Summary

Gregor Samsa wakes in his bed and discovers he has transformed into a giant bug. Wondering
what has happened, he looks around his small room, where everything appears normal. He sees
the fabric samples that he uses in his job as a traveling salesman, a picture of a woman in furs
that he tore out of a magazine and framed, and the rain dripping down outside his window. He
tries to roll over and go back to sleep in order to forget about what has happened, but because of
the shape of his back, he can only rock from side to side.

Feeling sore from his effort, Gregor thinks about what a difficult job he has and the fact that his
constant traveling prevents him from making any lasting friendships. He thinks that he would
leave his overbearing employer but he has to work off a debt that his parents incurred. He
suddenly realizes that he has overslept and does not have a good excuse to give his boss.

Gregor’s mother reminds him that he has to catch his train to work. When Gregor responds, he
finds his voice has changed. His father and Grete, his sister, join his mother at the door, urging
him to get up and unlock it. Gregor twists and rocks, managing to turn sideways and dangle off
the bed. Then the doorbell rings. It is the office manager, come to check on Gregor. Gregor rocks
his body violently and finally tumbles to the floor. His family and the office manager come to the
door to inquire if he is all right.

Gregor’s mother pleads with the office manager, telling him what a devoted worker Gregor is,
while Grete cries in the next room. The office manager calls through the door and demands an
explanation . He hints that Gregor’s recent work has not been satisfactory and that Gregor’s
current behavior looks very bad, especially in light of rumors that Gregor may have stolen
money from the company. Gregor claims that he had a dizzy spell and asks the office manager to
spare his parents any undue concern. While Gregor tries to lift himself off the floor, the office
manager and his family discuss the strange change in his voice, and his sister leaves to fetch a
doctor and a locksmith.
Gregor reaches the door, turns the lock with his mouth, and slowly pulls open the door. Seeing
that Gregor is now a giant insect, the terrified office manager backs away, the mother passes out,
and the father cries. Gregor delivers a long speech asking the office manager to put in a good
word for him at work, since traveling salesmen often become the subjects of negative gossip, but
the office manager continues to back out of the apartment. Gregor unsuccessfully tries to catch
him as he flees and discovers how easily he can crawl on his new legs. The father then picks up a
newspaper and the office manager’s cane and drives Gregor back into his bedroom. Gregor
injures himself when he becomes stuck in the doorway, but the father shoves him through and
slams the door.

Analysis
The opening line of The Metamorphosis, which reports Gregor’s discovery that he has become a
giant insect, sets the tone for the rest of the story. The line recounts the bizarre event of Gregor’s
transformation in a sober, straightforward manner, and this contrast between an extraordinary
situation and the ordinary terms used to describe it creates the sense that the narrator expects the
world in the story to be absurd and chaotic, rather than rational and orderly. Gregor embodies
this absurdist tone from the very beginning. When he first recognizes his transformation, he
doesn’t appear significantly bothered by it, and treats it almost like any ordinary disturbance to
his sleep, as if it were not entirely out of the ordinary. As the story progresses, he remains
focused on largely ordinary concerns, such as losing his job, his physical comfort, and his
family’s financial situation, thus maintaining the story’s absurdist overtone throughout.
In this section, we also begin to learn the details of Gregor’s human life, and we get the first
glimpses into his feeling of alienation from those around him. As Gregor lies in bed, unable to
get himself up, he begins thinking of his job as a traveling salesman, and we learn that he only
continues at it because of his parents’ debt. In fact, he greatly dislikes the office manager, who
has come to the house to check on him. Furthermore, the friendships he makes because of his
work are only casual and never intimate, since he must always be traveling. The mother hints at
Gregor’s lack of friends when she tries to explain to the office manager what a good employee
Gregor is. She says Gregor never goes out in the evenings, but sits home reading a newspaper or
checking the train timetables, suggesting that Gregor already lives predominantly in isolation.
Now, Gregor is no longer even physically human. In his new form, he is unable to go to work,
and his voice is so altered that he can’t even communicate with those around him. In addition,
when he opens the door and the office manager and his family members see him, they are
horrified, and together these details foreshadow that Gregor’s isolation from other people will
only continue to grow.

The section also establishes the motif of money in the story, and hints at the major role money
plays in the Samsa family. Gregor’s greatest concern after discovering his metamorphosis is that
he will lose his job, which we quickly learn he only continues at so he can pay off his parents’
debt. (We also know that debt is substantial since he says it will take him five or six years to pay
it off.) As the section continues, we receive indications that, of the members of the Samsa family,
only Gregor works, and that the father stays at home. Though it remains unclear at this point why
the family is in so much debt, it is evident that they are not wealthy and that their debts hamper
them. Because he is responsible for paying these debts, Gregor feels trapped in his job. Finally,
the office manager also brings up money when he tells Gregor that the chief suspects him of
stealing from the company.

Summary
Gregor wakes in the evening. He sees that someone has put a bowl of milk and bread in the
room. Though milk had been his favorite drink, he finds he cannot stand the taste now. Then he
listens for his family, but the apartment is completely quiet. He recalls the pride he felt at taking
care of his family and wonders what will happen to them now. Someone cracks the door open
but shuts it immediately, and Gregor eventually sees the light go off in the other room. He crawls
under a small sofa and drops into a fitful sleep, vowing that he will do everything he can to make
his new condition as small a burden on his family as possible.

In the morning, Grete opens the door but shuts it when she sees Gregor under the sofa. She
reopens it and steps into the room. Noticing that Gregor has not eaten, she brings in various
kitchen scraps and leaves Gregor to eat alone. He enjoys the moldiest food but has no interest in
the fresh vegetables. Grete returns a little while later and sweeps up the scraps while Gregor
watches her from beneath the sofa. A pattern thus begins, with Grete feeding and cleaning up
after Gregor and reporting to the mother and father how much Gregor has eaten.

Gregor spends much of his time listening to the family through the door. He learns that the
money he regularly gave his parents has not all been spent, and he feels proud of his contribution
to their wellbeing. To avoid spending this savings, however, the family members will need to
find employment. Gregor feels embarrassed when he hears them discuss this topic, as the father
has become out of shape and clumsy and the mother has asthma, so neither seems very capable
of working. Gregor also reflects on his relationship with his family, recalling how he and his
parents had grown apart but that he and Grete had remained close, so much so that he had
planned to send her to music school to study the violin.

Gregor slowly adapts to his new life. He begins to enjoy scurrying around his room and climbing
on a chair to look out the window. Though Grete continues to look after Gregor, he notices that
she cannot stand the sight of him, and he hides behind a sheet draped over the sofa when she
enters the room. The parents avoid coming in, though they seem curious about his state. The
mother in particular is eager to see him, but Grete and the father urge her not to.

Grete sees that Gregor enjoys climbing up the walls and across the ceiling, so she decides to
remove the furniture from the room to give him more space. While the father is out, Grete and
the mother start taking out furniture. Gregor hides as usual, but he grows anxious as he hears his
mother worry that she and Grete might be doing him a disservice by stripping the room of his
possessions. Grete, however, considers herself the expert on Gregor and overrules the mother’s
objections. While Grete and the mother talk in the living room, Gregor, panicked at the thought
of losing all the remnants of his human life, climbs the wall and covers the picture of the woman
in furs to prevent it from being taken away.

The mother spots Gregor on the wall, goes into a panic, and passes out. Grete yells at Gregor as
he lets go of the picture and scurries into the living room. Grete rushes out, grabs medicine, and
returns to Gregor’s room, shutting the door behind her. The father returns and Grete tells him
that Gregor broke out. He misunderstands Grete and thinks Gregor attacked the mother, so he
starts chasing Gregor around the room. Gregor notices that his father has become a new man
since getting a job as a bank attendant—he stands straighter and looks cleaner and healthier. The
father throws fruit at Gregor, and eventually hits him with an apple that becomes lodged in
Gregor’s back. The mother bursts from the bedroom and Gregor rushes for the door, hearing his
mother beg his father to stop.

Analysis
The question of how much of Gregor’s humanity remains dominates the second section of the
story. As the members of the Samsa family adapt to the new situation with Gregor, each one
appears to develop a different perception of how much humanity remains in him. At the
beginning of the section, for instance, Grete leaves milk for Gregor, apparently assuming that his
preference for milk while he was human continues now that he’s a bug. The assumption suggests
that Grete believes, at least initially, that some part of Gregor remains the same. But as she
recognizes that Gregor’s tastes in food have changed and that he now likes to crawl about the
walls of his room, Grete gradually begins to conceive of Gregor as an insect. In response, she
suggests taking all Gregor’s possessions out of his room to eliminate obstacles to his crawling
and to make the space more suitable to an insect. The mother, on the other hand, protests that
Gregor will want his things when he returns to his former self, and earlier in the section she even
refers to Gregor as her “unfortunate son,” implying she still believes Gregor to be fundamentally
the same despite his appearance. The father gives no indication that he regards Gregor as the
same, and attacks him as though he were a wild animal when he escapes his room.

This confusion regarding Gregor’s humanity extends to Gregor himself, and much of the section
involves Gregor trying to reconcile his human emotions and history with the physical urges of
his new body. Gregor’s lingering humanity is most evident through his thoughts and emotions.
He continues to feel proud that he was able to help his family financially in the past, he feels
shame at being unable to help them now, and he is determined to spare them any unnecessary
suffering on his account. These details show that he still feels connected to his human past and
still considers himself a part of the family. Physically, however, he feels more and more like an
insect: his food preferences have completely changed, he feels terrified of his room and safe only
under the sofa, and he takes great pleasure in scurrying up the walls and across the ceiling. This
tension between Gregor’s mind and body culminates when Grete and the mother take the
furniture out of his room. Initially, he feels he would prefer the room to be empty because that
would make it more physically comfortable for him. But his ties to his possessions, which
represent to him his past as a human, lead him to cling desperately to the photograph of the
woman in furs.

Featured on Sparknotes
X
Video SparkNotes: Homer's The Odyssey summary
Video SparkNotes: Homer's The Odyssey summary
Powered By Trackerdslogo
Of all the characters, Grete has by far the most interaction with Gregor in Part 2, and over the
course of the section their relationship changes dramatically. Though Grete initially wants to care
for Gregor and takes on all the burdens of doing so, she cannot bear the sight of him. Notably,
after noticing Gregor’s habit of moving the chair to look out the window Grete kindly starts
placing the chair by the window for him, but when she inadvertently sees him standing on it
later, she is overcome with horror. Gradually, Grete’s disgust appears to wear down her
sympathy for Gregor, and while she continues to care for him, she does so evidently more from a
sense of duty than love. In fact, she appears to regard caring for Gregor as her role—and thus
part of her identity—in the family. She guards that role jealously against the mother, which
suggests that Grete performs these duties more for her own sake than for Gregor’s. Gregor,
meanwhile, begins to regard Grete’s presence in his room as an intrusion, and he prefers to be
entirely alone. By the end of the section, Grete’s and Gregor’s affection for one another has
faded completely. Grete appears to consider Gregor a chore and inconvenience, while Gregor
feels as alienated from Grete as he does everyone else, making him even more isolated from
others.

The reader learns a great deal more in this section about the family’s financial situation,
providing a greater understanding of how money shapes the relationships in the Samsa family.
Through Gregor’s reporting of the family’s conversations and his own recollections, we learn
that the father’s business failed five years earlier and that subsequently the whole family fell into
a state of despair. When Gregor first began supporting the family with his income, his parents
were extremely grateful, but as they came to expect Gregor’s help, their gratitude diminished and
Gregor began to feel alienated from them. These details clarify why the father in particular is so
lethargic and unmotivated up to this point. It also explains why Gregor feels so distant from the
mother and especially from the father, who is the only member of the Samsa family that Gregor
never wishes to see. Moreover, because Gregor cannot work, he acts as an additional burden to
the family, possibly contributing to their diminishing sympathy for him.

Summary
In the wake of Gregor’s injury, which limits his mobility, the family takes pity on him and leaves
the bedroom door open at night so Gregor can watch them. The father dozes in his chair while
the mother sews lingerie for a boutique and Grete studies French and shorthand in hopes of
moving up from her job as a sales clerk. The father stops taking off his bank attendant uniform
when he comes home, and the uniform becomes increasingly filthy. Grete and the mother
encourage the father to go to bed early, but he stays up late every night, muttering about how sad
his life has become.

Gregor learns that the family has been selling off jewelry to bring in money, and they replace
their regular maid with an elderly cleaning lady. He also realizes that they feel trapped by his
presence. Gregor stops sleeping and eating as he frets about the family and the past, alternating
between guilt over not helping them and outrage that they have neglected him. Grete hardly takes
care of him at all anymore. Despite this apparent indifference to Gregor, she becomes extremely
upset when the mother cleans Gregor’s room and insists that Gregor is hers to look after.

Featured on Sparknotes
X
Video SparkNotes: Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities summary
Video SparkNotes: Charles Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities summary
Powered By Trackerdslogo
The new cleaning lady, meanwhile, regularly talks to Gregor. She openly stares at him, and even
tries to sneak into the room to catch him off-guard. One day, Gregor, tired of being peered at,
attacks her, but the cleaning lady threatens him with a chair, so he desists.

The family takes three boarders into the apartment. These men cannot stand mess and disorder,
so the family moves much of the furniture and the cleaning lady’s supplies into Gregor’s room.
Gregor enjoys crawling through the clutter, though doing so leaves him exhausted.

One night, the cleaning lady accidentally leaves the door open while the boarders are home. The
boarders eat in the dining room while the family eats in the kitchen, and Gregor notices the
boarders being very picky about the food that his mother and sister have cooked. Hearing Grete
playing the violin, the boarders invite the family into the parlor. The boarders initially stand very
close to Grete as she plays, but they soon lose interest. Gregor is entranced by the violin and
slowly creeps out into the parlor. He longs to take his sister back to his room and tell her about
his plan to send her to music school.

One of the boarders spots Gregor and cries out. The father rushes the boarders out of the parlor
as they declare they will move out and not pay rent. Grete tells her parents that they have to stop
believing that the bug is Gregor and says they must find a way to get rid of it. The father wishes
they could explain to Gregor why they need him to leave, but Grete says that if he could
understand them, he would have left long ago to spare them any more pain. Gregor, feeling
terrible, scuttles back to his room. He remains motionless through the night, thinking to himself
all the while that he must go away to relieve them of their suffering. As dawn breaks, he dies.
The cleaning lady discovers Gregor’s body the next morning. The family gathers around the
corpse and Grete notices how skinny Gregor had become. The father kicks the boarders out of
the apartment. The family decides to take a walk, but first they write letters to their bosses
explaining why they aren’t coming into work. The cleaning lady tells them that she got rid of the
body, but the family seems uninterested in her, and the father decides to fire her that night. Grete
and her parents leave the apartment and take a trolley ride to the countryside. They discuss their
finances and discover that they have much more money than they thought. They decide to move
to a smaller apartment in a better location. The parents notice what an attractive young woman
Grete has become and think they should find a husband for her soon. As they reach their stop,
Grete stands and stretches.

Analysis
The members of the Samsa family continue to struggle with their uncertainty regarding Gregor’s
humanity, all the way up to his death. In a show of kindness, they begin leaving the door to
Gregor’s room open in the evenings, providing Gregor with at least a little contact with them.
This action suggests that they continue to regard Gregor, if only slightly, as a part of their family,
and that they believe some of his former humanity persists. After Gregor frightens away the
boarders, however, Grete comes to the conclusion that nothing of Gregor remains. The father
appears to wrestle with Grete’s assessment. He suggests if the bug could understand them maybe
they could work out a mutually agreeable situation, indicating that he holds out hope that
Gregor’s mind remains intact. But that hope is apparently minimal, as it takes Grete very little
effort to convince the father and mother that no remnant of Gregor, or any humanity at all, exists
in the insect.

Featured on Sparknotes
X
Video SparkNotes: Homer's The Odyssey summary
Video SparkNotes: Homer's The Odyssey summary
Powered By Trackerdslogo
Gregor’s confused feelings about his family and his own humanity appear again as he listens to
Grete play the violin to the boarders. Gregor has a strong reaction to the music, so strong in fact
it appears to make him feel distinctly like a bug, as he wonders if his great attraction to the music
derives from the fact that he is now an animal. But his feelings for Grete point to lingering
feelings from his human life, as he still loves Grete and wants her to know it, leading him to
imagine a tearful scene in which he locks Grete in his room and tells her he had intended to send
her to the Conservatorium. The scene also suggests that Gregor still has the desire to take care of
his family financially. Notably, however, in his fantasy Gregor is still a bug while he speaks to
his sister, despite the fact that he has not been able to speak properly since his transformation.
This detail signals a conflict in Gregor’s sense of his own identity, as he is not fully insect or
human in his fantasy.

Gregor becomes even more isolated as the family loses interest in caring for him. Grete, once the
family member to spend the most time in contact with Gregor, stops caring for him entirely,
leaving the task instead to the new cleaning lady. By this point, the family has also lost any
concern for Gregor’s comfort, which is apparent in the fact that they begin using Gregor’s room
as a storage closet once the boarders move in. Gregor simultaneously appears to lose all interest
in his family. He prefers to be by himself, and he even becomes angry when they leave his door
open during an argument and disturb him with the noise they make. With the arrival of the
boarders, Gregor’s presence becomes a liability rather than just a nuisance—he could scare the
boarders away and cost the family the rent money they would earn—and the family essentially
begins pretending he doesn’t exist. By this point, his only connection to his family is that they
live in the same apartment, and he lives in almost total isolation but for the occasional intrusion
by the cleaning lady.

The family’s sympathy for Gregor has steadily diminished over the course of the story, and
Gregor’s encounter with the boarders finally exhausts what little compassion they have left.
Although demanding, the boarders provide the family with an additional source of income.
Gregor, on the other hand, is a burden. He has to be fed, he takes up a room that could be used
for other purposes, and perhaps most importantly, his presence in the house causes the family a
great deal of stress. By driving away the boarders, Gregor does, in fact, become a liability, and
the family, specifically Grete, can no longer tolerate his presence. By this time, Grete also
doesn’t think of the bug as her brother anymore, and since Gregor cannot speak, he’s not able to
convince her otherwise. Grete consequently demands they get rid of Gregor, indicating that she
has no sympathy remaining, and it takes her little effort to convince the father and mother, which
suggests their own sympathy for Gregor was minimal.

In contrast with the feeling of anxiety that dominates the story, the story’s final scene has a
hopeful tone, and it culminates in an image that suggests Grete’s own metamorphosis into a
woman is complete. As the family travels out to the countryside, the narrator describes “warm
sunshine” filling their train car, and this image creates a marked contrast from confining image
of the family’s small apartment. The family also appears to have experienced a dramatic shift
away from the frequent worrying over money that has preoccupied them through much of the
story, as each family member realizes his or her current employment will likely lead to better
opportunities. Finally, they think they can now get a smaller, cheaper, and better-located
apartment, implying that it was Gregor who kept them in their current home and that, with
Gregor gone, they will now be able to move onto better things. Together these details create a
feeling of relief that the family’s ordeal with Gregor is now over as well as a sense of hope for
the future. This hope reaches its climax in the final lines of the story. Looking at Grete, the
mother and father realize she’s grown into a pretty young woman and think of finding her a
husband, signaling both that Grete has undergone her own metamorphosis over the course of the
story and that a new chapter in her life is beginning. The story concludes with Grete stretching,
an act that suggests emerging after a long period of confinement, as if from a cocoon.