The reader learns that some time has passed. A little bit later, Grete brings another tray with rotten food that looks more appealing, so he devours it. Gregor wants to eat, but the smell of food makes him dizzy. He stands up and sees the food that has been brought to him by his sister. The second part of The Metamorphosis story starts with Gregor waking up from a deep sleep. When Gregor’s family manages to open the door, they are terrified by what they see. He still does not understand the implications of what it means to be a giant bug. Gregor thinks that he can save the situation by opening the door. Instead of sympathizing with the person who does not feel well, the chief clerk decides to accuse him of stealing money from the company. However, his speech cannot be understood by others. Gregor tries to explain that he was not feeling well. Gregor battles with his new body, when the chief clerk visits him to see why he did not use an early train to come to work. His sister, Grete, is the one who is the most preoccupied. The realization that he is still at home makes other members of his family try to enter his room and see why he missed work. He tries to reply, but he cannot recognize his own voice. Therefore, he is afraid that taking one will look suspicious.Ī quarter to seven, when the clock strikes, his mother asks him if he is going to work. The reader also learns that Gregor never took one single day off in many years. Gregor starts imagining that his boss will be outraged by Gregor’s delayed appearance. He looks at the clock and realizes that he is late. The reader can assume that Gregor is a workaholic, but a little further down, he explains that he does so for his parents and their well-being. However, he cannot do so.Įven in this horrendous situation, all he can think about is his career, which he cannot help but hate due to the need to travel constantly. He decides to sleep a little longer to avoid the problem, hoping that it will disappear. There is no explanation of why this happened to the protagonist, but he finds himself turned into a vermin overnight. He tries to get up from his bed, but he cannot do it for some unknown reason. After reading the book’s first paragraph in its original German, she shared her own translation into English.The Metamorphosis story starts with Gregor, who is a traveling salesman, waking up late for work. Franziska Kohlt, who is a Research Associate at the University of York, gave the readings at the start of this episode. She shows how popular ideas of the “kafkaesque”, as dark and claustrophobic writing, certainly have something to them, but have also obscured certain aspects of his works, such as its comedy.ĭr. Carolin Duttlinger, who is an Associate Professor of German at Oxford University and co-director of the Oxford Kafka Research Centre. Mark Harman, who is an acclaimed translator of Kafka and Professor Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, talks about the challenges and pleasures of rendering Kafka’s German into English prose. There’s a lot going on in this small story, as our experts explain. They may be the characters with human bodies, throughout the story, but they act in shockingly inhumane ways! As a result, Gregor’s becoming a bug may offer a counterintuitive form of freedom from a terribly dreary life. We also discuss Gregor’s wretched family, and their response to his metamorphosis. An insect, or a “vermin”, some kind of bug! As it turns out, the question of what he has become is even trickier to narrow down in the original German than it seems in English, so we compare several translations. It’s a famous story about one character, Gregor Samsa, transforming from a human into something decidedly not-human. This week we’re putting Franz Kafka’s slim novella, The Metamorphosis, under the microscope.
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