The Metamorphosis

The Metamorphosis

First edition cover
Author	Franz Kafka
Original title	Die Verwandlung
Country	Austria–Hungary
Language	German
Genre	Short story Absurdist fiction Slipstream
Publisher	Kurt Wolff Verlag, Leipzig
Publication date	1915
Original text	Die Verwandlung at German Wikisource
Translation	The Metamorphosis at Wikisource

The Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung, also sometimes translated as The Transformation) is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It has been called one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is studied in colleges and universities across the Western world.

The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed (metamorphosed) into a large, monstrous insect-like creature. The cause of Gregor's transformation is never revealed, and Kafka himself never gave an explanation. The rest of Kafka's novella deals with Gregor's attempts to adjust to his new condition as he deals with being burdensome to his parents and sister, who are repelled by the horrible, verminous creature Gregor has become.

Plot

Part I

One day, Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman, wakes up to find himself transformed into a giant insect (the most common translation of the German description ungeheures Ungeziefer, literally "monstrous vermin"). He reflects on how dreary life as a traveling salesman is. As he looks at the wall clock, he notices that he has overslept and missed his train for work. He ponders the consequences of this delay. Gregor becomes annoyed at how his boss never accepts excuses or explanations from any of his employees no matter how hard-working they are, displaying an apparent lack of trusting abilities. Gregor's mother knocks on the door, and he answers her. She is concerned for Gregor because he is late for work, which is unorthodox for him. Gregor answers his mother and realizes that his voice has changed, but his answer is short, so his mother does not notice. His sister, Grete, to whom he is very close, then whispers through the door and begs him to open it. He tries to get out of bed but is incapable of moving his body. While trying to move, he finds that his office manager, the chief clerk, has shown up to check on him. He finally rocks his body to the floor and calls out that he will open the door shortly.

Offended by Gregor's delayed response in opening the door, the clerk warns him of the consequences of missing work. He adds that Gregor's recent performance has been unsatisfactory. Gregor disagrees and tells him that he will open the door shortly. Nobody on the other side of the door has understood a single word he had uttered as Gregor's voice has also transformed, and they conclude that he is seriously ill. Finally, Gregor manages to unlock and open the door with his mouth. He apologizes to the office manager for the delay. Horrified by Gregor's appearance, his mother faints, and the manager bolts out of the apartment. Gregor tries to catch up with him, but his father drives him back into the bedroom with a cane and a rolled newspaper. Gregor injures himself squeezing back through the doorway, and his father slams the door shut. Gregor, exhausted, falls asleep.

Part II

Gregor awakens and sees that someone has put milk and bread in his room. Initially excited, he quickly discovers that he has no taste for milk, once one of his favorites. He settles himself under a couch. The next morning, his sister comes in, sees that he has not touched the milk, and replaces it with rotting food scraps, which Gregor happily eats. This begins a routine in which his sister feeds him and cleans up while he hides under the couch, afraid that his appearance will frighten her. Gregor spends his time listening through the wall to his family members talking. They often discuss the difficult financial situation they find themselves in now that Gregor can't provide for them. Gregor had plans of sending Grete to the conservatory to pursue violin lessons, something everyone else – including Grete – considered a dream. His incapability of providing for his family, coupled with his speechlessness, reduces his thought process greatly. Gregor also learns that his mother wants to visit him, but his sister and father will not let her.

Gregor grows more comfortable with his changed body. He begins climbing the walls and ceiling for amusement. Discovering Gregor's new pastime, Grete decides to remove some of the furniture to give Gregor more space. She and her mother begin taking furniture away, but Gregor finds their actions deeply distressing. He tries to save a picture on the wall of a woman wearing a fur hat, fur scarf, and fur muff. Gregor's mother sees him hanging on the wall and passes out. Grete angrily calls out to Gregor – the first time anyone has spoken directly to him since his transformation. Gregor runs out of the room and into the kitchen. He encounters his father, who has just returned home from work. The father throws apples at Gregor, and one of them sinks into a sensitive spot in his back and remains lodged there, paralyzing his movements for a month and damaging him permanently. Gregor manages to get back into his bedroom but is severely injured.

Part III

One evening, the cleaning lady leaves Gregor's door open while three boarders, whom the family has taken on for additional income, lounge about the living room. Grete has been asked to play the violin for them, and Gregor – who usually takes care to avoid crossing paths with anyone in the flat – creeps out of his bedroom to listen in the midst of his depression and resultant detachment. The boarders, who initially seemed interested in Grete, grow bored with her performance, but Gregor is transfixed by it. One of the boarders spots Gregor, and the rest become alarmed. Gregor's father tries to shove the boarders back into their rooms, but the three men protest and announce that they will move out immediately without paying rent because of the disgusting conditions in the apartment.

Grete, who has by now become tired of taking care of Gregor and is realizing the burden his existence puts on each one in the family, tells her parents they must get rid of Gregor, or they will all be ruined. Her father agrees, wishing Gregor could understand them and would leave of his own accord. Gregor does, in fact, understand and slowly moves back to the bedroom. There, determined to rid his family of his presence, Gregor dies.

Upon discovering Gregor is dead, the family feels a great sense of relief. The father kicks out the boarders and decides to fire the cleaning lady, who has disposed of Gregor's body. The family takes a trolley ride out to the countryside, during which they consider their finances. They decide to move to a smaller apartment to further save money, an act they were unable to carry out in Gregor's presence. During this short trip, Mr. and Mrs. Samsa realize that, in spite of going through hardships which have brought an amount of paleness to her face, Grete appears to have grown up into a pretty and well-figured lady, which leads her parents to think about finding her a husband.

Characters

Gregor Samsa

Gregor is the main character of the story. He works as a traveling salesman in order to provide money for his sister and parents. He wakes up one morning finding himself transformed into an insect. After the metamorphosis, Gregor becomes unable to work and is confined to his room for the remainder of the story. This prompts his family to begin working once again.

The name "Gregor Samsa" appears to derive partly from literary works Kafka had read. The hero of The Story of Young Renate Fuchs, by German-Jewish novelist Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934), is a certain Gregor Samsa. The Viennese author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, whose sexual imagination gave rise to the idea of masochism, is also an influence. Sacher-Masoch (note the letters Sa-Mas) wrote Venus in Furs (1870), a novel whose hero assumes the name Gregor at one point. A "Venus in furs" literally recurs in The Metamorphosis in the picture that Gregor Samsa has hung on his bedroom wall.^[1] The name Samsa is similar to "Kafka" in its play of vowels and consonants: "Five letters in each word. The S in the word Samsa has the same position as the K in the word Kafka. The A is in the second and fifth positions in both words."^[2]

Grete Samsa

Grete is Gregor's younger sister, who becomes his caretaker after his metamorphosis. Initially Grete and Gregor have a close relationship, but this quickly fades. While Grete initially volunteers to feed him and clean his room, she grows increasingly impatient with the burden and begins to leave his room in disarray out of spite. She plays the violin and dreams of going to the conservatory, a dream Gregor had intended to make happen; Gregor had planned on making the announcement on Christmas Eve. To help provide an income for the family after Gregor's transformation, she starts working as a salesgirl. At the end of the story, Grete's parents realize that she has become beautiful and full-figured and decide to consider finding her a husband.

Mr. Samsa

Mr. Samsa is Gregor's father. After the metamorphosis, he is forced to return to work in order to support the family financially. His attitude towards his son is harsh; he regards the transformed Gregor with disgust and possibly even fear.

Mrs. Samsa

Mrs. Samsa is Grete and Gregor's mother. She is initially shocked at Gregor's transformation; however, she wants to enter his room. This proves too much for her, thus giving rise to a conflict between her maternal impulse and sympathy, and her fear and revulsion at Gregor's new form.

Translation

Dependency tree illustrating the difference in syntax between the first sentence of Kafka's The Metamorphosis in translation by Ian Johnston and in the original German

Kafka's sentences often deliver an unexpected impact just before the period – that being the finalizing meaning and focus. This is achieved from the construction of sentences in the original German, where the verbs of subordinate clauses are put at the end. For example, in the opening sentence, it is the final word, verwandelt, that indicates transformation:

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

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

These constructions are not directly replicable in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the effect of the original text.^[3]

English translators have often sought to render the word Ungeziefer as "insect", but this is not strictly accurate. In Middle High German, Ungeziefer literally means "unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice"^[4] 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. The phrasing used by Joachim Neugroschel^[5] is: "Gregor Samsa found himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin", whereas David Wyllie says" "transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin".^[6]

However, 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."^[7]

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 by the cleaning lady near the end of the story, but it is not used in the narration. Ungeziefer also denotes a sense of separation between himself and his environment: he is unclean and must therefore be secluded.

Vladimir Nabokov, who was a lepidopterist 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. Nabokov left a sketch annotated, "just over three feet long", on the opening page of his (heavily corrected) English teaching copy. In his accompanying lecture notes, Nabokov discusses the type of insect Gregor has been transformed into, concluding that Gregor "is not, technically, a dung beetle. He is merely a big beetle".^[8]

English translations

• 1933: Edwin and Willa Muir
• 1972: Stanley Corngold
• 1993: Joachim Neugroschel
• 1996: Stanley Appelbaum
• 1999: Ian Johnston (public domain)
  • 2006: audio by David Barnes
  • 2012: audio by David Richardson
  • 2014: audio by Bob Neufeld
• 2002: David Wyllie
• 2007: Michael Hofmann
• 2009: Joyce Crick
• 2014: Christopher Moncrieff
• 2014: Susan Bernofsky
• 2014: John R Williams

Publications

• First print: Die Verwandlung. In: Die Weißen Blätter. Eine Monatsschrift. (The White Pages. A Monthly). ed. René Schickele. "Jg. 2" (1915), "H. 10" (October), ps. 1177–1230.
• Sämtliche Erzählungen. paperback, ed. Paul Raabe. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg 1970. ISBN 3-596-21078-X.
• Drucke zu Lebzeiten. ed. Wolf Kittler, Hans-Gerd Koch and Gerhard Neumann, S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ps. 113–200.
• Die Erzählungen. (The stories) ed. Roger Herms, original version S. Fischer Verlag 1997 ISBN 3-596-13270-3
• Die Verwandlung. with a commentary by Heribert Kuhn, Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 978-3-518-18813-2. (Suhrkamp BasisBibliothek, 13: Text und Kommentar)
• Die Verwandlung. Anaconda Verlag, Köln 2005. ISBN 978-3-938484-13-5.
• Metamorphosis. Hardcover, 2009 New Translation, Arcturus Publishing Limited. Forward by William Aaltonen ISBN 978-1-84837-202-3
• The Metamorphosis: A New Translation by Susan Bernofsky. Paperback, 2014, W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393347098. David Cronenberg's Introduction to the book was also published as "The Beetle and the Fly" in The Paris Review.^[9]

Adaptations to other media

Film

There are many film versions of the story, including:

• A 1975 television film by Jan Němec.
• A 1977 animated short film by Caroline Leaf.
• A 1987 television film by Jim Goddard.
• A 1993 short film by Carlos Atanes.
• A 2002 feature film by Valery Fokin.^[10]
• A 2004 short film by Fran Estévez.
• A 2012 feature film by Chris Swanton.
• A 2013 short film by Pencho.^[11]

Print

• Jacob M. Appel's Scouting for the Reaper contains a telling of the novella in which a rabbi attempts to arrange a "proper Jewish burial" for Gregor.^[12]
• Lance Olsen's book, Anxious Pleasures: A Novel After Kafka, retells Kafka's novella from the points of view of those inside his family and out.
• American cartoonist Robert Crumb drew a comic adaptation of the novella, which is included in the 1993 book Introducing Kafka, an illustrated biography of Kafka also known as Kafka for Beginners, R. Crumb's Kafka, or simply Kafka.
• American comic artist Peter Kuper illustrated a graphic-novel version, first published by the Crown Publishing Group in 2003.^[13]
• Marc Estrin's debut surrealist novel, Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa (2002),^[14] "resurrects Kafka's half-cockroach Gregor character"^[15] vis-à-vis the world between 1915 and 1945.
• East Press published a manga version of the story in 2008 as part of their Manga de Dokuha line.^[16]

Stage and opera

• Steven Berkoff performed a stage adaptation in 1969. Berkoff's text was also used for the libretto to Brian Howard's 1983 opera Metamorphosis.^[17] In 1989 Berkoff directed a Broadway production of a play, adapted by Berkoff, starring Mikhail Baryshnikov and René Auberjonois that opened at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre.^[18]
• Another stage adaptation was performed in 2006 as a co-production between the Icelandic company Vesturport and the Lyric Hammersmith, adapted and directed by Gísli Örn Garðarsson and David Farr, with a music soundtrack performed by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.^[19] It was also performed at the Sydney Theatre Company as part of a world tour in 2009^[20] and returned to the Lyric Hammersmith in January 2013, starring Garðarsson as Gregor Samsa.
• An adapted stage production was devised and directed by Samara Hersch as part of the Helium Season for the Malthouse Theatre in October 2014.

Radio

• A radio drama, combining Metamorphosis with Dr. Seuss performed by David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldstein and produced by Jonathan Goldstein and Mira Burt-Wintonick with Cristal Duhaime, was broadcast in 2008, on CBC Radio One's program Wiretap in 2008.^[21] In 2012, it was broadcast on This American Life^[22]
• In 2015, BBC Radio 4 adapted the novella for radio to commemorate the 100th anniversary of its publication with the story being read by actor Benedict Cumberbatch.^[23]
• 2011 'The Meowmorphosis' was released by Quirk Books as part of the Quirk Classics series; a 'mash-up' retelling by Coleridge Cook, where Gregor Samsa wakes up as an adorable kitten, instead of a hideous insect.^[24]

In popular culture

The Metamorphosis was even reprinted in the June 1953 issue of the pulp magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

• In The Simpsons book Treehouse of Horror Spook-tacular, Matt Groening included a spoof of The Metamorphosis, entitled "Metamorphosimpsons".
• In the Home Movies episode "Director's Cut", Brendon and the crew produce a rock opera adaptation of the novella.
• In Jhonen Vasquez's comic book series Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, "Mr. Samsa" is the name given by Johnny to a series of normal cockroaches that live in his basement, which he believes to be a single immortal cockroach that he must repeatedly kill. To Johnny, Mr. Samsa represents complete desensitization and unemotional thinking, a state for which Johnny begins a quest at the end of the series. The insects are normal bugs with no ties to the supernatural entities in the series.
• In The Real Ghostbusters episode "Janine Melnitz, Ghostbuster", the Ghostbusters' receptionist Janine Melnitz, running off a list of calls about supernatural menaces, says that "some guy named Samsa said he's been possessed by a giant cockroach". In the episode "The Crawler" of the follow-up series Extreme Ghostbusters, a giant demon insectoid creature who assumes human form gives himself the name Gregor Samsa.
• The 1995 short film Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life by Peter Capaldi tells the story of a author trying to write the opening line of The Metamorphosis and experimenting with various things that Gregor might turn into, such as a banana or a kangaroo. The short is also notable for a number of Kafkaesque moments. It won the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film.^[25]
• There are references to The Metamorphosis in the manga Tokyo Ghoul by Sui Ishida.
• In Mel Brooks' film The Producers, the protagonists are attempting to bring their scheme to fruition by staging the worst play ever written. While flipping through various scripts, one of them begins reading, "One morning, Gregor Samsa awoke to find he had been transformed into a giant cockroach." After a moment's consideration, he throws the script aside while saying, "Nah, it's too good"
• In episode 470 of Ira Glass' public radio documentary series "This American Life," a man named Samsa, who believes he's turning into a cockroach, reaches out to Dr. Seuss for advice. The doctor, however, will only respond in rhyme. The story was written and performed by David Rakoff and Jonathan Goldestein, with a cameo by Julie Snyder. It originally aired on the CBC show Wiretap.^[26]
• In Mel Brooks' film Spaceballs, during the climax of the comedy, when Spaceball-1 transforms into Mega-Maid, the main antagonist Dark Helmet leans towards Colonel Sandurz and asks "Ready, Kafka?".^[27]
• In the 2006 animated film Flushed Away, a stove falls through the floor of a house to show an annoyed cockroach sitting behind it, reading a French translation of Kafka's The Metamorphosis.^[28]
• The 2002 anthology Dreaming of Angels, edited by Monica J. O'Rourke and Gord Rollo, contains a short story titled "Mickeymorphosis", in which the main character awakens to discover that he's turned into Mickey Mouse.^[29]
• The song "Let Down" from OK Computer by the English band Radiohead makes references to the novella.
• 2007's Kockroach, by William Lashner under the name "Tyler Knox", inverts the premise by transforming a cockroach into a human; Lashner has stated that The Metamorphosis is "the obvious starting point for" Kockroach, and that his choice of pseudonym was made in honor of Josef K (of Kafka's The Trial).^[30]

References

External links

German Wikisource has original text related to this article: Die Verwandlung (Franz Kafka)

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Metamorphosis

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Kafka Die Verwandlung.

Online editions

• Die Verwandlung at DigBib.org (text, pdf, HTML) (German)
• The Metamorphosis, translated 2009 by Ian Johnston of Malaspina University-College, Nanaimo, BC
• The Metamorphosis at Project Gutenberg, translated by David Wyllie
• The Metamorphosis public domain audiobook at LibriVox
• Lecture on The Metamorphosis by Vladimir Nabokov

Commentary

• Lesson on the difficulties of translating the story into English

Related

• Metamorphosis: The Game by Mito Studio, based on the story by Franz Kafka.