This document provides an overview and context for Franz Kafka's novella "The Metamorphosis". It summarizes that the story, first published in 1915, involves a traveling salesman who wakes up transformed into a giant insect. As an insect, he is unable to work or communicate but retains his cognitive abilities. The story focuses on his interactions with his family and their changing perceptions of him. It also provides biographical details on Kafka, born in 1883 in Prague to a Jewish family, and contextualizes the novella as a modernist text portraying the limitations of human perception and identity.

1. Reader Project
“The Metamorphosis”
by Franz Kafka
CENEX – Intermediate 4
Sheila Morato Monteiro

2.  First published in
1915
 It is a fictional
prose narrative
organized in the
novella format
 A modernist text:
poetic imagination or
surrealism
 Kafka is considered
to be one of the most
important and
influential writers of
the 20th century.

3.  Franz Kafka was born of
Jewish parents in Prague in
1833.
 In 1906 he received his
doctorate in law.
 He worked as a respected
official of a state
insurance company.
 Literature, of which he
said that he “consisted”,
had to be pursued on the
side.

4.  His emotional life was dominated by
his relationships with his father
and with a series of women:
Felice Bauer Milena Jesenská Dora Diamant

5.  He died in 1924 of the tubercular illness.
"By believing passionately in something that
still does not exist, we create it.“
Franz Kafka

7. Plot Summary
 3rd person narrator
 A traveling salesman awakes one morning
to find himself inexplicably transformed
overnight into a gigantic insect.

8. “Ungeziefer”

9.  Gregor is the sole financial provider
for his parents and sister and their
comfort is dependent on his ability to work
 He becomes unable to communicate but
retains his cognitive faculties
 Most of the story revolves around his
interactions with his family
 In the end, his family also undergoes a
metamorphosis

10. Main Characters
 Gregor Samsa
 Mr. and Mrs. Samsa
 Gregor’s sister, Grete

11.  The world is not a place
of certainty and the ideal
is unrealizable:
“love is not enough”
 The Metamorphosis
portraits the limitations
that come from being a
human:
- interpreting the world
- the system presented by
society
- human relation
- the shifting sense of
identity

12. Sources
Hoffmann, Michael. Metamorphosis and Other Stories. New
York, New York: Penguin Books. 2007.
http://www.kafka-franz.com/kafka-Biography.htm
http://czechmeout.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/franz-kafka/
Pictures
http://www.kipbot.com/blog/2010/01/28/kindle-fail-bleak-house/
http://superpunch.blogspot.com/2009/05/four-versions-of-kafkas-metamorphosis.html
http://www.surrealismnow.com/frankkortanfeatured.html
http://avaxhome.ws/ebooks/novels/kafka_the_metamorphosis.html

13. CENEX / UFMG
Reader Project – Intermediate 4
by Sheila Morato Monteiro
2010