50 Fun Facts About The Metamorphosis

Who wrote The Metamorphosis?

The Prague-born writer published it in 1915; it is the longest of the stories he considered finished and released in his lifetime.

What is the name of the salesman who wakes up transformed?

His sister is Grete; the similarity of their names has been read as a clue that they form two halves of one personality.

What is the novella's original German title?

Kafka had read and even translated Ovid as a schoolboy, yet chose the everyday word for transformation rather than 'Metamorphose'.

In which year was The Metamorphosis first published?

It appeared in the October issue of the journal Die weißen Blätter, then as a book that December.

What was Gregor's job before his transformation?

He sold cloth, hated the constant travel and stayed only to pay off his bankrupt father's debts.

What German phrase describes the creature Gregor becomes?

The 'monstrous vermin' has been translated at least sixteen different ways into English.

What did Ungeziefer literally mean in Middle High German?

Its indeterminacy seems deliberate, though Kafka called Gregor an 'Insekt' in a 1913 letter to his publisher.

How did Willa and Edwin Muir render the creature in the first English translation of 1933?

Michael Hofmann chose 'monstrous cockroach' in 2007 and Christopher Moncrieff went for 'monstrous bedbug'.

Which family member becomes Gregor's caretaker after the change?

She discovers he prefers rotten food, but eventually declares the creature is no longer Gregor and must go.

Which instrument does Grete play?

Gregor had secretly planned to announce at Christmas that he would send her to the conservatory.

Who flees the apartment after seeing the transformed Gregor?

He had come to scold Gregor for missing his train and hears only incomprehensible noises through the door.

What does Gregor's father hurl at him, leaving him gravely wounded?

One lodges in his back and rots there; he eats little afterwards.

Which picture does Gregor cling to when his room is being emptied?

He fears losing all trace of his human past; his mother faints at the sight of him on the wall.

Where does Gregor hide whenever someone enters his room?

His mother and sister remove the rest of the furniture so he can crawl freely over walls and ceiling.

How many lodgers does the family take in?

They are never told about Gregor and threaten legal action when they discover him.

What draws Gregor out of his room on the night the lodgers spot him?

The charwoman had left his door ajar; the lodgers refuse to pay for their stay.

How does Gregor die?

Some critics read his slow emaciation as an unconscious hunger strike that his family fails to notice.

Who finds Gregor's body and disposes of it?

The old widow was never afraid of him and cheerfully called him an old dung beetle.

What do the Samsas do on the day of Gregor's death?

They notice that Grete has blossomed into a pretty young woman and think of finding her a husband.

What chronic ailment does Mrs. Samsa suffer from?

It is a constant worry to Gregor, whose own concern for his family never fades.

What did the old cleaning lady call Gregor?

Nabokov insisted this was just her friendly manner and that Gregor was 'merely a big beetle'.

What kind of creature did Vladimir Nabokov conclude Gregor had become?

The novelist-lepidopterist sketched it on his teaching copy, annotated 'just over three feet long'.

Whom did Nabokov call the cruellest person in the story?

He rejected the father-complex reading and saw the tale as an artist destroyed step by step by narrow minds.

What did Kafka instruct his publisher about the cover of the first edition?

'It is not even to be seen from a distance,' he wrote in October 1915.

Who edited the journal Die weißen Blätter, where the story first appeared?

Kurt Wolff then issued it as a book in his series Der jüngste Tag in December 1915.

Roughly how long is The Metamorphosis in print?

That makes it the longest work Kafka regarded as complete and published while alive.

Which critic first read the story as an expression of Kafka's father complex, in 1948?

Gregor's relationship with Mr. Samsa is often modelled on Kafka's own with his overbearing father Hermann.

Whose 1989 feminist reading argued that Grete's metamorphosis is as central as Gregor's?

Volker Drüke later suggested the title may point to Grete's growth from girl to woman as much as to Gregor.

Which translator titled his 2024 version The Transformation and defended the choice?

He argued Kafka could have written 'Die Metamorphose' but deliberately chose the plainer German word.

Into how many English translations has The Metamorphosis been rendered?

Renderings of the first sentence alone range from 'gigantic insect' to 'gargantuan pest'.

In which city was Kafka born in 1883?

His German-speaking Jewish family lived near the Old Town Square in what was then Austria-Hungary.

In which year did Kafka write The Metamorphosis?

It came in the same burst of creativity as The Judgment, written in a single night, and the start of Amerika.

What was Kafka's day job while writing?

His father dismissed it as a Brotberuf, a bread job; Kafka was promoted quickly but claimed to despise it.

Which friend and executor ignored Kafka's request to burn his unpublished work?

Kafka's note asked that everything be 'burned unread'; Brod published the novels between 1925 and 1935.

Of what disease did Kafka die in 1924, aged 40?

His throat became so painful that he could barely eat, and he starved in a sanatorium near Vienna.

Which two novels, with The Metamorphosis, are Kafka's best-known works?

Both were published after his death, in 1924 and 1926, and both were left unfinished.

Which adjective entered the language for surreal, bureaucratic nightmares like his?

It is applied especially to situations resembling The Trial and The Metamorphosis.

Which Nobel laureate said the novella showed him 'it was possible to write in a different way'?

W. H. Auden called Kafka 'the Dante of the twentieth century'.

Which British actor-playwright adapted The Metamorphosis for the stage in 1969?

He followed it with In the Penal Colony the same year and The Trial in 1971.

Who played Nabokov in the TV film dramatising his lecture on The Metamorphosis?

Peter Medak directed Nabokov on Kafka.

How quickly did Kafka write The Judgment, just before The Metamorphosis?

He wrote it soon after meeting Felice Bauer, to whom he was twice engaged.

Which of these does the story deliberately never explain?

Reiner Stach argued the story needs no commentary and would be canonical even if we knew nothing of its author.

Which 2007 translator boldly rendered the creature as a 'monstrous cockroach'?

Kafka himself never named the species, and Nabokov was sure it was not a cockroach.

What excuse does the previous maid give for leaving the Samsa household?

Her replacement, the old charwoman, takes Gregor completely in her stride.

Which publisher's series, Der jüngste Tag, issued The Metamorphosis in book form in December 1915?

Kafka wrote to Wolff that the insect itself must not be drawn on the cover, calling Gregor 'merely a big beetle'.

What job does Grete take to help support the family after Gregor's transformation?

By the story's end her parents notice she has 'blossomed into a pretty and shapely girl' and resolve to find her a husband.

Which Latin author's Metamorphoses had Kafka read and partly translated as a schoolboy?

Translator Mark Harman argues Kafka could have called his story Die Metamorphose but deliberately chose Die Verwandlung instead.

Which scholar in 1999 read Gregor and Grete as two halves of a single personality, Kafka's own?

He pointed to the similarity of their names and to the passive-active pairing typical of Kafka's fiction.

How did Kafka describe Gregor in an April 1913 letter to his future publisher?

The German text's 'Ungeziefer' is deliberately vague; its Middle High German sense was an unclean animal unfit for sacrifice.

What disease do critics such as Sokel and Sautermeister see the story as a metaphor for?

Other readings treat the transformation as an escape into illness or as exposing the cruelty beneath everyday life.