Gregor has supported his parents and sister for years, paying off his father’s debts. His first thoughts on waking transformed are about his job. By the end, starved and wounded, he dies “with tenderness and love” for his family — who go for a tram ride into the country and notice their daughter has grown into a pretty young woman.
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Franz Kafka
Prague insurance clerk whose parables of guilt, bureaucracy and metamorphosis became the defining images of modern anxiety — and the word “Kafkaesque”.
Anattā (No-Self)
The Buddha’s teaching that there is no permanent, unchanging self — only a flowing stream of physical and mental processes.
Samuel Beckett
Irish playwright, novelist and poet who wrote in English and French, the master of minimalism and the absurd — Waiting for Godot made a play in which “nothing happens, twice” into the defining drama of the twentieth century.
The World as Will and Representation
Schopenhauer’s single great work — the world is my representation; in itself it is Will; and the Will is the source of all suffering.
Saṃsāra
“Wandering” — the beginningless cycle of birth, death and rebirth through which beings pass according to their karma, and from which every major Indian religion seeks release.
Aśvaghoṣa
The 1st–2nd century Buddhist poet and dramatist — author of the Buddhacarita, the first full epic of the Buddha’s life, and the Saundarananda — often called the first great poet of classical Sanskrit, before Kālidāsa.