The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka













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The Metamorphosis
This text is a translation from the German
by Ian Johnston, Malaspina University-
College Nanaimo, BC. It has been
prepared for students in the Liberal Studies
and English departments. This document is
in the public domain, released, January
1999
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I
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from
anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been
changed into a monstrous verminous bug. He lay on his
armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little,
his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-
like sections. From this height the blanket, just about
ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place.
His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest
of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.
‘What’s happened to me,’ he thought. It was no dream.
His room, a proper room for a human being, only
somewhat too small, lay quietly between the four well-
known walls. Above the table, on which an unpacked
collection of sample cloth goods was spread out (Samsa
was a traveling salesman) hung the picture which he had
cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago and set
in a pretty gilt frame. It was a picture of a woman with a
fur hat and a fur boa. She sat erect there, lifting up in the
direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which her
entire forearm disappeared.
Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. The dreary
weather (the rain drops were falling audibly down on the
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metal window ledge) made him quite melancholy. ‘Why
don’t I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all
this foolishness,’ he thought. But this was entirely
impractical, for he was used to sleeping on his right side,
and in his present state he couldn’t get himself into this
position. No matter how hard he threw himself onto his
right side, he always rolled again onto his back. He must
have tried it a hundred times, closing his eyes, so that he
would not have to see the wriggling legs, and gave up
only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in his side
which he had never felt before.
‘O God,’ he thought, ‘what a demanding job I’ve
chosen! Day in, day out on the road. The stresses of trade
are much greater than the work going on at head office,
and, in addition to that, I have to deal with the problems
of traveling, the worries about train connections, irregular
bad food, temporary and constantly changing human
relationships which never come from the heart. To hell
with it all!’ He felt a slight itching on the top of his
abdomen. He slowly pushed himself on his back closer to
the bed post so that he could lift his head more easily,
found the itchy part, which was entirely covered with
small white spots (he did not know what to make of
them), and wanted to feel the place with a leg. But he
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retracted it immediately, for the contact felt like a cold
shower all over him.
He slid back again into his earlier position. ‘This
getting up early,’ he thought, ‘makes a man quite idiotic.
A man must have his sleep. Other traveling salesmen live
like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the
inn during the course of the morning to write up the
necessary orders, these gentlemen are just sitting down to
breakfast. If I were to try that with my boss, I’d be thrown
out on the spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn’t
be really good for me. If I didn’t hold back for my parents’
sake, I would’ve quit ages ago. I would’ve gone to the
boss and told him just what I think from the bottom of my
heart. He would’ve fallen right off his desk! How weird it
is to sit up at the desk and talk down to the employee
from way up there. The boss has trouble hearing, so the
employee has to step up quite close to him. Anyway, I
haven’t completely given up that hope yet. Once I’ve got
together the money to pay off the parents’ debt to him—
that should take another five or six years—I’ll do it for
sure. Then I’ll make the big break. In any case, right now
I have to get up. My train leaves at five o’clock.’
And he looked over at the alarm clock ticking away by
the chest of drawers. ‘Good God,’ he thought. It was half
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past six, and the hands were going quietly on. It was past
the half hour, already nearly quarter to. Could the alarm
have failed to ring? One saw from the bed that it was
properly set for four o’clock. Certainly it had rung. Yes,
but was it possible to sleep through this noise that made
the furniture shake? Now, it’s true he’d not slept quietly,
but evidently he’d slept all the more deeply. Still, what
should he do now? The next train left at seven o’clock.
To catch that one, he would have to go in a mad rush.
The sample collection wasn’t packed up yet, and he really
didn’t feel particularly fresh and active. And even if he
caught the train, there was no avoiding a blow up with the
boss, because the firm’s errand boy would’ve waited for
the five o’clock train and reported the news of his absence
long ago. He was the boss’s minion, without backbone or
intelligence. Well then, what if he reported in sick? But
that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious,
because during his five years’ service Gregor hadn’t been
sick even once. The boss would certainly come with the
doctor from the health insurance company and would
reproach his parents for their lazy son and cut short all
objections with the insurance doctor’s comments; for him
everyone was completely healthy but really lazy about
work. And besides, would the doctor in this case be totally
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wrong? Apart from a really excessive drowsiness after the
long sleep, Gregor in fact felt quite well and even had a
really strong appetite.
As he was thinking all this over in the greatest haste,
without being able to make the decision to get out of bed
(the alarm clock was indicating exactly quarter to seven)
there was a cautious knock on the door by the head of the
bed.
‘Gregor,’ a voice called (it was his mother!) ‘it’s quarter
to seven. Don’t you want to be on your way?’ The soft
voice! Gregor was startled when he heard his voice
answering. It was clearly and unmistakably his earlier
voice, but in it was intermingled, as if from below, an
irrepressibly painful squeaking which left the words
positively distinct only in the first moment and distorted
them in the reverberation, so that one didn’t know if one
had heard correctly. Gregor wanted to answer in detail
and explain everything, but in these circumstances he
confined himself to saying, ‘Yes, yes, thank you mother.
I’m getting up right away.’ Because of the wooden door
the change in Gregor’s voice was not really noticeable
outside, so his mother calmed down with this explanation
and shuffled off. However, as a result of the short
conversation the other family members became aware of
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the fact that Gregor was unexpectedly still at home, and
already his father was knocking on one side door, weakly
but with his fist. ‘Gregor, Gregor,’ he called out, ‘what’s
going on?’ And after a short while he urged him on again
in a deeper voice. ‘Gregor!’ Gregor!’ At the other side
door, however, his sister knocked lightly. ‘Gregor? Are
you all right? Do you need anything?’ Gregor directed
answers in both directions, ‘I’ll be ready right away.’ He
made an effort with the most careful articulation and by
inserting long pauses between the individual words to
remove everything remarkable from his voice. His father
turned back to his breakfast. However, the sister
whispered, ‘Gregor, open the door, I beg you.’ Gregor
had no intention of opening the door, but congratulated
himself on his precaution, acquired from traveling, of
locking all doors during the night, even at home.
First he wanted to stand up quietly and undisturbed, get
dressed, above all have breakfast, and only then consider
further action, for (he noticed this clearly) by thinking
things over in bed he would not reach a reasonable
conclusion. He remembered that he had already often felt
a light pain or other in bed, perhaps the result of an
awkward lying position, which later turned out to be
purely imaginary when he stood up, and he was eager to
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see how his present fantasies would gradually dissipate.
That the change in his voice was nothing other than the
onset of a real chill, an occupational illness of commercial
travelers, of that he had not the slightest doubt.
It was very easy to throw aside the blanket. He needed
only to push himself up a little, and it fell by itself. But to
continue was difficult, particularly because he was so
unusually wide. He needed arms and hands to push
himself upright. Instead of these, however, he had only
many small limbs which were incessantly moving with
very different motions and which, in addition, he was
unable to control. If he wanted to bend one of them, then
it was the first to extend itself, and if he finally succeeded
doing with this limb what he wanted, in the meantime all
the others, as if left free, moved around in an excessively
painful agitation. ‘But I must not stay in bed uselessly,’ said
Gregor to himself.
At first he wanted to get of the bed with the lower part
of his body, but this lower part (which he incidentally had
not yet looked at and which he also couldn’t picture
clearly) proved itself too difficult to move. The attempt
went so slowly. When, having become almost frantic, he
finally hurled himself forward with all his force and
without thinking, he chose his direction incorrectly, and
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he hit the lower bedpost hard. The violent pain he felt
revealed to him that the lower part of his body was at the
moment probably the most sensitive.
Thus, he tried to get his upper body out of the bed first
and turned his head carefully toward the edge of the bed.
He managed to do this easily, and in spite of its width and
weight his body mass at last slowly followed the turning of
his head. But as he finally raised his head outside the bed
in the open air, he became anxious about moving forward
any further in this manner, for if he allowed himself
eventually to fall by this process, it would take a miracle to
prevent his head from getting injured. And at all costs he
must not lose consciousness right now. He preferred to
remain in bed.
However, after a similar effort, while he lay there again
sighing as before and once again saw his small limbs
fighting one another, if anything worse than before, and
didn’t see any chance of imposing quiet and order on this
arbitrary movement, he told himself again that he couldn’t
possibly remain in bed and that it might be the most
reasonable thing to sacrifice everything if there was even
the slightest hope of getting himself out of bed in the
process. At the same moment, however, he didn’t forget
to remind himself from time to time of the fact that calm
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