The Metamorphosis

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The Metamorphosis

First edition cover
Author Franz Kafka
Original title Die Verwandlung
Translator see individual articles
Country Austro-Hungarian Empire
Language German
Genre(s) Philosophical novella
Publisher Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig
Publication date 1915

The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into a "monstrous vermin" (see Lost in translation, below).

Contents

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning in his family's apartment to find himself inexplicably transformed overnight into a gigantic insect. Gregor does not immediately recoil from his insect form, but instead chooses to lament the rain and general misery of the weather outside. Indeed, the narrative establishes the poor conditions as the cause of his bed-ridden state. Gregor works as a traveling salesman, and, as it is usual for traveling salesmen to move constantly from place to place, he is accustomed to waking up in unfamiliar surroundings and various circumstances. The true reality of his metamorphosis is complete when he sees his many legs waving in the air. But from then on he resists any conscious recognition regarding his change or the fact that a change indeed happened—everything but the recognition of his separation from the others. The problem Gregor has at the beginning of the story is that the world around him is beckoning for him to answer the door. The weight on Gregor’s life is that he is the financial head of the household; nobody else apparently works in his family (or is able to work); their whole present and comfortable existence relies upon Gregor’s employment at the "firm." Most of the weight is the debt which his father owes to the employer for whom Gregor now works.

Gregor is unable to speak in his insect form, and never successfully communicates with his family at all after his physical appearance is revealed to them. He is alienated by being suffered the usage of a voice of some other thing. However, he seems to retain his cognitive faculties, which are unknown to his family.

Curiously, his condition does not arouse a sense of surprise or incredulity in the eyes of his family, who merely despise it as an indication of impending burden. However, most of the story revolves around his interactions with his family, with whom he lives, and their shock, denial, and repulsion whenever he reveals his physical condition. Horrified by his appearance, they take to shutting Gregor into his room, but do try to care for him by providing him with food and water. The sister takes charge of caring for Gregor, initially working hard to make him comfortable. Nevertheless, they seem to want as little to do with him as possible. The sister and mother shrink back whenever he reveals himself, and Gregor's father pelts him with apples when he emerges from his room one day. One of the apples becomes embedded in his back, causing an infection.

Time passes while he is confined to his room. Gregor's only activities are looking out his window and crawling up the walls and on the ceiling. Financial hardship befalls the family, and the sister's caretaking deteriorates. Gregor’s perception diminishes throughout the course of the story. It is apparent that Gregor’s physical size is getting smaller and smaller (small enough to cover a picture frame), and so too the size of his personal identity seems to shrink. Aside from being an untouchable entity in his new state, Gregor decides to hide underneath a sheet when somebody has to come into his room. As much as he tries to imprison himself within his room, his family become the jailers, locking Gregor in from the outside. Devoid of human contact, one day Gregor emerges to the sound of his sister's violin with the hope of getting his much-loved sister to join him in his room and play her violin for him. But her rejection of him is total when she says to the family, We must try to get rid of it. We've done everything humanly possible to take care of it and to put up with it, no one can blame us in the least.

The sister then determines with finality that the insect is no longer Gregor, since Gregor would have left them out of love and taken their burden away. Gregor returns to his room, lies down, and dies from lacking the will to live.

The point of view shifts as, upon discovery of his corpse, the family feel an enormous burden has been lifted from them, and start planning for the future again. Fantastically, the family suddenly discovers that they aren't doing badly at all, both socially and financially, and the brief process of forgetting Gregor and shutting him from their lives is quickly accomplished. The final sentence echoes the first: while the opening lines document Gregor's physical metamorphosis, the novella ends with mention of Greta's "good-looking, shapely" body suggesting her bridal stock for a financial marriage of convenience.

Main article: Gregor Samsa

Gregor's younger sister, who becomes his caretaker after the metamorphosis. At the beginning Greta and Gregor have a strong relationship but this relationship fades as Gregor evolves. While Greta originally volunteers to feed him and clean his room, throughout the story she grows more and more impatient with the task to the point of deliberately leaving messes in his room in spite. She plays the violin and dreams of going to the conservatory, a dream that Gregor's income was supporting. To help provide an income for the family after Gregor's transformation she becomes a salesclerk.

A slouching, defeated man whose business failure has seemingly sapped his vitality, Gregor's father finds new confidence and better posture once the economic necessity engendered by Gregor's misfortune forces him to work again. His fruit-flinging fit of rage is the catalyst for Gregor's declining health.

A physically and constitutionally weak woman, Gregor's mother seems to suffer most from the fact of her son's metamorphosis. Despite her love for Gregor, the effect on her health is terrible whenever she catches sight of his bug form. Gregor's father and sister's protective feelings toward his mother lead them to resent Gregor. [1]

Charwoman - Hired by the Samsas to replace their live-in servant, the charwoman is a tough old woman who, unlike the other characters, is neither horrified nor frightened by Gregor's insect form. She often taunts Gregor, calling him an "old dung beetle" and at one point threatens him with a chair. She is the one who discovers that Gregor has died and who cheerfully disposes of his body.[2]

Chief Clerk - The chief clerk from Gregor's firm comes to the Samsa house to find out why Gregor has not shown up for work. When Gregor delays coming out of his room, the clerk criticizes him for poor work performance and reports that the head of the firm suspects Gregor of embezzling funds. When Gregor finally emerges, the clerk flees in horror.[2]

Tenants - Three tenants are invited to live with the Samsas to supplement their income. They are fussy and cannot stand dirtiness, eventually leading to the point when they discover Gregor's identity.


The opening sentence of the novella is famous in English:

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

The original German is this:

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

Kafka's sentences often deliver an unexpected impact just before the period—that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved due to the construction of certain sentences in German which require that the verb be positioned at the end of the sentence. Such constructions are not duplicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same effect found in the original text.[3]

English translators have often sought to render the word Ungeziefer as "insect", but this is not strictly accurate, and may be based on an attempt to clarify what Kafka may have intended (according to his journals and letters to the publisher of the text) to be an ambiguous term.[citation needed] In German, Ungeziefer literally means "vermin" [1]and is sometimes used colloquially to mean "bug" – a very general term, unlike the scientific sounding "insect". Kafka had no intention of labeling Gregor as any specific thing, but instead wanted to convey Gregor's disgust at his transformation. Literally, the end of the line should be translated as "transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." This is the phrasing used in the David Wyllie translation[4] and Joachim Neugroschel.[5]

However, "a monstrous vermin" sounds unwieldy in English and in Kafka's letter to his publisher of 25 October 1915, in which he discusses his concern about the cover illustration for the first edition, he uses the term "Insekt", saying "The insect itself is not to be drawn. It is not even to be seen from a distance."[6] While this shows his concern not to give precise information about the type of creature Gregor becomes, the use of the general term "insect" can therefore be defended on the part of translators wishing to improve the readability of the end text.

Ungeziefer has sometimes been translated as "cockroach", "dung beetle", "beetle", and other highly specific terms. The term "dung beetle" or Mistkäfer is in fact used in the novella by the cleaning lady near the end of the story, but it is not used in the narration. It has become such a common misconception that Ungeziefer, in the literal "vermin" sense of the word, can be comprehensively defined as an unclean animal (or any entity) unsuitable for sacrifice. It is very characteristic of Kafka to play word games (and could be why these direct terminologies are not used in the narration): the Un part of the word, grammatically speaking, is a negation that makes the word opposite to “clean” and “suited”, although there was no such word as Geziefer in 20th century German. Ungeziefer also denotes a sense of separation between him and his environment: he is unclean and therefore he shall be excluded. 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 in Gregor's personified self). The maid's use of Mistkäfer can be interpreted as a description of Gregor's lifestyle: sedentary, slob-like, a nuisance, etc.

Vladimir Nabokov, who was an entomologist as well as writer and literary critic, insisted that Gregor was not a cockroach, but a beetle with wings under his shell, and capable of flight - if only he had known it. Nabokov left a sketch annotated "just over three feet long" on the opening page of his (heavily corrected) English teaching copy.[7]

There are several film versions, including:

A stage adaptation was performed by Steven Berkoff in 1969. Another stage adaption was performed in 2006 by the Icelandic company Vesturport, showing at the Lyric Hammersmith, London. That adaption is set to be performed in the Icelandic theater fall of 2008.[2] [8] Another stage adaptation was performed in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 2005 by the Centre for Asian Theatre.[9] That performance is still continuing in Bangladesh. American comic artist Peter Kuper illustrated a graphic-novel version, first published by the Crown Publishing Group in 2003.[10]

  • Philip Glass composed incidental music for two separate theater productions of the story. These two themes, along with two themes from the Errol Morris film The Thin Blue Line, were incorporated into a five-part piece of music for solo piano entitled Metamorphosis.[citation needed]
  • In the play The Shape of Things by Neil LaBute, Adam says to Evelyn in the final scene "I got a little Gregor Samsa thing going on right now..." after Evelyn reveals his "metamorphosys" to his peers.

  • In Mel Brooks' 1968 movie The Producers, two men working on a fraud scheme are looking for the worst play they can find, and pass up The Metamorphosis because, after having read the first line ("Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find he had been transformed into a gigantic cockroach"), they feel it is "too good". This dialogue survives in the 2001 Broadway and 2005 movie adaptations.
  • In another Mel Brooks movie, Spaceballs, Dark Helmet makes a reference to Kafka when their spaceship is transforming into a gigantic maid: "Prepare for metamorphosis. Ready, Kafka?"
  • In 1995, the actor Peter Capaldi won an Oscar for his short-film Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life. The plot of the film has the author (played by Richard E. Grant) trying to write the opening line of Metamorphosis and experimenting with various things that Gregor might turn into, such as a banana or a kangaroo. The film is also notable for a number of Kafkaesque moments.
  • In the movie version of Naked Lunch one character (Joan Lee, played by Judy Davis) mentions Kafka in connection with a poison against bugs which they use as drug and causes visions involving grotesque speaking insects, saying "It's a Kafka high; you feel like a bug."[citation needed]
  • In the 2005, Noah Baumbach film The Squid and the Whale, one of the characters, Walt Berkman (Jesse Eisenberg), recommends The Metamorphosis to his girlfriend, Sophie. When he finds out she liked it, he describes the story as being "Kafkaesque", to which Sophie replies, "Because it's written by Franz Kafka."
  • Noah Baumbach's 1995 film Kicking and Screaming also refers to The Metamorphosis. At the graduation party at the beginning of the movie, Josh Hamilton's character, Grover, tries to convince Olivia d'Abo's character, Jane, his girlfriend, not to go to Prague. He tells her, wryly, that she will wake up one morning a bug.
  • Mark Damon's Foresight Unlimited has boarded[citation needed] the $9m Franz Kafka adaptation Metamorphosis starring Daniel Brühl (playing Franz Kafka), Anna Paquin and Stephen Rea. Limor Diamant wrote and will direct Metamorphosis, which weaves together the celebrated tale of a man who transforms into a giant bug with a parallel account of Kafka's heartbreaking writing process. Ram Bergman is producing and a European shoot has been set for the summer of 2007.

  • The dialogue-driven cartoon Home Movies did a tribute to "The Metamorphosis" in "Director's Cut", an episode in the first season of the show. The characters performed a rock opera style retelling of the short story.[11]
  • In The Venture Bros. episode "Mid-Life Chrysalis", Dr. Venture's transformation into a caterpillar slightly mirrors that of Gregor Samsa's transformation. Quote: "Gentlemen, what you are about to see is a nightmare inexplicably torn from the pages of Kafka!"
  • A reference appears in the 2006 Aardman Animation feature film Flushed Away when a refrigerator falls through the floor of the protagonist Rita's home and a giant cockroach appears reading a copy of The Metamorphosis.
  • The second segment (titled "Bugged") of episode 8-3 of the children's show Arthur centers around a dream sequence where the character Brain wakes to find that he has turned into a giant insect as a manifestation of his concerns that he is seen as an annoying pest.
  • A brief reference is made to "The Metamorphosis" in the next-episode preview at the end of Episode 8 of the anime series Kino no Tabi.
  • The anime Sayonara Zetsubō Sensei references The Metamorphosis in the title of its seventh episode, "One Morning, When Gregor Samsa awoke, he was carrying a portable shrine." Also, one character goes by the pseudonym "Kafuka Fūra," derived from Franz Kafka's name.
  • The popular Americanized anime Dragonball Z references The Metamorphosis in that as one of King Kai's test Goku must hit a humanoid insect named Gregory. Although his name is Gregory only in the Funimation dub version of the show, not the original Japanese version.
  • The quasi-cult hit Mission Hill features an episode where Andy French, one of the main characters, attempts to publish a single-frame comic without a caption. In trying to 'spice up' the comic with such caption, the executive he speaks to suggests "How Kafkaesque," with no relation to the comic. Andy's frustration grows throughout the episode as he continues to hear people improperly use the term.

  • Notorious American cartoonist Robert Crumb drew an illustrated adaptation of the novella which appears in the book Introducing Kafka.
  • In the comic book Johnny the Homicidal Maniac by Jhonen Vasquez, the eponymous Johnny is plagued by a roach that keeps appearing in his house no matter how many times he kills it (whether or not this roach is immortal or simply many different roaches is up to interpretation) and is affectionately named "Mr. Samsa".
  • In The Simpsons book Treehouse of Horror Spook-tacular, Matt Groening did a spoof on the metamorphosis, entitling it Metamorphosimpsons. In addition, in one of the episodes, Lisa attends a place called "Cafe Kafka", which is shown to be a popular place for college students, and features several posters of cockroaches in Bohemian-like poses.
  • In the popular comic Calvin and Hobbes, Hobbes claims that if he does not receive a good night kiss, he will have Kafka dreams. The strip then features an enormous bedbug coming from inside the bed.[12]
  • In the popular comic FoxTrot, Jason sleeps with the hopes of waking up as a beetle, and instead has a dream were he wakes up as a younger version of his sister.
  • In the comic book Ghost Rider 2099, Network 23 introduces a show called "Samsa N.Y.P.D." about a detective sergeant who finds himself transformed into a gigantic cockroach. Samsa's partner is "trusty officer" Frank Kafka.
  • Pete Kuper (illustrator of Spy vs. Spy, The System, Kafka's Give It Up!) also adapted Kafka's Metamorphosis, published by Three Rivers Press.
  • In the one-off Marvel comic "Carnage: It's a Wonderful Life", Doctor Kafka, whilst trapped in Carnage's mind, is mutated into a giant cockroach.

  • In the Midway Playstation 2 game Shadow Hearts 2 (also known as Shadow Hearts: Covenant), the player faces bug-like creatures called "Gregor" during random battles in the sewer level.
  • In the Steve Jackson game Munchkin Bites!, players may face "Gregor", a giant cockroach reading a book titled Kafka for Dummies.
  • The computer game Bad Mojo features the protagonist, Roger Samms, as a human being transformed into a cockroach. Players play through the entire game from this perspective.
  • One of the early, minor boss monsters in the computer roleplaying game Wizardry 8 by Sir-Tech is a huge bug called a "Gregor".
  • Planescape: Torment's Festhall features a sensory stone entitled 'complete bafflement', which depicts the experience of a bug waking up to find that it has become a human.

  • In season 4 of The Secret World of Alex Mack, in the episode "The Switch", Alex Mack is studying Kafka's The Metamorphosis in English class and while they are discussing it in class, she falls asleep and dreams that she and her mother transformed into each other (a la Freaky Friday).
  • In season 6 of Law & Order: Criminal Intent, a one time suspect in an episode says, "It's Kafkaesque", Eames then responds "Guess that makes you the bug."
  • In the television series Smallville, Chloe speculates that a character who seems to be transforming into an insect is "going Kafka".
  • In the TV series, My So-Called Life, an episode called "The Zit" uses The Metamorphosis. The characters are studying the story in English class and at the same time going through adolescent body/beauty angst. The story is referred to a few times during the episode and then finally explained by the Brian to Jordan at the end (because Jordan hasn't done the reading and has to take a test).[citation needed]
  • In Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan (Anime) on episode 3 about a man's "poisonous bug" with much visual reference to The Metamorphosis.
  • In the children's game show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, a regular informant was a cockroach named Kafka who lived in a roach motel in the Acme CrimeNet office.
  • In an episode of M*A*S*H, Major Sidney Freeman tells Cpl. Kilnger about a case he had of a soldier who pretended to be a cockroach and crawl along the woodwork. Hawkeye responds with, "That was Private Kafka, I believe."

  • The post-hardcore band Showbread has a song titled "Sampsa Meets Kafka" on their album No Sir, Nihilism Is Not Practical, about the ending of The Metamorphosis.
  • German Gothic artist Alexander Kaschte named his main band project Samsas Traum (Samsa's Dream).
  • Gregor Samsa is the name of an American post-rock band.
  • In the filk band Ookla the Mok's song "Stranger in the Mirror", the narrator says he once "awoke from unsettling dreams transformed in [his] bed into a monstrous vermin."[13]
  • Nu-metal band Slaves on Dope has a song entitled "Kafka Bug"
  • Roger Waters, one of the founding members of the rock group Pink Floyd, uses a giant inflatable pig that floats over the stage in his 2006-07 Dark Side of the Moon tour. One of the markings spray painted on this pig, on the wing, is "Kafka Rules".
  • The Rolling Stones' 1975 album Metamorphosis features cover art of the band members with insect heads.
  • Widespread Panic channels Kafka in their song "Imitation Leather Shoes", which describes an insect boy and his family's reaction

  1. ^ SparkNotes.com - The Metamorphosis (Characters). Accessed Dec-17-2006.
  2. ^ a b BookRags.com - The Metamorphosis (Characters). Accessed Dec-17-2006.
  3. ^ Kafka (1996, xi).
  4. ^ http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/metam10h.htm
  5. ^ ISBN 0684194260
  6. ^ http://www.literature.at/elib/www/wiki/index.php/Briefe_und_Tageb%C3%BCcher_1915_%28Franz_Kafka%29#1915-10-11.2C_Prag:_An_den_Kurt_Wolff_Verlag_.28G.H.Meyer.29
  7. ^ http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/vermeer/287/nm.htm
  8. ^ http://arts.guardian.co.uk/critic/review/0,,1888037,00.html
  9. ^ http://www.catbd.org/the_metamorphosis.html
  10. ^ http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/metamorphosis/
  11. ^ "Director's Cut". Home Movies. UPN. 2001-09-02. No. 6, season 1.
  12. ^ http://fotos.ya.com/mcs_29q/ph11395827920453.GIF
  13. ^ http://www.otmfan.com/pmc/strangera.htm

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