Essays on Metamorphosis

1915, by Franz Kafka

Novella

Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition. His tyrannical father forces him to hide in his bedroom, and, after his father throws an apple at him, Gregor slowly dies from both his family’s neglect and his own guilty despair.

Themes in The Metamorphosis include a sudden, unexpected transformation, family duty, responsibility, and alienation, etc. Franz Kafka has shown a surrealistic transformation in an individual and its impacts on the relationships.

Gregor Samsa, Grete Samsa, Mr Samsa, Mrs Samsa, The Charwoman

Like most of Kafka's works, Metamorphosis tends to be given a religious or psychological interpretation by most of its interpreters. It has been particularly common to read the story as an expression of Kafka's father complex, as was first done by Charles Neider in his The Frozen Sea: A Study of Franz Kafka (1948). Besides the psychological approach, interpretations focusing on sociological aspects, which see the Samsa family as a portrayal of general social circumstances, have also gained a large following.

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
“Calm — indeed the calmest — reflection might be better than the most confused decisions”
“I only fear danger where I want to fear it.”