The Metamorphosis

Introduction 

Gregor Samsa awoke from uneasy dreams; he found himself transformed in his bed into a giant insect." So begins The Metamorphosis, a sinister allegory of dehumanization and hopelessness in the modern world by Franz Kafka (1883-1924). Once rendered an insect, Gregor becomes a functionless and embarrassing eyesore in a household, whose members grow to resent and neglect him to the point of death. There is no place in domestic, social, and professional life, Kafka's tale suggests, for the unproductive and the nonconformist. Written in 1912, The Metamorphosis was one of the few works Kafka published in his lifetime. Owing to the author's ...