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The Metamorphosis is “not just one among Kafka's stories, but an exemplary Kafkan story” (Corngold, 1970. p. 103). This “horror story” (Neider, 1948, p. 77), which Kafka himself described as “exceptionally repulsive” (Kafka, 1912, p. 117),1 is generally considered “the most haunting and universal of all of his stories” (Corngold, 1970, p. 91), and one of his most famous.
In The Metamorphosis, a man wakes up one morning to find himself turned into a huge Ungeziefer, usually translated as “cockroach,” or “insect.” Kafka minutely details Gregor's and his family's reaction to his fantastic transformation with a dry, deadpan matter-of-factness for which he is famous. Gregor has been a traveling salesman living with his parents and younger sister, and has been their sole source of support. When he does not come out of his room the morning of his transformation, both his family and the chief clerk of his office reprimand him for his lateness. After Gregor does finally manage to drag himself out of bed—not without much difficulty—and comes out of his room, he cannot understand why his family and the clerk recoil in horror at him.
Gregor only slowly begins to realize that his family finds the very sight of him disgusting. The parents leave his care to the younger sister. Once, when the mother catches sight of him on the wall of his room by accident, she faints from shock, whereupon his father, suspecting him of having