99 Fun Facts About The Metamorphosis

In the famous first sentence of The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa wakes one morning from what?

Troubled dreams. Kafka shuts that escape at once: 'It was no dream,' Gregor thinks, and his small, ordinary bedroom is still all around him.

With no hands to turn the key, how does Gregor unlock his bedroom door in The Metamorphosis?

With his jaws. He has no teeth, so the effort hurts him, and a brown fluid runs from his mouth over the key and drips to the floor.

What is the original German title of The Metamorphosis?

Die Verwandlung. It is the everyday German word for a fairy-tale change, such as brothers turned into swans, and Kafka chose it over the learned 'Die Metamorphose'.

Where did The Metamorphosis first appear in print?

Literary magazine. Editors had been asking for the story since 1913, after friends heard Kafka read it aloud, but Die weißen Blätter only printed it in October 1915.

In The Metamorphosis, what was Gregor's job before his transformation?

Travelling salesman. He sells cloth, loathes the early trains and hotel food, and stays only to pay off his parents' debt to his boss.

In The Metamorphosis, which drink, once Gregor's favourite, disgusts him after his transformation?

Milk. Grete leaves him a bowl of it with bread, but he turns away, and the next day he devours old cheese he had called inedible two days before.

What did the medieval root of Ungeziefer probably first mean?

An unclean animal unfit for sacrifice. The word names no species at all, which is why Kafka could leave Gregor's new body undefined and translators still argue over it.

What does Mr. Samsa wave to drive Gregor back into his room on the first morning?

A stick and a newspaper. Hissing and stamping, he herds Gregor into a doorway too narrow for him, then shoves him through so hard that his side is left bleeding.

In The Metamorphosis, what do the Samsas sell to raise money once Gregor can no longer work?

Family jewellery. His mother and sister had loved wearing the pieces at parties, and Gregor learns they are gone only by overhearing the family talk over the prices.

In The Metamorphosis, what does Grete hurry to do each time she enters Gregor's room?

Open the window. She pulls it wide and gulps the air as if she were suffocating, and the noise and cold leave Gregor trembling twice a day.

Who flees the apartment after seeing the transformed Gregor?

The chief clerk from his office. He came to ask why Gregor missed the early train, and backs away down the stairs while Gregor begs him to speak up for him at work.

What does Mr. Samsa hurl at Gregor, leaving him gravely wounded?

Apples. One sticks in Gregor's back, and because no one dares to pull it out, it rots there and cripples him for the rest of the story.

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

A woman clad in fur. He had cut her out of an illustrated magazine; now he presses his whole body over the glass, and the sight of him makes his mother faint.

Where does Gregor hide whenever someone enters his room?

Under the sofa. He even spends four hours dragging a sheet over it on his back, so that Grete is spared the sight of him when she comes in.

How does Mr. Samsa treat the three lodgers on the morning Gregor is found dead?

Orders them to leave at once. The night before, the same lodgers had caught sight of Gregor, given notice and refused to pay a penny for their stay.

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

Grete's violin playing. The lodgers are soon bored by it, but Gregor creeps closer and wonders how he can be an animal when music moves him so.

How does Gregor die?

Of starvation before sunrise. After hearing Grete say he must go, he drags himself back to his room and thinks of his family with love as his last breath leaves him.

Whom does the family send for when Gregor will not open his bedroom door?

A doctor and a locksmith. Neither is needed in the end, but hearing them sent for comforts Gregor: he feels drawn back into the human circle.

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

Take a tram trip into the countryside. All three write to excuse themselves from work, and on the ride the parents see how Grete has blossomed and think of finding her a husband.

What chronic ailment does Mrs. Samsa suffer from?

Asthma. It leaves her fighting for breath every other day, yet once Gregor cannot work she takes in sewing for a fashion shop.

What does the cleaning lady call Gregor in The Metamorphosis?

Old dung beetle. She says it fondly, and she alone is unafraid of him: when he creeps towards her she simply lifts a chair until he backs off.

What did Vladimir Nabokov argue Gregor had without ever discovering it?

Wings. Nabokov read Gregor's hard, domed back as a pair of wing cases and told his students that some Gregors, 'some Joes and Janes', never learn that they have wings.

What does Mr. Samsa stubbornly keep wearing at home, even asleep in his chair?

His bank uniform. The man who once shuffled about in a dressing gown now dozes every evening in a blue coat with gold buttons, as if always ready for duty.

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

The insect must not be drawn. Kafka had kept Gregor's new body vague on purpose, and he begged his publisher not to let an illustrator settle what readers should only imagine.

Which movement led German writing in the 1910s, when The Metamorphosis appeared?

Expressionism. It prized powerful symbols like Gregor's change, and Kafka is sometimes labelled an Expressionist, yet his calm, matter-of-fact tone also reads like plain realism.

In The Metamorphosis, which language does Grete study in the evenings, hoping for a better job?

French. She learns it alongside shorthand after work: the sister Gregor once planned to support is now training to earn for the family herself.

To whom did Kafka write a long 1919 letter of accusation that never reached its reader?

His father. Kafka blamed Hermann's bullying for his own fear and failures; by one account he gave the letter to his mother to pass on, and she never did.

Which Japanese novelist's 2013 story Samsa in Love has a creature wake up as Gregor Samsa?

Haruki Murakami. He runs Kafka's premise backwards: something wakes to find it has become Gregor Samsa, and must learn to walk on two legs and find clothes.

Where does the transformed Gregor most enjoy hanging once he learns to climb?

From the ceiling. Up there he can breathe more freely, and the sticky trails his feet leave behind are what make Grete decide to clear out his furniture.

Listening at his door, what does Gregor learn Mr. Samsa has kept quiet about for years?

A stash of savings. Gregor had worked himself to exhaustion believing the family had nothing left, yet he is simply glad of the old man's thrift and caution.

In which city was Kafka born in 1883?

Prague. His family were German-speaking Jews there, which is why he wrote his fiction in German rather than Czech.

Where was Kafka when the idea for The Metamorphosis came to him in 1912?

Lying in bed. He wrote in a letter that the story had come to him 'in my misery' there, which is just where he leaves Gregor as the tale opens.

What was Kafka's day job while writing?

Insurance official. By day he handled injury claims at a workers' accident institute; he wrote The Metamorphosis at night, grumbling that the office kept interrupting it.

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

Max Brod. Told to burn everything 'unread', he instead edited the three unfinished novels and had them all in print by 1927.

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

Tuberculosis. Diagnosed in 1917, it pushed him out of his office job on a pension in 1922, and he spent much of his last years in sanatoriums.

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

The Trial and The Castle. Kafka completed neither, and both reached readers only after his death, pieced together from notebooks and loose pages he had asked to have burned.

In which subject did Kafka earn a university doctorate in 1906?

Law. He spent the next year working unpaid in the law courts, then took the desk job he kept while writing his fiction at night.

Which Nobel laureate said the first line of The Metamorphosis made him start writing fiction as a student?

Gabriel García Márquez. A student in Bogotá, he thought he 'didn't know anyone was allowed to write things like that', and began writing short stories at once.

Which ballet star played Gregor Samsa on Broadway in 1989?

Mikhail Baryshnikov. He chose a speaking part in Steven Berkoff's staging for his stage debut as a dramatic actor, and it earned the dancer a Tony nomination for acting in a play.

Which novelist, a byword for exact and impersonal prose, was among Kafka's greatest influences?

Gustave Flaubert. The debt shows in the story's plain, realist surface: Gregor's impossible change is reported as flatly as the furniture in his room.

Which story did Kafka write in a single night in September 1912, weeks before The Metamorphosis?

The Judgment. He dedicated it to Felice Bauer, whom he had met only weeks before, and called that night's work 'the total opening of body and soul'.

How does Gregor first react on finding himself transformed?

He worries about being late for work. The story never says why he has changed, and Gregor barely asks: the missed train and his boss's anger trouble him far more.

What do all three of the lodgers in The Metamorphosis have in common?

Full beards. The three are so fussy about tidiness that everything they have no use for is dumped in Gregor's room, which turns into the household junk store.

Working from clues in the text, Vladimir Nabokov judged the transformed Gregor to be the size of which animal?

A dog. He worked it out from the scene at the door: reared up on his back legs Gregor can just reach the key, which makes him about three feet long.

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

Salesgirl. She had never had to work before, and when Gregor hears the family say she must earn, he goes hot with shame that he can no longer spare her.

Which Latin poet's Metamorphoses did Kafka study at school, years before writing his own?

Ovid. Kafka knew the poem from the classroom, yet he passed over its famous title for his own story and chose a plain word from German fairy tales instead.

With which hobby did Gregor make the frame for his favourite picture?

Fretsaw woodwork. His mother offers it as proof of how quietly he lives, and when his room is cleared he is dismayed to lose the chest that holds the saw.

Why does Gregor's mother at first object to emptying his room of furniture?

It looks like giving up hope. She wants him to find everything unchanged when he comes back to them, and hearing her, Gregor decides that nothing must be moved.

What change do the Samsas agree would most improve their lives once Gregor is gone?

A smaller, cheaper flat. The big one had been Gregor's choice, and while he lived the family felt trapped in it, saying they had no way to move him.

In The Metamorphosis, why does Gregor Samsa stay in a job he would otherwise quit at once?

To pay off family debt: his parents owe money to his boss, and Gregor reckons clearing it will take another five or six years. Only then, he promises himself, will he tell the man what he thinks.

Which kind of food does Grete discover the transformed Gregor Samsa will eat in The Metamorphosis?

Rotten leftovers are all he wants: Grete lays out a spread to test his taste, and he leaves everything fresh untouched. He cannot even bear the smell of unspoiled food any more.

In The Metamorphosis, what does Grete finally tell her parents the family must do about Gregor?

Get rid of it, she says, refusing even to use her brother's name for the creature. Gregor takes in every word, drags himself back to his room, and does not live through the night.

Who discovers that Gregor Samsa has died in his room near the end of The Metamorphosis?

The charwoman finds him on her early-morning visit and announces the news to the Samsas without a trace of alarm. She had never been afraid of him, and she later disposes of the body herself.

As The Metamorphosis closes, what do Mr. and Mrs. Samsa decide it is time to find for Grete?

A husband is on their minds as Grete gets up and stretches at the journey's end. The story's last change is hers: the worn-out girl has blossomed into a young lady.

In which Mel Brooks comedy is the opening of The Metamorphosis read aloud and rejected as too good?

The Producers has Max Bialystock hunting for the worst play ever written, and Kafka's opening sentence is among the scripts he reads and discards. He settles on a musical tribute to Hitler.

Which Scottish actor won an Oscar for directing a short film about Kafka struggling to begin The Metamorphosis?

Peter Capaldi wrote and directed Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life, in which the blocked author toys with turning Gregor into a banana or a kangaroo. Richard E. Grant played Kafka.

Which rock band's 1975 compilation Metamorphosis has cover art with a human-insect motif alluding to Kafka?

The Rolling Stones lent their faces to the sleeve of this collection of outtakes recorded from 1964 to 1970. Both Brian Jones and his replacement Mick Taylor are pictured on it.

In a 2011 mash-up parody of The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa wakes up as which adorable animal instead?

A kitten is what he becomes in The Meowmorphosis, issued in the Quirk Classics series of mash-up novels. The joke swaps Kafka's hideous creature for one nobody could fear.

In The Metamorphosis, which grim institution fills the view across the street from Gregor Samsa's bedroom?

A hospital stands opposite, an endless grey-black block that Gregor used to curse the sight of. As his eyesight fades he can no longer make it out, and the street looks like a grey wasteland.

In The Metamorphosis, a photograph on the living-room wall shows the young Gregor Samsa in which proud role?

Army lieutenant: the picture dates from his military service and shows him smiling and carefree, one hand on his sword. It faces the helpless creature as he first edges out of his room.

In The Metamorphosis, where had Gregor Samsa secretly planned to send Grete at his own great expense?

To the conservatory: unlike her brother, Grete loved music, and he meant to cover the fees whatever they cost. Their parents disliked any mention of the idea.

In The Metamorphosis, what work does Mrs. Samsa take on at home once Gregor's wages stop coming?

Sewing fine underwear for a fashion shop keeps her bent over the table far into the evening. Before the transformation, Gregor alone had earned the household's living.

On the morning Gregor Samsa dies in The Metamorphosis, what do his parents and Grete sit down to write?

Letters of apology go to a supervisor, a client and a proprietor, excusing all three Samsas from the day's duties. They have decided they have earned a rest and badly need one.

Which habitual sleeping position can Gregor Samsa no longer get into on the first morning of The Metamorphosis?

On his right side is how he always slept, but each time he throws himself over he tips onto his back again. He tries perhaps a hundred times, eyes shut so as not to see his wriggling legs.

In The Metamorphosis, why must employees step close up when Gregor Samsa's boss addresses them from on high?

He is hard of hearing, yet he likes to sit perched above his staff and speak down to them. Gregor thinks the habit weird and longs to say so to his face.

How does the Samsas' servant girl respond on the very first day of Gregor's change in The Metamorphosis?

She begs to be dismissed, on her knees, and thanks Mrs. Samsa in tears when she is let go a quarter of an hour later. Unasked, she swears a solemn oath never to breathe a word of it.

Once the Samsas take in lodgers in The Metamorphosis, what does Gregor's own bedroom gradually become?

A storage room for whatever fits nowhere else: the household's surplus goods pile up around him. Even the box of ashes and the rubbish pail end up there.

On which festive evening had Gregor Samsa meant to announce his secret plan for Grete's future?

Christmas Eve was to be the moment, with his parents given no chance to object. When the wounded Gregor later recalls the plan, he is no longer sure whether the holiday has come and gone.

Which ornament on the cleaning woman's hat has irritated Mr. Samsa throughout her service in The Metamorphosis?

An ostrich feather stands almost upright on her hat and sways in all directions as she stands smiling in the doorway. Mr. Samsa cuts her short and decides she will be let go that same evening.

As Grete hunts for something to revive her fainting mother in The Metamorphosis, what cuts Gregor's face?

A broken bottle is to blame: one of the small medicine flasks Grete is rummaging through falls and shatters, and a splinter catches him. Some corrosive remedy drips over him as well.

Besides the chest of drawers, which piece from his student days do Grete and Mrs. Samsa haul out of Gregor Samsa's room?

His writing desk had served him as an elementary pupil, a schoolboy and a business student, and it is fixed tight to the floor. Seeing it worked loose is what drives Gregor out of hiding.

In The Metamorphosis, what does Gregor Samsa's boss hint may explain his failure to appear that morning?

Cash he collected for the firm is the boss's suspicion, relayed to Gregor through his closed bedroom door. He is also told that his recent results have been very unsatisfactory.

In The Metamorphosis, where do the Samsas take their own meals once the lodgers dine in the living room?

In the kitchen, while the paying guests take over the family table. The lodgers inspect the meat before they will eat it, and the Samsas wait anxiously to see whether it passes.

Which dreary weather greets Gregor Samsa as he wakes transformed in The Metamorphosis?

Falling rain drums on the metal ledge outside and makes him quite melancholy. By seven o'clock a fog is still hanging over the street as well.

On spotting Gregor, what do the lodgers in The Metamorphosis declare about the days already spent in the apartment?

They will pay nothing, the middle lodger announces, cancelling his room on the spot and spitting on the floor for emphasis. His two companions at once say the same.

To spare Grete the sight of him, what does Gregor Samsa spend four hours dragging over his hiding place?

A bedsheet, hauled across the room on his back, hides him so completely that Grete could not see him even by bending down. He believes he catches a look of gratitude from her.

How does Mr. Samsa respond in The Metamorphosis when he is shown that Gregor is dead?

He crosses himself after saying they can now give thanks to God, and the women follow his example. It is the nearest thing to a funeral that Gregor receives.

Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis within months of meeting which Berlin woman, to whom he was later twice engaged?

Felice Bauer worked for a dictaphone company in Berlin, and Kafka courted her mostly by post for the next five years. He became engaged to several women and never married.

After Mr. Samsa's attack cripples Gregor in The Metamorphosis, what small mercy do the Samsas grant each evening?

He may watch them talk: the door between the rooms is opened towards evening, and he lies in the dark looking on at the lamplit table. He counts it fair compensation for no longer being able to climb.

Which American composer wrote the 1988 five-movement piece Metamorphosis, inspired by Kafka's novella?

Philip Glass wrote all five movements in 1988 and recorded them himself on his album Solo Piano. They have since accompanied recorded readings and stage versions of Kafka's tale.

Which British novelist's 2019 satire The Cockroach flips The Metamorphosis by turning a bug into a prime minister?

Ian McEwan has his creature wake in 10 Downing Street as Jim Sams, a name that winks at Kafka's hero. Overnight an average nobody becomes the most powerful man in Britain.

In which American author's 1972 novella The Breast does the hero compare his plight to Gregor Samsa's?

Philip Roth turns a literature professor, David Kepesh, into a 155-pound breast. The scholar reaches for Kafka's tale and Gogol's story of a runaway nose to make sense of his fate.

Which English actor read The Metamorphosis for BBC radio in 2006, before fame as a television detective?

Benedict Cumberbatch read an abridged version in four half-hour parts, four years before Sherlock made his name.

Franz Kafka, author of The Metamorphosis, had a surname echoing the Czech word for which bird?

A jackdaw is kavka in Czech, and Hermann Kafka made the bird the logo of his fancy goods business, which employed up to 15 people.

What creeps into Gregor Samsa's voice on the first morning of The Metamorphosis, garbling his replies?

A painful squeaking rises from beneath his usual voice, leaving each word clear for a moment and then distorted. Through the wooden door, Mrs. Samsa at first fails to catch the change.

Unlike The Metamorphosis, which Kafka completed and saw into print, what is true of all three of his novels?

He never finished them, and he burned around nine-tenths of everything he wrote. Only a small part of his work reached print in his lifetime, and it drew little attention.

With which household tool does the cleaning woman try to tickle Gregor from the doorway in The Metamorphosis?

A long broom happens to be in her hand, and unlike the rest of the household she feels no fear of him. She takes his stillness for sulking and credits him with complete understanding.

Which Australian singer performed the soundtrack, with Warren Ellis, for a 2006 London staging of The Metamorphosis?

Nick Cave and his bandmate Ellis scored the co-production between the Icelandic company Vesturport and the Lyric Hammersmith. The show reached Sydney on a world tour in 2009.

Which American cartoonist drew a comic version of The Metamorphosis for the 1993 book Introducing Kafka?

Robert Crumb's adaptation sits inside an illustrated life of the author that has also been published as Kafka for Beginners and simply as Kafka.

Which daily comic strip did R. Sikoryak mash up with The Metamorphosis, handing its hapless hero Gregor's role?

Peanuts supplies the cast, with Charlie Brown taking Gregor Samsa's place. The parody appears in Sikoryak's series Masterpiece Comics, which retells literary classics in famous comic styles.

A. Igoni Barrett's 2015 novel borrows Kafka's opening: what change does its Nigerian hero discover on waking?

He has turned white, all but one body part, which the novel's irreverent title, Blackass, gives away. Like Gregor Samsa, he makes the discovery on waking up one morning.

Among the stories Kafka completed and published in his lifetime, which distinction belongs to The Metamorphosis?

It is the longest, running to about 70 printed pages. The first edition in book form appeared in December 1915.

While writing The Metamorphosis, Kafka was also drafting a novel about a young emigrant in which country?

America is where young Karl Rossmann is packed off to after a scandal with a housemaid, landing in New York. The novel's first chapter was published on its own in 1913 as The Stoker.

In Karl Brand's 1916 sequel to The Metamorphosis, what happens to Gregor Samsa on the rubbish heap?

He turns back into a man in The Retransformation of Gregor Samsa, printed only a year after Kafka's original. The whole reply runs to about four pages in translation.

What does the dazed Mrs. Samsa send streaming over the carpet when Gregor first emerges in The Metamorphosis?

A pot of coffee lies overturned as she sinks onto the breakfast table, too dazed to notice the flood beside her. The dishes were still out because Mr. Samsa liked to stretch the meal for hours.

In which children's cartoon does a character nicknamed The Brain have a nightmare of waking as a giant bug, Kafka-style?

Arthur gave the nightmare to Alan Powers in the 2003 episode Bugged, where becoming a pest stands for his fear of being annoying.

Which item in the spread Grete lays out does the transformed Gregor Samsa go for first in The Metamorphosis?

The cheese attracts him at once, more than everything else she has set out, and he sucks at it greedily. His eyes water with satisfaction as he eats.

Which manga about a student turned half-monster has its hero recall reading The Metamorphosis in fifth grade?

Tokyo Ghoul opens its second chapter with Ken Kaneki remembering Kafka's tale, soon after his own change into a half-ghoul.

Which married pair of translators gave The Metamorphosis a classic English version featuring a 'gigantic insect'?

Willa and Edwin Muir chose that phrase for Kafka's deliberately vague creature, which later translators have rendered in at least sixteen different ways.