The Metamorphosis

Gregor Samsa discovered himself transformed into a huge insect in his bed as he awoke one morning from uneasy dreams. When he lifted his head a little while lying on his hard almost armor-plated back he could see that his dome-shaped brown belly was split into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt was struggling to stay in place and about to fall off entirely. His many legs waved aimlessly in front of his eyes pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his bulk. Kafka starts The Metamorphosis his masterpiece with a startling bizarre but unexpectedly humorous first opening. It tells the tale of a young man who after transforming into a giant insect-like beetle over night finds himself an outcast in his own house and a man who embodies alienation. The Metamorphosis has established itself as one of the most popular and significant works of literature from the 20th century. It is a harrowing—yet absurdly comic—meditation on the feelings of inadequacy guilt and isolation that plague human beings. Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man wrote W.H. Auden.