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Okay, so I read the plot summary on a website about this book and it seems very strange but really interesting. I wont say much because I dont want to ruin it for the poeple readying this, but what do you think the title conveys?

Everything about the book.

A change is goanna come.

The title conveys the most important aspects of the book and main character.

this is the best book i've ever read in my life

I'd argue that the mechanics of the change, and the change itself, are rather secondary to the narrative as a whole. After all, it's finished by the end of the first line. What really matters here is how people react to the change (spoiler: not always very well).

I read this book as a young adult and i was blown away by it. Once you get over and accept the initial event, it is amazing to read how the dynamics if the relationships change. This is one of the saddest stories i know.. Along with the Great Gatsby ofcourse!

How people change and how the main character changes and has to deal with it.

Torn between two self images, the human race`s dialectical is suspended between that of a race of angels, or that of demons. But in Judeo-Christian theology, he is suspended midpoint between a spiritual being and one not far removed from the beasts. The main character relapses into the latter. His corporality is so gruesome and is perceived as loathsome as a cockroach. The transformation is merely metaphorical and addresses the nature of man himself, or his basest element.

Geoffrey, thank you for giving your explanation of the "Metamorphosis"; It is very good and comes close what I had in mind. Franz Kafkas books mostly deal about Human transformation, alienation and the cruelty it brings physical and psychological it brings with it. In this case a disgusting cockroach. Feeling inside still the same, he sees how things change around him. But I dont thnk, it has anything to do in a spiritual aspect (Judean-Christian). He himself was from Jewish parents.

As Shoshi says, Gregor's inner self is little changed by the transformation. He still wants to go to work and support his family, and still wants to understand and be understood. So I don't see Geoffrey's comment as fitting the story. He wakes up to find himself grotesquely incapacitated. To me, the fact that it starts with waking up is meaningful. A person could be going along through life for years in a sort of somnolent fashion, undergoing changes that don't go noticed until some critical moment of awareness. For instance, you learn you have cancer. Or you realize you don't have the mental chops you used to have and you can't keep up with the demands made by the responsibilities you still have. ... I also wonder about the fact that nobody in the story ever says, "Hey, this is impossible! No one ever changes into a monstrous insect!" They are disturbed, but more as if his transformation is one that is known to occur.

I am lazy so I am just copying my review. I love Kafka, but unlike you all, I think he is not only sad, but also very funny.
I loved it, but I had an interesting experience with it. I read it a long time ago in Czech, but my daughter read it in German in her British school. So I read it, too. The thing was, it had added notes and explanations in English, and I did not think the writer of those notes got the book.
This is dark, but also very funny book, and rather typical of Central European Jewish humour.
ALl Kafka's books, even The Trial " have humour in them. ANd some of those scenes are farcical- the father throwing apples at the beetle -son to chase him back to his room.
ANybody who reads Kafka and does not get the humour should try to read him again!

i love how he worked his butt off so his family could live but when tables turned and they had to go to work all of a sudden hes just a expendable bug. people stink through and through lol

Well, just finished it.

The more I keep turning over that last sentence in the story, which is quite tragic by itself, the more it seems to me that the story is ultimately about the parents, seeing their children in the end only in light of how they can be put best to their own advantage.

Gerd wrote: "Well, just finished it.

The more I keep turning over that last sentence in the story, which is quite tragic by itself, the more it seems to me that the story is ultimately about the parents, seein..."

Yes, very good point.Families- those relatives we would never chose as friends.

It was quite interpretive and psychoanalytically symbolic on various degrees of overall human condition. The metamorphosis in held the essence of yin-yang. It could be simply a fairy tale or just abstract expressionism in existentialism with essence of communicative capitalism.

To feel 'not sad', about it, one would rather focus on Samsa family's 'brave' metamorphosis; let's interpret, after their son's mortal loss, but not loss as a memory that lingered around the room as a bug. Or simply the helplessness of Gregor because of his new found depression; family evolved psychologically and physically..

Any interpretation and ratiocination wouldn't be wrong, even either the linear or the cyclic ones. That's one the best things I noticed about this novella...hoping that nothing was lost in the translation !

Metamorphosis goes so much more deeper than the physical appearance in this story. I felt it was the development not only of the main character's physical appearance but his emotions as well as those of his family members dealing with what has happened.

i agree suge

Yes, Duane, the autobiographical aspect is certainly what I sensed as well. In fact, with the exception of AMERIKA, I would say the protagonists in his novels share many qualities with himself.

Aren't all books autobiographical? Remember Flaubert? Madame Bovary, C'est moi"

Hardly, Lucie. Try to find the autobiographical in THE GRAPS OF WRATH, THE MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, MOLL FLANDERS, MYRA BECKINRIDGE, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, .....I could go on and on......

yeah, and you better hope Thomas Harris isn't writing about himself...

Lest,er, not get onto that subject, Duane or we will have bloody murder.

I think the title conveys everything happening in the book and everything the book is in one word.

Wait a minute, Jimbo. Gregor was resented for not contributing to his family's finances as he degenerated into a non-working cockroach.

Teenage children resents their parent's authority for their loss of priveleges, (midnight curfews, paltry allowances, tongue lashings for bad grades), not for becoming cockroaches.

Businesses are not looted by kids wearing $200 shoes but are by kids who don't wear expensive shoes and boost $200 shoes from retailers.

I have yet to hear anyone call another a racist because the national debt is a trillion dollars a year. If they are called racists it's because of other attitudes and remarks.

So what planet do you live on?

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the price of their tennis shoes".

Jimbo, Duane said nothing about his kids being looters. Where did you get that idea?

Without question, the title refers to the grotesque transformation of the protagonist, but I believe that is only half of it. An equally fascinating metamorphosis is the one experienced by his family. As I progressed through the narrative, I felt that more and more, Kafka was shifting the focus of the story to them instead of the protagonist.

Oh yeah, fantastic story!

The first thing that come to my mind after reading the plot summary was "Unique". How come a person can transform into beetle in one night, it is magic or other random phenomenon? But, I got this book from some reference in some game I played and I think it's about some phsychological, talking about people character.

I remember seeing the cartoon as a child and loving it. Then I found the book and it intrigued me.

There is something I really like in Kafka's writing : the fact that everything seems to be absurd and tragic. There is no explanations, we don't know much about the metamorphosis, about how Samsa has transformed, and everything seems to be "normal" for him too. When I started reading the book, I thought it was absurd, maybe in a funny way. It's not. This is an horrible story, it was really hard to going through when I finished it. We find the same thing in The Trial : we don't know anything about Mr. K's arrest. In Kafka's books, the characters are victims of their existence, I think that's the hardest.