English Discussion Board

About Kafka:
Franz Kafka was one of the major German-language fiction writers of
the 20th century. A middle-class Jew based in Prague, his unique body of
writing — many incomplete and most published posthumously — has
become amongst the most influential in Western literature. Kafka’s
works – including the stories Das Urteil (1913, “The Judgement”), In der
Strafkolonie (1920, “In the Penal Colony”); the novella Die Verwandlung
(“The Metamorphosis”); and unfinished novels Der Prozess (“The Trial”) English Discussion Board.
and Das Schloß (“The Castle”) – have come to embody the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective “kafkaesque”.
Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Kafka:
• The Trial (1925)
• A Hunger Artist (1922)
• In the Penal Colony (1914)
• The Country Doctor (1919)
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Chapter 1
One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he
discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous vermin.
He lay on his armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little,
his brown, arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections.
From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely,
could hardly stay in place. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference, flickered helplessly before his eyes.
“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream. His room, a
proper room for a human being, only somewhat too small, lay quietly
between the four well-known walls. Above the table, on which an unpacked collection of sample cloth goods was spread out—Samsa was a
travelling salesman—hung the picture which he had cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago and set in a pretty gilt frame. It was a
picture of a woman with a fur hat and a fur boa. She sat erect there, lifting up in the direction of the viewer a solid fur muff into which her entire forearm had disappeared.
Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather—the
rain drops were falling audibly down on the metal window
ledge—made him quite melancholy. “Why don’t I keep sleeping for a
little while longer and forget all this foolishness,” he thought. But this
was entirely impractical, for he was used to sleeping on his right side,
and in his present state he couldn’t get himself into this position. No
matter how hard he threw himself onto his right side, he always rolled
again onto his back. He must have tried it a hundred times, closing his
eyes so that he would not have to see the wriggling legs, and gave up
only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in his side which he had
never felt before.
“O God,” he thought, “what a demanding job I’ve chosen! Day in, day
out, on the road. The stresses of selling are much greater than the work
going on at head office, and, in addition to that, I have to cope with the
problems of travelling, the worries about train connections, irregular bad
food, temporary and constantly changing human relationships which
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never come from the heart. To hell with it all!” He felt a slight itching on
the top of his abdomen. He slowly pushed himself on his back closer to
the bed post so that he could lift his head more easily, found the itchy
part, which was entirely covered with small white spots—he did not
know what to make of them and wanted to feel the place with a leg. But
he retracted it immediately, for the contact felt like a cold shower all over
him.
He slid back again into his earlier position. “This getting up early,” he
thought, “makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep. Other
travelling salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I come
back to the inn during the course of the morning to write up the necessary orders, these gentlemen are just sitting down to breakfast. English Discussion Board.  If I were
to try that with my boss, I’d be thrown out on the spot. Still, who knows
whether that mightn’t be really good for me? If I didn’t hold back for my
parents’ sake, I’d have quit ages ago. I would’ve gone to the boss and
told him just what I think from the bottom of my heart. He would’ve
fallen right off his desk! How weird it is to sit up at that desk and talk
down to the employee from way up there. The boss has trouble hearing,
so the employee has to step up quite close to him. Anyway, I haven’t
completely given up that hope yet. Once I’ve got together the money to
pay off my parents’ debt to him—that should take another five or six
years—I’ll do it for sure. Then I’ll make the big break. In any case, right
now I have to get up. My train leaves at five o’clock.”
He looked over at the alarm clock ticking away by the chest of drawers. “Good God!” he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were going quietly on. It was past the half hour, already nearly quarter to. Could
the alarm have failed to ring? One saw from the bed that it was properly
set for four o’clock. Certainly it had rung. Yes, but was it possible to
sleep through that noise which made the furniture shake? Now, it’s true
he’d not slept quietly, but evidently he’d slept all the more deeply. Still,
what should he do now? The next train left at seven o’clock. To catch that
one, he would have to go in a mad rush. The sample collection wasn’t
packed up yet, and he really didn’t feel particularly fresh and active.
And even if he caught the train, there was no avoiding a blow-up with
the boss, because the firm’s errand boy would’ve waited for the five
o’clock train and reported the news of his absence long ago. He was the
boss’s minion, without backbone or intelligence. Well then, what if he reported in sick? But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious, because during his five years’ service Gregor hadn’t been sick even
once. The boss would certainly come with the doctor from the health
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insurance company and would reproach his parents for their lazy son
and cut short all objections with the insurance doctor’s comments; for
him everyone was completely healthy but really lazy about work. And
besides, would the doctor in this case be totally wrong? Apart from a
really excessive drowsiness after the long sleep, Gregor in fact felt quite
well and even had a really strong appetite.
As he was thinking all this over in the greatest haste, without being
able to make the decision to get out of bed—the alarm clock was indicating exactly quarter to seven—there was a cautious knock on the door by
the head of the bed.
“Gregor,” a voice called—it was his mother!—”it’s quarter to seven.
Don’t you want to be on your way?” The soft voice! Gregor was startled
when he heard his voice answering. It was clearly and unmistakably his
earlier voice, but in it was intermingled, as if from below, an irrepressibly painful squeaking, which left the words positively distinct only in
the first moment and distorted them in the reverberation, so that one
didn’t know if one had heard correctly. Gregor wanted to answer in detail and explain everything, but in these circumstances he confined himself to saying, “Yes, yes, thank you mother. I’m getting up right away.”
Because of the wooden door the change in Gregor’s voice was not really
noticeable outside, so his mother calmed down with this explanation and
shuffled off. However, as a result of the short conversation, the other
family members became aware that Gregor was unexpectedly still at
home, and already his father was knocking on one side door, weakly but
with his fist. “Gregor, Gregor,” he called out, “what’s going on?” And,
after a short while, he urged him on again in a deeper voice: “Gregor!”
Gregor!” At the other side door, however, his sister knocked lightly.
“Gregor? Are you all right? Do you need anything?” Gregor directed answers in both directions, “I’ll be ready right away.” He made an effort
with the most careful articulation and by inserting long pauses between
the individual words to remove everything remarkable from his voice.
His father turned back to his breakfast. However, the sister whispered,
“Gregor, open the door—I beg you.” Gregor had no intention of opening
the door, but congratulated himself on his precaution, acquired from
travelling, of locking all doors during the night, even at home.
First he wanted to stand up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed,
above all have breakfast, and only then consider further action, for—he
noticed this clearly—by thinking things over in bed he would not reach a
reasonable conclusion. He remembered that he had already often felt a
light pain or other in bed, perhaps the result of an awkward lying
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position, which later turned out to be purely imaginary when he stood
up, and he was eager to see how his present fantasies would gradually
dissipate. That the change in his voice was nothing other than the onset
of a real chill, an occupational illness of commercial travellers, of that he
had not the slightest doubt.
It was very easy to throw aside the blanket. He needed only to push
himself up a little, and it fell by itself. But to continue was difficult, particularly because he was so unusually wide. He needed arms and hands
to push himself upright. Instead of these, however, he had only many
small limbs which were incessantly moving with very different motions
and which, in addition, he was unable to control. If he wanted to bend
one of them, then it was the first to extend itself, and if he finally succeeded doing what he wanted with this limb, in the meantime all the
others, as if left free, moved around in an excessively painful agitation.
“But I must not stay in bed uselessly,” said Gregor to himself.
At first he wanted to get out of bed with the lower part of his body,
but this lower part—which, by the way, he had not yet looked at and
which he also couldn’t picture clearly—proved itself too difficult to
move. The attempt went so slowly. When, having become almost frantic,
he finally hurled himself forward with all his force and without thinking,
he chose his direction incorrectly, and he hit the lower bedpost hard. The
violent pain he felt revealed to him that the lower part of his body was at
the moment probably the most sensitive.
Thus, he tried to get his upper body out of the bed first and turned his
head carefully toward the edge of the bed. He managed to do this easily,
and in spite of its width and weight his body mass at last slowly followed the turning of his head. But as he finally raised his head outside
the bed in the open air, he became anxious about moving forward any
further in this manner, for if he allowed himself eventually to fall by this
process, it would take a miracle to prevent his head from getting injured.
And at all costs he must not lose consciousness right now. He preferred
to remain in bed.
However, after a similar effort, while he lay there again, sighing as before, and once again saw his small limbs fighting one another, if anything worse than earlier, and didn’t see any chance of imposing quiet
and order on this arbitrary movement, he told himself again that he
couldn’t possibly remain in bed and that it might be the most reasonable
thing to sacrifice everything if there was even the slightest hope of getting himself out of bed in the process. At the same moment, however, he
didn’t forget to remind himself from time to time of the fact that
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calm—indeed the calmest—reflection might be better than the most confused decisions. At such moments, he directed his gaze as precisely as he
could toward the window, but unfortunately there was little confident
cheer to be had from a glance at the morning mist, which concealed even
the other side of the narrow street. “It’s already seven o’clock,” he told
himself at the latest striking of the alarm clock, “already seven o’clock
and still such a fog.” And for a little while longer he lay quietly with
weak breathing, as if perhaps waiting for normal and natural conditions
to re-emerge out of the complete stillness.
But then he said to himself, “Before it strikes a quarter past seven,
whatever happens I must be completely out of bed. Besides, by then
someone from the office will arrive to inquire about me, because the office will open before seven o’clock.” And he made an effort then to rock
his entire body length out of the bed with a uniform motion. If he let
himself fall out of the bed in this way, his head, which in the course of
the fall he intended to lift up sharply, would probably remain uninjured.
His back seemed to be hard; nothing would really happen to that as a
result of the fall. His greatest reservation was a worry about the loud
noise which the fall must create and which presumably would arouse, if
not fright, then at least concern on the other side of all the doors.
However, it had to be tried.
As Gregor was in the process of lifting himself half out of bed—the
new method was more of a game than an effort; he needed only to rock
with a constant rhythm—it struck him how easy all this would be if
someone were to come to his aid. Two strong people—he thought of his
father and the servant girl—would have been quite sufficient. They
would have only had to push their arms under his arched back to get
him out of the bed, to bend down with their load, and then merely to exercise patience and care that he completed the flip onto the floor, where
his diminutive legs would then, he hoped, acquire a purpose. Now, quite
apart from the fact that the doors were locked, should he really call out
for help? In spite of all his distress, he was unable to suppress a smile at
this idea.
He had already got to the point where, by rocking more strongly, he
maintained his equilibrium with difficulty, and very soon he would finally have to decide, for in five minutes it would be a quarter past seven.
Then there was a ring at the door of the apartment. “That’s someone from
the office,” he told himself, and he almost froze while his small limbs
only danced around all the faster. For one moment everything remained
still. “They aren’t opening,” Gregor said to himself, caught up in some
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absurd hope. But of course then, as usual, the servant girl with her firm
tread went to the door and opened it. Gregor needed to hear only the

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first word of the visitor’s greeting to recognize immediately who it was,
the manager himself. Why was Gregor the only one condemned to work
in a firm where, at the slightest lapse, someone immediately attracted the greatest suspicion? Were all the employees then collectively, one and all, scoundrels? Among them was there then no truly devoted person who, if he failed to use just a couple of hours in the morning for office work, would become abnormal from pangs of conscience and really be in no state to get out of bed? Was it really not enough to let an apprentice make inquiries, if such questioning was even necessary? Must the manager himself come, and in the process must it be demonstrated to the entire innocent family that the investigation of this suspicious circumstance could be entrusted only to the intelligence of the manager? And more as a consequence of the excited state in which this idea put Gregor than as a result of an actual decision, he swung himself with all his might out of the bed. There was a loud thud, but not a real crash. The fall was absorbed somewhat by the carpet and, in addition, his back was more elastic than Gregor had thought. For that reason the dull noise was not
quite so conspicuous. But he had not held his head up with sufficient care and had hit it. He turned his head, irritated and in pain, and rubbed it on the carpet. English Discussion Board.
“Something has fallen in there,” said the manager in the next room on
the left. Gregor tried to imagine to himself whether anything similar to
what was happening to him today could have also happened at some
point to the manager. At least one had to concede the possibility of such
a thing. However, as if to give a rough answer to this question, the manager now, with a squeak of his polished boots, took a few determined
steps in the next room. From the neighbouring room on the right the sister was whispering to inform Gregor: “Gregor, the manager is here.” “I
know,” said Gregor to himself. But he did not dare make his voice loud
enough so that his sister could hear.
“Gregor,” his father now said from the neighbouring room on the left,
“Mr. Manager has come and is asking why you have not left on the early
train. We don’t know what we should tell him. Besides, he also wants to
speak to you personally. So please open the door. He will be good
enough to forgive the mess in your room.”
In the middle of all this, the manager called out in a friendly way,
“Good morning, Mr. Samsa.” “He is not well,” said his mother to the
manager, while his father was still talking at the door, “He is not well,