I’ve thought about this story a lot over the years and each time I reread it, I see it slightly differently. Its beginning will be familiar to many readers: Gregor Samsa, a mild-mannered and well-meaning young man, who has been supporting his family as a travelling salesman since his father’s business collapsed five years before, wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed into a giant insect. Comically, his first reactions include an extreme anxiety about being late for work and he focuses on the physically difficult task of turning over in his shell and getting off his bed, still hoping to make the next train, so that his boss won’t be inconvenienced.
His family are horrified by his transformation. His father reacts aggressively and his sister, who he’s especially close to, and who even now tries to find food that he will like, reacts with an instinctive revulsion which she tries to hide, but which progresses, as the story continues, into outright rejection.
This is a story about difference and alienation, about wanting to belong and about what it means to be human. It’s also a story about the extreme toll that caring for someone especially vulnerable and dependent over a long period of time can take on a family, but the love Gregor feels for his younger sister, and the extent to which he’s hurt by her ultimate rejection of him are what gives it its real emotional power.
First published in 1915 in Die Weissen Blätter; first published in English in 1937, translated by Willa Muir and Edwin Muir. Read online here
