Metamorphosis

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.

he didn’t forget to remind himself from time to time of the fact that calm (indeed the calmest) reflection might be better than the most confused decisions.

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 only be entrusted to the intelligence of the manager?

‘He is not well, believe me, Mr. Manager. Otherwise how would Gregor miss a train!

I am amazed. I thought I knew you as a calm, reasonable person, and now you appear suddenly to want to start parading around in weird moods.

No request of Gregor’s was of any use; no request would even be understood. No matter how willing he was to turn his head respectfully, his father just stomped all the harder with his feet.

Now it was certain that no one would come into Gregor any more until the morning. Thus, he had a long time to think undisturbed about how he should reorganize his life from scratch.

But the high, open room, in which he was compelled to lie flat on the floor, made him anxious, without his being able to figure out the reason, for he had lived in the room for five years.

always only as a beautiful dream, whose realization was unimaginable, and their parents never listened to these innocent expectations with pleasure.

Sometimes in his general exhaustion he couldn’t listen any more and let his head bang listlessly against the door, but he immediately pulled himself together, for even the small sound which he made by this motion was heard near by and silenced everyone. ‘ There he goes on again,’

He found it difficult to bear lying quietly during the night, and soon eating no longer gave him the slightest pleasure. So for diversion he acquired the habit of crawling back and forth across the walls and ceiling. He was especially fond of hanging from the ceiling. The experience was quite different from lying on the floor.

Gregor was a member of the family, something one should not treat as an enemy, and that it was, on the contrary, a requirement of family duty to suppress one’s aversion and to endure—nothing else, just endure.

At first he thought it might be his sadness over the condition of his room which kept him from eating, but he very soon became reconciled to the alterations in his room. People had grown accustomed to put into storage in his room things which they couldn’t put anywhere else, and at this point there were many such things, now that they had rented one room of the apartment to three lodgers.

He scarcely wondered about the fact that recently he had had so little consideration for the others; earlier this consideration had been something he was proud of.

‘If only he understood us,’ said the father in a semi-questioning tone.

‘It must be gotten rid of,’ cried the sister; ‘That is the only way, father. You must try to get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we have believed for so long, that is truly our real misfortune. But how can it be Gregor? If it were Gregor, he would have long ago realized that a communal life among human beings is not possible with such an animal and would have gone away voluntarily. Then we would not have a brother, but we could go on living and honour his memory. But this animal plagues us. It drives away the lodgers, will obviously take over the entire apartment, and leave us to spend the night in the alley. Just look, father,’ she suddenly cried out, ‘he’s already starting up again.’

He remembered his family with deep feeling and love. In this business, his own thought that he had to disappear was, if possible, even more decisive than his sister’s.

From the window he witnessed the beginning of the general dawning outside. Then without willing it, his head sank all the way down, and from his nostrils flowed out weakly out his last breath.

They talked to each other, leaning back comfortably in their seats, about future prospects, and they discovered that on closer observation these were not at all bad,