7.7 Metamorphosis

"Metamorphosis" was originally published in German by Franz Kafka in 1916 and translated into English by Willa and Edwin Muir in 1933.

It is a short story describing one of the most horrific events that can ever occur to a human being. If you want to read the complete traumatic series of events that happened to Gregor Samsa, acquire the book or access the story on the Internet.

The first few paragraphs of this living nightmare of waking up and being reincarnated as an insect are shown below. Read it. I will explain why later.

Metamorphosis- Franz Kafka

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armour-plated back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed-quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.

What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread out - Samsa was a commercial traveller - hung the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished.

Gregor's eyes turned next to the window, and the overcast sky - one could hear raindrops beating on the window gutter - made him quite melancholy. What about sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his present condition he could not turn himself over. However violently he forced himself towards his right side he always rolled on to his back again. He tried it at least a hundred times, shutting his eyes to keep from seeing his struggling legs, and only desisted when he began to feel in his side a faint dull ache he had never experienced before.

O God, he thought.....

That was frightening. Even more so for that nasty cockroach I trod on yesterday. Maybe it was ……………... who died recently. Andronicos "The Cynic"

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