The Metamorphosis Trivia
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99 free The Metamorphosis trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Metamorphosis trivia quiz covers Franz Kafka's 1915 novella from its famous first sentence to the family's tram ride: Gregor Samsa the travelling salesman, the chief clerk at the door, Grete's violin and rotten food, the woman in fur, the apple lodged in his back, the three lodgers, the charwoman and Gregor's quiet death. It also digs into what surrounds the story — what 'ungeheueres Ungeziefer' really means and its twenty-plus English translations, Kafka's order that the insect never be drawn, Nabokov's beetle sketch, the father-complex and feminist readings, Steven Berkoff's stage version, and Kafka himself: Prague, the insurance job, Max Brod, tuberculosis and the note asking for everything to be burned. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. Enjoy this one? Try our Classic Literature and Famous Authors quizzes next.
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Q 01In the famous first sentence of The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa wakes one morning from what?
Troubled dreams
Troubled dreams. Kafka shuts that escape at once: 'It was no dream,' Gregor thinks, and his small, ordinary bedroom is still all around him.
Q 02With no hands to turn the key, how does Gregor unlock his bedroom door in The Metamorphosis?
With his jaws
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.
Q 03What is the original German title of The Metamorphosis?
Die Verwandlung
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'.
Q 04Where did The Metamorphosis first appear in print?
Literary magazine
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.
Q 05In The Metamorphosis, what was Gregor's job before his transformation?
Travelling salesman
Travelling salesman. He sells cloth, loathes the early trains and hotel food, and stays only to pay off his parents' debt to his boss.
Q 06In The Metamorphosis, which drink, once Gregor's favourite, disgusts him after his transformation?
Milk
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.
Q 07What did the medieval root of Ungeziefer probably first mean?
An unclean animal unfit for sacrifice
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.
Q 08What does Mr. Samsa wave to drive Gregor back into his room on the first morning?
A stick and a newspaper
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.
Q 09In The Metamorphosis, what do the Samsas sell to raise money once Gregor can no longer work?
Family jewellery
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.
Q 10In The Metamorphosis, what does Grete hurry to do each time she enters Gregor's room?
Open the window
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.
Q 11Who flees the apartment after seeing the transformed Gregor?
The chief clerk from his office
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.
Q 12What does Mr. Samsa hurl at Gregor, leaving him gravely wounded?
Apples
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.
Q 13Which picture does Gregor cling to when his room is being emptied?
A woman clad in fur
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.
Q 21What does the cleaning lady call Gregor in The Metamorphosis?
Old dung beetle
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.
Q 22What did Vladimir Nabokov argue Gregor had without ever discovering it?
Wings
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.
Q 23What does Mr. Samsa stubbornly keep wearing at home, even asleep in his chair?
His bank uniform
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.
Q 14Where does Gregor hide whenever someone enters his room?
Under the sofa
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.
Q 15How does Mr. Samsa treat the three lodgers on the morning Gregor is found dead?
Orders them to leave at once
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.
Q 16What draws Gregor out of his room on the night the lodgers spot him?
Grete's violin playing
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.
Q 17How does Gregor die?
Of starvation before sunrise
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.
Q 18Whom does the family send for when Gregor will not open his bedroom door?
A doctor and a locksmith
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.
Q 19What do the Samsas do on the day of Gregor's death?
Take a tram trip into the countryside
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.
Q 20What chronic ailment does Mrs. Samsa suffer from?
Asthma
Asthma. It leaves her fighting for breath every other day, yet once Gregor cannot work she takes in sewing for a fashion shop.
Q 24What did Kafka instruct his publisher about the cover of the first edition?
The insect must not be drawn
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.
Q 25Which movement led German writing in the 1910s, when The Metamorphosis appeared?
Expressionism
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.
Q 26In The Metamorphosis, which language does Grete study in the evenings, hoping for a better job?
French
French. She learns it alongside shorthand after work: the sister Gregor once planned to support is now training to earn for the family herself.
Q 27To whom did Kafka write a long 1919 letter of accusation that never reached its reader?
His father
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.
Q 28Which Japanese novelist's 2013 story Samsa in Love has a creature wake up as Gregor Samsa?
Haruki Murakami
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.
Q 29Where does the transformed Gregor most enjoy hanging once he learns to climb?
From the ceiling
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.
Q 30Listening at his door, what does Gregor learn Mr. Samsa has kept quiet about for years?
A stash of savings
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.