The Metamorphosis

by Franz Kafka

“What’s happened to me?” he thought. It was no dream.

“Why don’t I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all this foolishness?”

A man must have his sleep.

Could the alarm have failed to ring?

he was peering out at a featureless wasteland, in which the grey heaven and the grey earth had merged and were indistinguishable.

It was, on the contrary, a requirement of family duty to suppress one’s aversion and to endure—nothing else, just endure.

People had grown accustomed to discard in there things which they could not put anywhere else,

It seemed odd to Gregor that, out of all the many different sorts of sounds of eating, what was always audible was their chewing teeth,

It was as if the way to the unknown nourishment he craved was revealing itself.

Franz was an avid reader educated in Latin, Greek, chemistry, and law.