NovellaModern · 1915Study guide · no full textSteady

The Metamorphosis

The horror is bureaucratic and domestic: the problem is not the transformation but the rent and the shame. Read the ending closely.

Identity Family Class Absurdity

Study guide

This work is still in copyright, so there is no full text on the page. What you get instead: the context, the cast, the ideas and the themes — enough to read it well, and to know exactly what to watch for in the first thirty pages.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning he found himself transformed.”

The cast, in the Character Atlas →Literary devices →Where it sits in time →

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Identity — how other works handle it →Class — how other works handle it →

The castFull atlas →

Gregor Samsa

Travelling salesman, now an insect

The Metamorphosis · Franz Kafka

Wants: To be of use to his family, which is the only way he knows to be loved.
Undone by: He apologises for his own catastrophe.

Grete Samsa

Younger sister and musician

The Metamorphosis · Franz Kafka

Wants: To make a life for herself while keeping the household running.
Undone by: She becomes competent at the expense of the person she is caring for.

Now read the first page with all of this in mind.

The notes here are the map; the book is the journey.

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