Key Ideas
Gregor worries first about missing his train.
The apple his father throws, which lodges in his back and rots.
The sister’s violin — and her final verdict, “we must try to get rid of it.”
The family’s springtime outing after his death.
Kafka insisted the insect must never be drawn on the cover. The German ungeheueres Ungeziefer — “monstrous vermin” — is deliberately vague. See Gregor Samsa.
Characters
1Lines to Remember
1 quotationsAs Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
Context & when to use it
For alienation, sudden loss of identity, becoming a burden.
Explore Next
related by shared connections
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 Trial
Josef K. is arrested one morning without having done anything wrong, and spends a year trying to understand an invisible court — until two men take him to a quarry and kill him “like a dog”.
Anattā (No-Self)
The Buddha’s teaching that there is no permanent, unchanging self — only a flowing stream of physical and mental processes.
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.
Albert Camus
Algerian-born novelist and essayist of the absurd and of revolt — “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”