From the Bookshelf of Classics for Beginners…

The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka

Start date: February 1, 2016

Finish date: February 29, 2016

Discussion: Current Group Read

Why we're reading this: Chosen as February 2016 read
[close] Chosen as February 2016 read

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of -4 topics — 818 comments total

Current Group Read

The Prince
By ☯Emily , moderator · 3 posts · 32 views

last updated Jun 08, 2019 03:47PM

April 2019: The Crucible
By ☯Emily , moderator · 10 posts · 40 views

last updated May 09, 2019 05:21AM

showing 9 of 9 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Aug 12, 2011 Sheila rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed, classic, owned

A man who wakes up and finds himself transformed into a cockroach and then dismisses the discovery to get more sleep is surely a strange way to open a story.

But to have the climax in the beginning can urge the reader to immerse himself further into the story. It's like climbing down from the top of Mt. Everest, which in itself, is not a simple journey.

In Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis, we meet Gregor Samsa, who just turned into a monstrous vermin. But if there's a monstrous vermin who's funny ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

Sep 23, 2015 Erika B. (SOS BOOKS) rated it really liked it

O this book-it has so many layers! I couldn't possibly analyze them all here. Trust me. I've already written six pages on only the surface of the story! Definitely full of dark humor! I really liked it! Wasn't that last sentence so deep?! haha ...more

8 likes · Like · see review

Jul 19, 2011 Uday Desai rated it really liked it

This is so beautifully conceived and written.
On the writing style, Kafka powerfully conveys all the pain and agony of Gregor, and that too with very simple words and very simple language. No big quote no poetic language is used to make it that way but still makes it so effective. He gives very balanced picture and feeling about all the characters in this novella.
What I like most is the points that he is making:
1. Each one of us has some purpose in our society (and that includes our family and mo ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Nov 02, 2011 Parikhit rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, short-stories

Thank you all for recommending this novella. Kafka is a genius in every possible sense and ‘The Metamorphosis’ is the perfect illustration of Kafka’s impeccable and unrivalled imagination. The novella was originally written in German and that the essence of a book dwindles with translations is no exception to Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’. I was amazed to find the number of interpretations and analysis that this novella has seen. While many have utterly labelled this as fantasy some have coined ‘T Thank you all for recommending this novella. Kafka is a genius in every possible sense and ‘The Metamorphosis’ is the perfect illustration of Kafka’s impeccable and unrivalled imagination. The novella was originally written in German and that the essence of a book dwindles with translations is no exception to Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’. I was amazed to find the number of interpretations and analysis that this novella has seen. While many have utterly labelled this as fantasy some have coined ‘The Metamorphosis’ as a work of philosophy.

Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, wakes up to discover that he has morphed into a ‘monstrous vermin’, as the translators have settled for. However, in Kafka’s original work what Gregor really became has never been explicitly mentioned; the German equivalent would be closest to something disgraceful. Indeed a disgrace Gregor becomes to his family for whom he had toiled tirelessly. It was rather uncanny that after discovering his predicament Gregor’s thoughts wandered about his work and his employer. It was absurdly humorous. With the first chapter I kept hoping that it would be a humorous story or fantasy even- that Gregor would wake up to find he was dreaming. But Gregor’s disgraceful state was never to abandon him. Settling to this perturbed situation, the family gradually distance themselves from Gregor who remains confined always. His sister abandons Gregor with a vicious cleaning woman employed to clean his room. It was heart-rending to read his father behave so monstrously when Gregor creeps out of his room to listen to his sister play the violin and bombard him with apples to shoo him away one other time. His outlandish obsession with a photo of a woman wrapped in furs was out and out humorous. The ending is glum but it would not have been better otherwise.

Kafka’s writing transcends anything that I have read so far. Profound, deep, haunting and beautiful ‘The Metamorphosis’ indisputably summarizes transcendental thoughts.

I could not help myself from reading these lines again and again and only marvel at Kafka’s ingenuity.
“He undertook the very difficult task of shoving a chair over to the window. Then he crept up on the window sill and, braced in the chair, leaned against the window to look out, obviously with some memory or other of the satisfaction which that used to bring him in earlier times. Actually, from day to day he perceived things with less and less clarity, even those a short distance away: the hospital across the street, the all-too-frequent sight of which he had previously cursed, was not visible at all any more, and if he had not been precisely aware that he lived in the quiet but completely urban Charlotte Street, he could have believed that from his window he was peering out at a featureless wasteland, in which the grey heaven and the grey earth had merged and were indistinguishable.”
...more

Like · see review