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Metamorphosis – a study guide

plot summary, characters, video, study resources

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka is one of the most important and influential fiction writers of the early twentieth century. He was a novelist and writer of short stories whose works, only after his death, came to be regarded as one of the major achievements of twentieth century literature.

Metamorphosis (1915) is truly one of Kafka’s masterpieces – a stunning parable which lends itself to psychological, sociological, or existential interpretations. It’s the tale of a man who wakes up one morning and finds himself transformed into a giant insect. His family are horrified, gradually disown him, and he dies of neglect, with a rotting apple lodged in his side.

Plot summary

Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself transformed from a human being into a giant insect. Rather than lament his transformation, Gregor worries about how he will get to his job as a traveling salesman; Gregor is the sole financial provider for his parents and sister, Grete, and their comfort is dependent on his ability to work.

When Gregor’s supervisor arrives at the house and demands Gregor come out of his room, Gregor manages to roll out of bed and unlock his door. His appearance horrifies his family and supervisor; his supervisor flees while his family chases him back into his room.

Metamorphosis Grete attempts to care for her brother by providing him with milk and the stale, rotten food he now prefers. Gregor also develops the fears of an insect, being effectively shooed away by hissing voices and stamping feet. However, Gregor remains a devoted and loving son, and takes to hiding beneath a sofa whenever someone enters his room in order to shield them from his horrifying appearance. When alone, he amuses himself by looking out of his window and crawling up the walls and on the ceiling.

No longer able to rely on Gregor’s income, the other family members take on jobs and Grete’s caretaking deteriorates. One day, when Gregor emerges from his room, his father chases him around the dining room table and pelts him with apples. One of the apples becomes embedded in his back, causing an infection. Due to his infection and his hunger, he is soon barely able to move at all.

Later, his parents take in lodgers and use Gregor’s room as a dumping area for unwanted objects. Gregor becomes dirty, covered in dust and old bits of rotten food. One day, Gregor hears Grete playing her violin to entertain the lodgers. Gregor is attracted to the music, and slowly walks into the dining room despite himself, entertaining a fantasy of getting his beloved sister to join him in his room and play her violin for him. The lodgers see him and give notice, refusing to pay the rent they owe, even threatening to sue the family for harboring him while they stayed there. Grete determines that the monstrous vermin is no longer Gregor, since Gregor would have left them out of love and taken their burden away. She suggests that they must get rid of it. Gregor retreats to his room and collapses, finally succumbing to his wound, and dying alone.

The point of view shifts as, upon discovery of his corpse, the family feels an enormous burden has been lifted from them, and start planning for the future again. The family discovers that they aren’t doing financially badly at all, especially since, following Gregor’s demise, they can take a smaller flat. The brief process of forgetting Gregor and shutting him from their lives is quickly completed.

Study resources

Metamorphosis – Oxford World Classics edition

Metamorphosis – Dover Thrift edition

Metamorphosis – Norton Critical Editions

Metamorphosis – Cliffs Notes

Metamorphosis – eBook format at Project Gutenburg

Metamorphosis – audioBook version at LibriVox

Metamorphosis – A Study: Nabokov on Kafka – 1989 Peter Medak film

Franz Kafka – biographical notes

Kafka’s manuscripts – the absurd legacy

Kafka in Love – photomontage at YouTube

Kafka: A Short Introduction

Franz Kafka at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Franz Kafka at Mantex – tutorials, web links, study materials

Franz Kafka: Illustrated Life is a photographic biography that offers an intimate portrait in an attractive format. A lively text is accompanied by over 100 evocative images, many in colour and some previously unpublished. They depict the author’s world – family, friends, and artistic circle – together with original book jackets, letters, and other ephemera. An excellent starting point for beginners which captures fin de siecle Europe beautifully.

Principal characters

Gregor Samsa	travelling salesman who supports his family
Mr Samsa	his lazy father, who owes money to Gregor’s boss
Grete Samsa	Gregor’s younger sister, who tends him at first
Mrs Samsa	Gregor’s mother, who cannot bear to look at him
The chief clerk	Gregor’s boss, to whom Mr Samsa owes money
Tenants	three tenants who provide an income for the family

Vladimir Nabokov – Lecture on Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis – A Study: Nabokov on Kafka

Vladimir Nabokov’s copy of Metamorphosis

Kafka - Nabokov

Photomontage

Kafka, family photos, and old Prague

Kafka - manuscript page

a page of Kafka’s manuscript

Other works by Franz Kafka

The Trial is Kafka’s one indisputably successful novel – a haunting and original study in existential anxiety, paranoia, and persecution. Joseph K is accused one day of being guilty – but not told what crime he has committed. He wrestles hopelessly with legal officials and a nightmare-like court which acts on arbitrary rules, striving to find justice. In the end he fails, only to be killed ‘like a dog’. Kafka gave expression to modern anxiety three decades before most people even started feeling it. This is a novel which stands outside literary norms – a superb achievement of literary modernism. Be prepared for black humour as well as mind-bending contradictions and deeply etched literary expressionism. Read the stories and The Trial as a start and a minimum.

The Castle is Kafka’s last work – a long, rambling, and unfinished novel in which the castle itself which operates as a huge metaphor for authority and bureaucracy. If The Trial is about a hopeless search for justice, The Castle is often said to be about the search for grace and forgiveness. It lies like a magnificent ruin amongst the many other fragments in Kafka’s oeuvre. This is strictly for the advanced devotee. Tackle this one only when you have read the other shorter works.

Amerika is Kafka’s first attempt at a novel. He is renowned for documenting the horrors of modern life, but Kafka also had a lighter and amusing side. This is incomplete, like so much else he wrote. It’s the story of Karl Rossmann who after an embarrassing sexual misadventure is expelled from his European home and goes to live in an imaginary United States (which of course Kafka had never visited). The story is deeply symbolic – as usual – and an interesting supplement to the central texts. The first chapter is frequently anthologised as ‘The Stoker’.

The Complete Short Stories is an amazing bargain, because this includes not only the stories, but also Kafka’s fragments, parables, and sketches. Many of these – although sometimes no more than jottings – contain the germs of ideas and images which Kafka worked up later into his major works. Kafka wrote on the boundaries between fiction and philosophy, and very often he blurrs the distinction between the two.

The Diaries Kafka wrote to himself almost as much as he did to other people, and he communicated some of his most subtle and revealing ideas in fragments and notes made in the margins of his tormented life. Here there are the wrestlings with guilt and personal inadequacy, plus the aspirations to a a higher spiritual life. They cover the period from 1910 to 1923 and reveal the inner world in which he lived.

He also describes the father he worshipped but feared, and the woman he loved but could not bring himself to marry. It is sometimes difficult to see where his fiction ends and his biographical notes begin, but they form an interesting contrast if they are read in conjunction with the letters and the notebooks. They also need to be read with care, because they conceal almost as much as they reveal.

Letters to Felice Many of Kafka’s surviving letters were written to women with whom he was ‘in love’. The qualification of this term is necessary because they reveal a fascinating ambiguity in his attitude to the recipients. Thousands of words are spent analysing his feelings, arranging meetings then cancelling them, deciding to get married and making all the necessary arrangements for where and how to live – and then changing his mind. Other letters reveal his painstaking sympathy and scrupulous kindness to friends, his neurotic fastidiousness over what most people would regard as trivialities, and his amazing modesty in dealing with other figures of the literary world.

The Complete Novels is a handy, good value compilation which includes Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle. One Amazon reviewer complains that the print is very small, but you can hardly complain when three major works are rolled into one volume for less than the price of two cocktails.

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