The Metamorphosis / The Trial

Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to discover he has changed into a giant insect, the narrator distractedly ponders a picture on the wall of a pretty lady in a fur cap and muff. Like Samsa, the narrator is ready to let the transformation pass as if it were a dream, although stating just previously, "It was no dream." Were we to awaken changed into an insect, we should devoutly hope for a narrator of our plight more engaged than to be infatuated by a pretty picture on the wall.

This short story from the Prague of 1915 - Sigmund Freud's hometown - explores the darkest corners of our modern, commercial, 20th-century psychological mind. It has become a central metaphor for contemporary angst, a touchstone for what's wrong with show more civilisation.

Gregor is alienated from himself, his family, and the wider social world. It is a world of disconnestion and dissociation, where nobody cares, nobody sees, nobody feels, where the abnormal and mad becomes accepted as just another thing and where relationships are based on unthinking and unrecognised sadism. It is a nightmare world. If we know something about Kafka's family and his childhood we can understand why he wrote this story. show less

The book was interesting the way how an ordinary man just turned into a big beetle.Franz Kafka was a pretty good writer that expressed a dark way.I'm hoping to read another one of his books one day.