The Metamorphosis

Rating: 4 (114 votes)

Tags: Male author

Description:

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, “Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.”

Reviews:

Anganile Mwenechanya (1 year ago)	21 Jan, 2024 Very interesting. The themes of abandonment and the limits of sympathy, even for your own family members, were the most apparent themes to me.
Urbina28 (5 months ago)	15 Apr, 2025 Short story from 1915 Germany....given the times and geographical location of publication origin, I gotta say, this was a sad damn story. Poor Gregory. I felt sad for his character throughout the short story and understand why it would have multiple themes to discuss in classrooms today. A quick 44 page read, but the depth of at solid 250 page book
Aster 444 (1 month ago)	14 Aug, 2025 instead of asking your partner if they’d love you if you were a worm, ask them if they’d love you if you were a human sized cockroach