Joyce Crick

Franz Kafka

'When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin.' With a bewildering blend of the everyday and the fantastical, Kafka thus begins his most famous short story, The Metamorphosis. A commercial traveller is unexpectedly freed from his dreary job by his inexplicable transformation into an insect, which drastically alters his relationship with his family. Kafka considered publishing it with two of the stories included here in a volume to be called Punishments. The Judgement also concerns family tensions, when a power struggle between father and son ends with the father passing an enigmatic judgement on the helpless son. The third story, In the Penal Colony, explores questions of power, justice, punishment, and the meaning of pain in a colonial setting. These three stories are flanked by two very different works. Meditation, the first book Kafka published, consists of light, whimsical, often poignant mood-pictures, while in the autobiographical Letter to his Father, Kafka analyses his difficult relationship in forensic and devastating detail. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

Die Verwandlung

Elina Berzina

Franzi

raia – inactive

He was already on the verge of forgetting, and only his mother’s voice, which he had gone so long now without hearing, had shaken him awake.

Luca Stromann

[…] denn ihn hätte man doch in einer passenden Kiste mit ein paar Luftlöchern leicht transportieren können;

Anfangs rief sie ihn auch zu sich herbei, mit Worten, die sie wahrscheinlich für freundlich hielt, wie »Komm mal herüber, alter Mistkäfer!« oder »Seht mal den alten Mistkäfer!«

tuna

The previous morning while the doors were locked everyone had wanted to get in there to him, but now, now that he had opened up one of the doors and the other had clearly been unlocked some time during the day, no-one came, and the keys were in the other sides.

They had been good times and they had never come again, at least not with the same splendour

With a certain definitiveness he sensed, terrified, that everything was about to collapse all around him, and so he waited. 

Oriana andrade

As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

Alison Deaner

It occurred to him how simple everything would be if somebody came to help him.

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories quotes

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