The Metamorphosis“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, “Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.” |
Contents
A Note on the Text | 56 |
Letter by Kafka to Max Brod October 8 1912 | 103 |
Entries in Kafkas Diaries | 109 |
Kafkas Obscurity | 130 |
Kafkas Conception Thematik of Being | 140 |
Franz Kafkas Metamorphosis | 153 |
Education for Tragedy | 164 |
The Writer Franz Kafka | 181 |
189 | |
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Common terms and phrases
alien already animal apple becomes body boss castration Charles Dickens chief clerk cleaning woman completely consciousness Copyright couch course crawl death debt destrudo Diaries disgusting door dream dung beetle Edwin Honig everything existence fact family constellation fantasy feels felt firm floor foyer Franz Kafka fretsaw Fyodor Dostoevsky Georg Müller Goronwy Rees Gregor Samsa Gregor's metamorphosis Gregor's room Grete guilt Gustav Janouch hand head hero human imago insect Josef K Kafka's Metamorphosis libido literature little legs living room looked manager Max Brod meaning metamor metamorphosis monstrous vermin morning morphosis notes once parents perhaps Politzer possible punishment Raban Ralph Freedman reality Reprinted by permission roomers scene Schlingmann Schocken Books Schubiger seemed sense sleep Sokel story symbolic things thought tion trans transformed translated turn unconscious Ungeziefer unknown nourishment Verlag voice wanted Weinberg window word writing