The Metamorphosis

A travelling salesman discovers his body is no longer his own

He lies on an armour-hard back, staring at a brown, arched abdomen segmented into rigid bow-like sections, his numerous thin legs flickering uselessly.

A travelling salesman discovers his body is no longer his own

He lies on an armour-hard back, staring at a brown, arched abdomen segmented into rigid bow-like sections, his numerous thin legs flickering uselessly. His room is unchanged—sample cloth goods on the table, a gilt-framed picture of a woman in fur on the wall. The alarm clock reads half past six; his five o'clock train is long gone. Gregor's first instinct is not horror but professional anxiety: five years without a single sick day, a debt owed to his employer, a family depending on his wages. He tries to roll onto his right side, as he always sleeps, and fails a hundred times. He attempts to push himself upright, but his many limbs twitch in contradictory spasms he cannot master. The absurdity of his condition registers as inconvenience before it registers as catastrophe.

Gregor opens the door with his mouth and the household fractures

The office manager arrives in person and lectures through the locked door about negligence, suspicions over a recent cash collection, and Gregor's declining productivity. Gregor's mother defends her son; his sister Grete sobs in the next room. Desperate to save his position, Gregor drags himself to the door and turns the key with his jaws, brown fluid seeping from his mouth onto the floor. The door swings open. The manager recoils as if pushed by an invisible hand. The mother collapses amid her skirts. The father weeps, then clenches his fists. Gregor tries to speak rationally—promises to catch the eight o'clock train—but his words emerge as inhuman noise. The manager bolts down the staircase. The father seizes the abandoned cane and a newspaper and drives Gregor back through the doorframe, scraping him bloody, then slams the door shut.

His sister discovers what the insect will eat Gregor wakes at twilight, his left side one long scar, one leg dragging lifelessly. By the door sits a bowl of sweetened milk—once his favorite drink, now repulsive. When Grete finds it untouched the next morning, she replaces it with an astonishing spread: half-rotten vegetables, bones crusted with white sauce, stale bread, cheese Gregor had declared inedible days before. She turns the key so he can eat in private. He devours the decay with watering eyes; the fresh food disgusts him. A routine crystallizes—Grete feeds him twice daily, cleans his room, averts her gaze. She is seventeen, the only family member who enters. The others cannot bring themselves to look. Gregor hides under the couch and…