The Metamorphosis

Summary

The Metamorphosis is a novella in three parts about Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman in cloth who supports his parents and his seventeen-year-old sister Grete, and who wakes one morning in his room to find that he has been changed into a monstrous insect. Kafka tells the story plainly, in the third person and almost entirely from Gregor's point of view, never explaining the transformation and never letting it become a dream. In Part I Gregor lies on his armored back, worrying chiefly that he has missed the early train and will lose his job. His family knock at the locked door, and the chief clerk of his firm arrives to demand an explanation, hinting that Gregor is suspected of mishandling money. Gregor learns to move his many small legs, turns the key with his jaws and appears in the doorway. The clerk flees in horror, his mother collapses, and his father drives him back into the room with a walking stick and a newspaper, wounding him on the door frame. In Part II the family adjusts. Grete brings Gregor food, discovering that he now prefers half-rotten leftovers, and cleans his room while he hides under the couch. Gregor overhears that his father had kept back savings from the failed family business, and that Gregor's years of labor had paid a debt the family could have managed otherwise. Grete and her mother decide to clear out his furniture so he can crawl freely; Gregor, alarmed at losing every sign of his human past, clings to a framed picture of a lady in furs. His mother sees him and faints, and his father, now in a bank messenger's uniform, pelts him with apples. One lodges in his back. In Part III the rotting apple and the wound weaken Gregor. The family take jobs, dismiss the maid, hire a gaunt old charwoman, and rent a room to three bearded lodgers. One evening Grete plays the violin for the lodgers; Gregor, drawn by the music, creeps into the living room, the lodgers see him and give notice, and Grete declares that the creature is not Gregor and must go. Gregor returns to his room, thinks of his family with tenderness and love, and dies before dawn. The charwoman sweeps the body away. The father dismisses the lodgers, and the three Samsas write letters excusing themselves from work and take a tram into the spring countryside, where the parents notice that Grete has become a lovely young woman ready for a husband. Kafka wrote the story in late 1912. It appeared in the monthly Die weißen Blätter in October 1915 and as a small book from Kurt Wolff in Leipzig later that year. The library does not include a full text: the German original is in the public domain, but no English translation has been verified as public domain.

Plot or Argument

• Part I: The morning of the transformation

  Gregor wakes as an insect, frets about his job and his train, and struggles with his new body while his family and the chief clerk call through the doors. When he opens his door the clerk runs, his mother collapses, and his father drives him back inside, injuring him.

• Part II: The family adjusts

  Grete feeds and tends him and the family learns of hidden savings. The women remove his furniture; Gregor protects the picture of the lady in furs; his mother faints at the sight of him; his father bombards him with apples, and one sticks in his back.

• Part III: Lodgers, the violin and Gregor's death

  Weakened and neglected, Gregor listens as the family work long hours and take in three lodgers. Drawn out by Grete's violin playing, he is seen; Grete insists they must be rid of him. He dies that night, and the relieved family travels to the countryside, looking to Grete's future.

Characters

• Gregor Samsa, protagonist

  Dutiful travelling salesman who supports his family and wakes transformed into a huge insect.

• Grete Samsa, sister

  Gregor's seventeen-year-old sister, a violinist, who cares for him at first and later demands his removal.

• Mr. Samsa, father

  Gregor's father, idle after his business failed, who becomes a uniformed bank messenger and treats Gregor with violence.

• Mrs. Samsa, mother

  Gregor's asthmatic mother, torn between love for her son and horror at his appearance.

• The chief clerk, Gregor's superior

  Manager's deputy who comes to the flat to demand why Gregor missed his train and flees at the sight of him.

• The charwoman, servant

  Bony old cleaning woman who is unafraid of Gregor and disposes of his body.

• The three lodgers, boarders

  Bearded, exacting gentlemen who rent a room from the Samsas and give notice after seeing Gregor.

Lessons

• Worth beyond usefulness

  While Gregor earns money he is the center of the household; once he cannot work, his family come to see him as a burden. The story presses the question of whether a person's value lies in what he provides.

  • What does Gregor worry about first when he wakes, and what does that reveal about his life?
  • How does the discovery of the father's savings change the meaning of Gregor's years of work?
  • Does the family's love for Gregor depend on his usefulness?

• The slow wearing-out of care

  Grete begins as a devoted nurse and ends as the one who says Gregor must go. Kafka shows, without commentary, how patience can erode under fatigue, shame and money worries.

  • What signs of tenderness does Grete show in Part II?
  • At what point does her attitude change, and why?
  • What would faithful care for Gregor have looked like?

• The inner person behind a changed body

  Gregor keeps his memories, his love for his family and his response to music even as his body and habits change. The reader knows what his family cannot see, and the gap between the two drives the story's pathos.

  • Why does Gregor cling to the picture of the lady in furs?
  • Why is he drawn to Grete's violin playing in Part III?
  • Is Gregor still Gregor at the end?

Context

Kafka belonged to the German-speaking Jewish minority of Prague, a Bohemian city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a Czech majority. He wrote in the same years as the expressionist movement in German literature, and the story's middle-class flat, commercial travel, debt and lodgers belong to the ordinary Central European life he knew from his family and his work in accident insurance.

Composition

Kafka wrote the story in November and early December 1912, interrupting work on the novel later published as Amerika. It was first printed in René Schickele's monthly Die weißen Blätter in October 1915 and then as a volume in Kurt Wolff's series Der jüngste Tag (Leipzig, 1915). In a letter to his publisher Kafka asked that the insect itself not be drawn on the cover.

Reception

The novella became the best known of Kafka's works after his death and posthumous fame. English versions began to appear in the 1930s, and the work has been read in many ways: as a family drama, a parable of alienated labor, a religious or existential allegory, and a story about illness and caregiving. Kafka's own name became an adjective for nightmarish bureaucracy and helplessness.

Comparisons

• the-death-of-ivan-ilyich

  Tolstoy's dying judge, like Gregor, becomes a burden whose family wishes the ordeal over; Ivan finds light and forgiveness at the end, while Gregor's last thoughts of love go unseen by anyone.

• metamorphoses

  Ovid's transformations usually fix a person's character in a new body as reward or punishment; Kafka's transformation has no stated cause and leaves Gregor's mind unchanged inside an alien form.

• billy-budd-and-other-stories

  Melville's Bartleby, a clerk who stops working and slowly stops eating, is a close American cousin of Gregor; both stories show a dutiful world unable to understand a man who has withdrawn from it.

• frankenstein

  Victor's creature, like Gregor, has a feeling heart hidden by a frightening body and is driven away by the family he longs to love, as in the creature's episode with the De Lacey cottagers.

• the-strange-case-of-dr-jekyll-and-mr-hyde

  Both stories make a bodily transformation the occasion for questions about the self; Stevenson gives a chemical cause and a moral reading, while Kafka refuses to explain.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The first paragraph, where the transformation is stated as plain fact and never explained.
• Gregor's thoughts about work, trains and debts in Part I, and what they show about his life before.
• The picture of the lady in furs and the furniture-clearing scene in Part II.
• The changing ways Grete speaks of her brother, ending in her speech after the violin recital.
• The final tram ride, and what the family notices about Grete.

Key terms and names

Gregor Samsa

The commercial traveller in cloth whose earnings have kept the family afloat and whose transformation opens the story.

The chief clerk

The firm's representative who arrives within hours of Gregor's missed train, showing how little room his employer allows.

The apple

The fruit the father throws in Part II, which stays lodged in Gregor's back as a lasting wound.

The lodgers

Three paying boarders whose presence forces the family to hide Gregor and whose notice prompts the final crisis.

Die weißen Blätter

The German literary monthly in which the story first appeared in October 1915.

Translation used

This library does not include the full text: Kafka's German original is public domain, but no English translation has been verified as public domain, so students should read the story in a translation supplied by their teacher.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why does the chief clerk come to the Samsa apartment, and what does he accuse Gregor of?
2. Comprehension What does Gregor learn about his father's savings in Part II?
3. Comprehension What happens when Gregor comes out to listen to Grete's violin?
4. Interpretation Why does Kafka never explain the transformation, and how would the story change if he did?
5. Interpretation Who is the most changed character by the end: Gregor, Grete or Mr. Samsa?
6. Interpretation Is the closing tram ride a happy ending, an ironic one, or both?
7. Big Question What do we owe to a family member who can no longer give anything back?

Faith Connections

• Luke 15:11-32 (Scripture)

  The father of the prodigal son runs to embrace a son who returns degraded; Mr. Samsa drives his transformed son back with a stick and apples, a reversal that sharpens what fatherly mercy looks like.

• Psalm 22:6 (Scripture)

  The psalmist's cry that he is a worm and no man, scorned by the people, gives words to Gregor's state and is read by Christians as a prophecy of Christ's suffering, which honors the despised.

• Matthew 25:35-40 (Scripture)

  Christ's teaching that care for the least is care for Him sets a standard against which to measure Grete's nursing and its decline.

• Pascal, Pensées (thinking reed) (Great Conversation)

  Pascal locates human dignity in thought rather than bodily strength; Gregor's thoughts remain human, and his love endures, after his body ceases to look human.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: If a family's regard for a son rests on what he earns and how he appears, then when he can neither earn nor look human their love will give way to relief at his removal; Kafka shows this conditional love unfolding step by step.

Rhetorical device: understatement. In Part I the narration reports the transformation in calm, matter-of-fact sentences and turns at once to Gregor's worries about his train, so that the horror lies in what goes unsaid.

Debate: Resolved: that Grete's decision in Part III is justified by the family's circumstances.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Argue whether The Metamorphosis is chiefly a story about Gregor or about his family, using the furniture scene in Part II and the final tram ride.

Comparison with The Death of Ivan Ilyich: Compare how the families of Ivan Ilyich and Gregor Samsa respond to a member who becomes a burden, and how each story ends for the sufferer.

Medical Lens

Read medically, the story is a study of a family's response to a sudden, disabling and stigmatizing change in one member: the first shock, the attempt at home nursing by a sister, the economic strain, the shame before outsiders, and the relief at death. Kafka worked for years assessing industrial injury claims, and many readers see his professional knowledge of disablement in the story, though this is interpretation. Gregor's festering apple wound, loss of appetite and wasting are given in physical detail. Kafka's own tuberculosis was diagnosed in 1917, after the story was written, so readings of the novella as an illness narrative about his disease are anachronistic; the theme of a body that betrays the self belongs to the story on its own terms.

• Part I

  Gregor's first attempts to control an unfamiliar body, and his injury on the door frame when his father forces him back.

  Disability Deformity Mind Body
• Part II

  Grete's home nursing: food left out, the room cleaned, the decision to remove furniture, and the mother's fainting at the sight of her son.

  Nursing Caregiving
• Part II, end, and Part III

  The apple lodged in Gregor's back becomes an inflamed wound that weakens him over the following weeks.

  Fever Infection
• Part III

  Gregor stops eating, wastes away, and dies alone at dawn; the charwoman finds the dried body and the family feels relief.

  Starvation Nutrition Death Dying

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Trace Grete's changing care for Gregor across the three parts and argue whether her final decision is cruelty, exhaustion or something else.

• Fiction

  Retell the evening of the violin recital from the point of view of one of the three lodgers, keeping Kafka's plain, unexplaining manner.

• Classroom

  Kafka asked that the insect not be pictured on the first cover. Design a cover that honors his wish, and explain what your image shows instead.

Further Reading

• The Trial, Franz Kafka

  Kafka's posthumous novel of Josef K.'s arrest by an unexplained court.

• Letter to His Father, Franz Kafka

  Kafka's long unsent letter of 1919 about his relationship with his father.

• Kafka: The Decisive Years, Reiner Stach

  The volume of Stach's biography covering the years in which the story was written.

• Franz Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt, Saul Friedländer

  A short biography attentive to Kafka's family and religious background.