furniture to stay. Grete, however,
thinks otherwise, and the two women
soon begin removing the furniture.
40
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “Although Gregor kept reassuring
himself that nothing out of the way
was happening, but only a few bits of
furniture were being changed round,
he [. . .] was bound to confess that he
could not be able to stand it for long.
They were clearing his room out;
taking away everything he loved”
(978).
41
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Gregor decides that he must at least
save the picture on the wall, and so
attaches himself to it, but his mother
faints at the sight of him, and,
concerned for his mother, Gregor is
outside of his room when his father
demands to know what has been
happening.
42
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• What follows is one of the most important
scenes in the story.
• First of all, Gregor’s father has changed:
“Truly, this was not the father he had
imagined to himself [. . .] and yet, could
that be his father? the man who used to lie
wearily sunk in bed [. . . w]as standing
there in fine shape; dressed in a smart
blue uniform with gold buttons such as
bank messengers wear; his strong double
chin bulged over the stiff high collar of his
jacket . . .”
43
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• “from underneath his bushy eyebrows his
black eyes darted fresh and penetrating
glances; his onetime tangled white hair
had been combed flat on either side of a
shining and carefully exact parting. He
pitched his cap [. . .] in a wide sweep
across the whole room on to a sofa and
with the tailends of his jacket thrown back,
his hands in his trouser pockets, advanced
with a grim visage towards Gregor. [. . .]
Gregor was dumbfounded at the
enormous size of his shoe soles” (980).
44
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Gregor’s father does not actually
stomp on Gregor, but he does pelt
him with apples while his son is trying
to escape, hurting him tremendously.
• At the end of Part II, Gregor loses
consciousness just as he sees his
mother “with her hands clasped
round his father’s neck as she
begged for her son’s life” (981).
45
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• At this point, how does each member
of Gregor’s family feel about him?
46
Part II: Gregor’s Family
• Gregor’s sister has become openly hostile
towards the brother she once loved.
• Gregor’s mother still appears to have
some love for him, but she is very much
struggling to adjust to his present form,
and this struggle is taking its toll on her
health.
• Gregor’s father has become strong (after
five years of being completely supported
by Gregor), and is not afraid to use his
new power against his son.
47
Part III: Decline and Death
• “The serious injury done to Gregor, which
disabled him for more than a month—the
apple went on sticking in his body as a
visible reminder, since no one ventured to
remove it—seemed to have made even his
father recollect that Gregor was a member
of the family, despite his present
unfortunate and repulsive shape, and
ought not to be treated as an enemy, that,
on the contrary, family duty required the
suppression of disgust and the exercise of
patience, nothing but patience” (981).
48
Part III: Decline and Death
• The door leading from Gregor's darkened
room to the lighted living room is now left
open every evening, but when Gregor
creeps out to listen to his family’s
conversations, they sound glum, tired, and
defeated (981-82).
• The serving-girl is dismissed (replaced
with an elderly charwoman, who becomes
important later on), and “[v]arious family
ornaments, which his mother and sister
used to wear with pride at parties and
celebrations, had to be sold” (982).
49
Part III: Decline and Death
• “But what they lamented most was the fact that
they could not leave the flat which was much too
big for their present circumstances, because they
could not think of any way to shift Gregor. Yet
Gregor saw well enough that consideration for
him was not the main difficulty preventing the
removal, for they could have easily shifted him in
some suitable box with a few air holes in it; what
really kept them from moving into another flat was
rather their own complete hopelessness and the
belief that they had been singled out for a
misfortune such as had never happened to any of
their relations or acquaintances” (982-83).
50
Part III: Decline and Death
• The family feels persecuted, and Gregor,
consequently, is increasingly neglected.
• The half-hearted cleaning of his room by
his mother, after weeks of sisterly neglect,
causes a noisy family row, with the result
that the charwoman takes over his care.
She is not frightened of him, and, in fact,
seems to have some friendliness towards
him, referring to Gregor as “you old dung
beetle” (984).
51
Part III: Decline and Death
• Nevertheless, Gregor’s room becomes
filled with spare furniture and various items
haphazardly placed there by his family, as
one of the rooms in the flat has been let to
lodgers.
• Notice that Gregor almost stops eating
entirely, while Kafka emphasizes the food
being prepared and eaten by the “[t]hree
serious gentlemen” (985).
52
Part III: Decline and Death
• “It seemed remarkable to Gregor that
among the various noises coming from the
table he could always distinguish the
sound of their masticating teeth, as if this
were a sign to Gregor that one needed
teeth in order to eat, and that with
toothless jaws even of the finest make one
could do nothing. ‘I’m hungry enough,’ said
Gregor sadly to himself, ‘but not for that
kind of food. How these lodgers are
stuffing themselves, and here am I dying
of starvation!’” (985-86).
53
Part III: Decline and Death
• In another crucial scene, Grete plays
the violin in the kitchen, and Gregor is
certain that this is the first time that
he has heard the instrument since his
metamorphosis.
• The lodgers invite her to come into
the living room, where they spend
their evenings, in order to play for
them.
54
Part III: Decline and Death
• Gregor, “owing to the amount of dust which lay
thick in his room and rose into the air at the
slightest movement, [. . . is] covered with dust;
fluff and hair and remnants of food trailed with
him, caught on his back and along his sides; his
indifference to everything was much too great
for him to turn on his back and scrape himself
clean on the carpet, as once he had done
several times a day. And in spite of his
condition, no shame deterred him from
advancing a little over the spotless floor of the
living room” (986).
55
Part III: Decline and Death
• “To be sure, no one was aware of him.
The family was entirely absorbed in the
violin-playing; the lodgers, however, [. . .]
had soon retreated to the window, [. . .]
making it more than obvious that they had
been disappointed in their expectation of
hearing good or enjoyable violin-playing,
that they had had more than enough of the
performance and only out of courtesy
suffered a continued disturbance of their
peace” (986-87).
56
Part III: Decline and Death
• Gregor, however, is certain that his
sister is playing beautifully, and he
“crawled a little farther forward and
lowered his head to the ground so
that it might be possible for his eyes
to meet hers. Was he an animal that
music had such an effect upon him?
He felt as if the way were opening
before him to the unknown
nourishment he craved” (987).
57
Part III: Decline and Death
• Gregor is responding on a very
primitive level to the music, but there
is something else going on as well:
• “He was determined to push forward
till he reached his sister, to pull at her
skirt and so let her know that she was
to come into his room with her violin,
for no one here appreciated her
playing as he would appreciate it. . .”
58
Part III: Decline and Death
• “[H]is sister should need no constraint, she should
stay with him of her own free will; she should sit
beside him on the couch, bend down her ear to
him and hear him confide that he had had the firm
intention of sending her to the School of Music,
and that, but for his mishap, last Christmas—
surely Christmas was long past?—he would have
announced it to everybody without allowing a
single objection. After this confession his sister
would be so touched that she would burst into
tears, and Gregor would then raise himself to her
shoulder and kiss her on the neck” (987).
• What is the significance of this dream?
59
Part III: Decline and Death
• Gregor’s vision is soon shattered
when the lodgers spot him, and
Gregor’s father, interestingly, tries to
block the view of the lodgers and
drive them towards their room.
Unsurprisingly, the trio immediately
gives notice to quit the flat.
60
Part III: Decline and Death
• Gregor’s sister announces, with
finality, that “things can’t go on like
this. [. . .] I won’t utter my brother’s
name in the presence of this
creature, and so all I say is: we must
try to get rid of it. We’ve tried to look
after it and to put up with it as far as
is humanly possible, and I don’t think
anyone could reproach us in the
slightest” (988).
61
Part III: Decline and Death
• It does not take long for the father and sister to
conclude that Gregor cannot understand them,
and Grete insists that “[i]f this were Gregor, he
would have realized long ago that human beings
can’t live with such a creature and he’d have gone
away on his own accord. Then we wouldn't have
any brother, but we’d be able to go on living and
keep his memory in honour. As it is, this creature
persecutes us, drives away our lodgers, obviously
wants the whole apartment to himself and would
have us all sleep in the gutter” (989).
• Painfully, Gregor makes his way back to his room,
only to hear the door immediately being shut and
bolted by his sister.
62
Part III: Decline and Death
• “The rotting apple in his back and the inflamed
area around it, all covered with soft dust, already
hardly troubled him. He thought of his family with
tenderness and love. The decision that he must
disappear was one that he held to even more
strongly than his sister, if that were possible. In
this state of vacant and peaceful meditation he
remained until the tower clock struck three in the
morning. The first broadening of light in the world
outside the window entered his consciousness
once more. Then his head sank to the floor of its
own accord and from his nostrils came the last
faint flicker of his breath” (990).
63
Part III: Decline and Death
• In the morning, the charwoman finds
Gregor’s dead, dried-up body.
• While Grete points out that Gregor must
have starved to death, the family seems
relieved, and Grete joins her family (invited
by her mother “with a tremulous smile”
[991]) without looking back.
• The charwoman opens the window. It is
the end of March, and thus the beginning
of spring.
64
Part III: Decline and Death
• Nabokov notes, in his famous lecture
on this text, that after Gregor’s death
it is never “father” and “mother” but
only Mr. and Mrs. Samsa.
• Mr. Samsa dismisses the lodgers in
no uncertain terms – much to their
surprise – “and as if a burden had
been lifted from them [the family]
went back into their apartment” (992).
65
Part III: Decline and Death
• The family decides to “spend this day
in resting and going for a stroll; they
had not only deserved such a respite
from work, but absolutely needed it”
(992).
• Should we read this passage in
straightforward terms, or as tinged
with irony?
66
Part III: Decline and Death
• The charwoman reveals that the body has already
been disposed of, and though this briefly unsettles
the Samsas, they are soon unified again:
• “[T]hey all three left the apartment together, which
was more than they had done for months, and
went by trolley into the open country outside the
town. The trolley, in which they were the only
passengers, was filled with warm sunshine.
Leaning comfortably back in their seats they
canvassed their prospects for the future, and it
appeared on closer inspection that these were not
at all bad, for the jobs they had got, which so far
they had never really discussed with each other,
were all three admirable and likely to lead to
better things later on . . .”
67
Part III: Decline and Death
• “The greatest immediate improvement in their
condition would of course arise from moving
to another house; they wanted to take a
smaller and cheaper but also better situated
and more easily run apartment than the one
they had, which Gregor had selected. While
they were thus conversing, it struck both Mr.
and Mrs. Samsa, almost at the same moment,
as they became aware of their daughter's
increasing vivacity, that in spite of all the
sorrow of recent times, which had made her
cheeks pale, she had bloomed into a buxom
girl. . .”
68
Part III: Decline and Death
• “They grew quieter and half
unconsciously exchanged glances of
complete agreement, having come to
the conclusion that it would soon be
time to find a good husband for her.
And it was like a confirmation of their
new dreams and excellent intentions
that at the end of their journey their
daughter sprang to her feet first and
stretched her young body” (993).
69
Part III: Decline and Death
• How do you interpret the ending?
What does it all mean?
70
Part III: Decline and Death
• One can read this ending in a fairly
straightforward manner – the story
began with Gregor’s changed body,
and it ends with Grete’s.
• Now a “good-looking, shapely”
woman, she is ready to be married off
by her eager parents, who view her
as a commodity to benefit them.
71
Part III: Decline and Death
• Similarly, if we view the parents as
parasitical, we might suggest that,
now that they have wrung all of the
life out of their son, they are ready to
move on to their daughter – perhaps
even to “eat” her!
72
Part III: Decline and Death
• Gregor seems to have been by far
the most caring and compassionate
individual in the home. Now that he
has gone, the fact that Grete is
described more as animal than
human being might cause us to
wonder if there is any humanity left in
the Samsas at all.
73