The Metamorphosis

"Apart from a really excessive drowsiness after the long sleep, Gregor in fact felt quite well and even had a really strong appetite."

Gregor struggles to reconcile his insect-like body with his still-human mind. Although he feels hunger, as a human or animal would, Gregor finds himself unable to eat food suited for human consumption, instead preferring to eat rotting food. Later, Gregor will lose his appetite and starve to death.

"And for a little while longer he lay quietly with weak breathing, as if perhaps waiting for normal and natural conditions to re-emerge out of the complete stillness."

Gregor never reacts to his situation with complete panic or terror. Instead, he remains calm and rational, acting as though things will go back to normal just as quickly and mysteriously as they went awry.

"Why was Gregor the only one condemned to work in a firm where, at the slightest lapse, someone immediately attracted the greatest suspicion?"

Even though Gregor has more pressing physical concerns, anxiety about his job and money consume his thoughts. Gregor works hard and makes a decent living but feels somewhat victimized by the strict rules and expectations of his employer. 

"He was keen to witness what the others now asking about him would say when they saw him."

Gregor wonders how his family and manager will react to his transformation. Either way, Gregor does not feel worried. If his appearance shocks them, Gregor knows he can do no more and will remain calm. On the other hand, if they accept his appearance, which Gregor hopes they will, things can go on normally. 

"He felt himself included once again in the circle of humanity and was expecting from both the doctor and the locksmith, without differentiating between them with any real precision, splendid and surprising results."

At first, Gregor maintains a sense of optimism about his condition. He feels happy that his parents take his inability to open his bedroom door seriously and think to call a doctor and locksmith to come to his aid. Gregor hopes that things will resolve with a little help. 

"‘A person can be incapable of work momentarily, but that's precisely the best time to remember the earlier achievements and to consider that later, after the obstacles have been shoved aside, the person will work all the more eagerly and intensely.’"

Gregor says this to his manager in his own defense after finally managing to open his bedroom door, using his mouth. Gregor has not yet learned that his appearance shocks anyone who sees him, nor that no one can understand his speech. Rather than helping Gregor's case, this speech terrifies the manager.

"'What a quiet life the family leads,' said Gregor to himself and, as he stared fixedly out in front of him into the darkness, he felt a great pride that he had been able to provide such a life in a beautiful apartment like this for his parents and his sister."

After seeing Gregor for the first time, the Samsas no longer spend their evenings engaged in conversation or reading the newspaper aloud to each other. Gregor mistakes this disturbed silence for tranquility afforded by the stability his income provides his family. 

"They had become quite accustomed to it, both the family and Gregor as well."

The Samsas have become “accustomed” to Gregor working intensely to bring home enough money to support the family and pay off their father's debt. They seem to have moved from taking his money with gratitude to a state of taking Gregor's income for granted, which upsets Gregor. Gregor now only really feels close with Grete.

"Gregor, behind his door, nodded eagerly, rejoicing over this unanticipated foresight and frugality."

Mr. Samsa reveals the state of the family's finances to his wife and daughter, which Gregor overhears. Gregor feels proud and pleased to hear that there is money left from his earnings, although, as he'll later learn, it's not enough to sustain them.

"If Gregor had only been able to speak to his sister and thank her for everything that she had to do for him, he would have tolerated her service more easily."

What Gregor wishes for in this passage is to have his humanity restored. As it is, Gregor can't speak to his sister, Grete, who is so repulsed by Gregor's appearance that she has to open his bedroom window to stifle her nausea every time she feeds him.

"She understood everything much better than his sister, who, in spite of all her courage, was still a child and, in the last analysis, had perhaps undertaken such a difficult task only out of childish recklessness."

Although Gregor appreciates Grete's service to him, he feels that his mother may be more mature and thus better suited to help him. This passage also hints at Grete's eventual metamorphosis from girl to woman. 

"Was he really eager to let the warm room, comfortably furnished with pieces he had inherited, be turned into a cavern in which he would, of course, then be able to crawl about in all directions without disturbance, but at the same time with a quick and complete forgetting of his human past as well?"

Grete's rearrangement of Gregor's room presents another obstacle in retaining his humanity. Gregor's furniture represents his human need for living in practical comfort. While Gregor agrees with Grete that it would be better for him as an insect, he also agrees with Mrs. Samsa that removing his furniture might further confuse him once he recovers. 

"Nevertheless, nevertheless, was that still his father?"

Gregor's lack of recognition of his father is visual but also metaphorical. Since Gregor's transformation has rendered him incapable of working, Mr. Samsa has risen from his chair, put on a uniform, and gone back to work. Gregor doesn't recognize his father in his uniform, nor as a provider for the family.

"With a sort of stubbornness the father refused to take off his servant's uniform even at home, and while his sleeping gown hung unused on the coat hook, the father dozed completely dressed in his place, as if he was always ready for his responsibility and even here was waiting for the voice of his superior."

Gregor's father embraces his rediscovered role as provider, represented by his uniform, with seriousness. Additionally, Kafka points to the attitude of the subservient worker, ever at the beckon call of their employer, as with Gregor's persistent obsession with getting back to work. 

"What the world demands of poor people they now carried out to an extreme degree."

Gregor, and his father before him, had worked to shelter the family from the harshness of a life of poverty. Whereas before the Samsas had a live-in maid, they now have a cleaning woman who comes twice a day. They've also had to sell prized possessions and take on demanding jobs. Gregor, helpless, witnesses this change from inside his dark, dirty bedroom. 

"The main thing holding the family back from a change in living quarters was far more their complete hopelessness and the idea that they had been struck by a misfortune like no one else in their entire circle of relatives and acquaintances."

The Samsas' dire situation is more a psychological one than anything. They act as though having to care for Gregor prevents them from ever leaving their home or from finding a more appropriately sized home. However, as Gregor suspects, it would be easy enough to move him in a suitable cardboard box. 

"At first, she also called him to her with words which she presumably thought were friendly, like 'Come here for a bit, old dung beetle!' or 'Hey, look at the old dung beetle!'"

The Samsas' new cleaning woman regards Gregor with neither fear nor disgust. Rather she approaches him with humor, acting as though she's seen everything in the world. In addition, she's the only person to address Gregor by his appearance rather than by his former self. 

"For him it was as if the way to the unknown nourishment he craved was revealing itself."

Gregor's intuitive attraction to Grete's violin-playing frightens him, as it compels him to leave his room without considering the consequences of his actions. It causes Gregor to ask himself whether he is truly an animal now. The music also satisfies Gregor in a way that, so far, nothing else has. 

"I will not utter my brother's name in front of this monster, and thus I say only that we must try to get rid of it."

Grete finally begins regarding Gregor as inhuman and encourages her parents to do the same. This represents not only the Samsas' first step towards a life not beholden to Gregor's condition, but the beginning of Gregor's fast decline. 

"When people have to work as hard as we all do, they cannot also tolerate this endless torment at home."

Here Kafka emphasizes not only the difficulty of working for a living but the difficulty of emotional labor. Grete frames her argument against continuing to care for Gregor in terms of self-preservation for the Samsas. 

"But Gregor did not have any notion of wishing to create problems for anyone and certainly not for his sister."

When Gregor hears Grete talking about him as though he's lost all humanity and sees her fright when he begins moving, Gregor withdraws into his bedroom. From the novella's beginning, Gregor has felt compelled to spare his family unnecessary grief. Seeing the fear and strife he's caused them, Gregor retreats. 

"It's kicked the bucket."

When Gregor dies, it's the cleaning woman who finds him. Unlike the Samsas, the cleaning woman never knew Gregor as a human and doesn't regard him as “Gregor” but rather as a “old dung beetle” (38).She refers to him as “it,” which his family doesn't start to do until just before his death.

"Then all three left the apartment together, something they had not done for months now, and took the electric tram into the open air outside the city."

Gregor's death allows the Samsas to feel they can finally leave their apartment. Setting the entire novella inside the apartment gives a sense of claustrophobia which the Samsas, especially Gregor, who never left, must have felt.