A book of few pages, only three chapters,

simple and rough vocabulary, but of a

immeasurable grandeur. I see no other way.
to describe my first contact with the works of
Kafka.
The book begins with Gregor's transformation.
Samsa, a traveling salesman, in a monstrous
insect. It was Gregor who supported the family.
composed of the mother, the father, and a younger sister,
Grete. After your metamorphosis, let's go
follow the impact caused throughout the
family and in Gregor's life.

When one morning Gregor Samsa woke up from

Restless dreams, found himself in his bed.
metamorphosed into a monstrous insect. It was
lying on your back hard as armor and, to
lifting his head a bit, he saw his belly
bulbous, brown, divided by arched ribs,
at the top of which the cover is about to slide off
at times, barely held on. Its numerous legs,
unfortunately thin compared to the volume
from the rest of the body, they trembled helplessly in front of
from your eyes.
Page 7 (The Metamorphosis)

It is important to emphasize that Gregor does not transform.

in a cockroach, at no point in the book does the author
makes mention of this insect, but describes
detailed the body of Gregor transformed,
leaving it to the reader to imagine what it
Gregor has transformed. I believe it was because of the
descriptions and the disgust with which he is
later treated, most imagine him as
a cockroach.
Kafka makes a fierce critique throughout his book, which
it is full of symbols and metaphors. Right at the
at the beginning of the book we see that, despite being in the
insect shape, Gregor is only concerned with going
to work and not miss the train. It is almost absurd.
the family's reaction. They blame him for his
transformation and do not ask how that
it happened.
The way the family starts to
sustaining after the metamorphosis is also shocking.
The mother, who is asthmatic and could not work, starts to
to make seams outward. The father, sick and
retired, returns to work. The sister, protected from
Gregor and the family start working in a shop. The
that leads the reader to question who they really are
parasitized in the book: Gregor when human or the
family by 'Gregor-insect'?
The author plays a lot with the inversion of values and with
constant questioning. To what extent this
Was the family really dependent on Gregor? A
Was the metamorphosis only in Gregor or in the family as well?
also transformed after he became a
insect?
The book is profound and its ending is touching.
I am reluctant about reading, but I admit that Kafka
can overcome any obstacle of evil
judged within us. This work is capable of
reach different audiences, talk to different
minds and touch them all. Excellent reading. More
how recommended!

The Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka in 1912, but only printed in
1915, in a German magazine called The White Pages
Whites - in the context of the Belle Époque - a period marked by cultural transformations that
influenced the way people lived and thought –, two years preceding the
World War I. In Brazil, it was first published in 1956, by the Publisher
Brazilian Civilization.

The work is divided into three parts. In the first part, we follow a Gregor (the
protagonist of the story) newly metamorphosed, and we observe how he is received
for your family in its new form. In the second part, we observe the daily life of Gregor.
isolated and rejected. Already in the third and final part, we observe the end of a weak Gregor and
psychologically battered.

The Metamorphosis is narrated by an omniscient narrator (heterodiegetic), from the perspective of

perspective of the main character. This connection between the narrator and the protagonist endures until the
moment of his death, when the narrator detaches himself from Gregor and begins to focus on his
family.

As for the characters, Gregor Samsa is a round (shaped) character because he is well
finished and characterized. Secondary characters can be considered flat.
(designed), including Gregor's sister, Grete, who at the end of the novel takes a stance
hard and insensible in relation to the monstrous insect that is in place of her brother.

The time of the narrative is chronological, that is, the events are arranged in order of
event. Much of the story takes place in Gregor's room, after all, it's there that he
spends most of his time after being transformed. However, it is not clarified in
what time period the story takes place, as dates are never specified throughout the work.
The transition of time is exposed to the reader through hours and days.

Contrary to the rules dictated by Aristotle in his work Poetics (theory of beginning, middle and
end, where at the beginning there would be the introduction of the story and the characters) A
Metamorphosis begins with the climax, as can be seen right in the first sentence.
from the book:
One morning, after a troubled sleep, Gregor Samsa woke up and found himself in his bed.
transformed into a monstrous insect” (KAFKA, 2001, p. 11).

Photograph by Christophe Huet

As we can see from reading the initial excerpt of the book, Gregor already begins to
story transformed into an insect. The narrator and Gregor himself take the metamorphosis as
something almost insignificant. The first merely notes the transformation and is limited to
describe Gregor's new body, and when he finishes doing so, he begins to describe his
fourth; the second first finds its monstrous new form strange, but soon desires
resume your life as a traveling salesman as if you had just contracted a
sick. In fact, both the narrator and the protagonist do not know the causes of the transformation and neither
they also seem to be interested in the subject. Thus, the reader ends up not having access, in a way
explicitly, what led Gregor to undergo the metamorphosis. In fact, it is also not specified
in what Gregor transforms: the narrator only speaks of a monstrous insect.

If we make a deeper analysis of history, we will be able to see that the metamorphosis
represents a metaphor of the society of the time and/or the psychological state of Gregor. He
took on the mission of financially supporting his family, practicing the profession of
traveling salesman, which was extremely exhausting and did not provide professional fulfillment or
Guys, how can we check in the excerpt below:

What a hard profession I chose! Traveling every single day. It is much worse than when you
is at the office, because when I travel, I can't neglect the train schedules, the
meals are bad, made out of time; relationships always change, they are never the
"the same, never allow for an authentic friendship" (KAFKA, 2001, p. 12).

When Gregor took on the household expenses, his family treated him affectionately.
Still, over time, his parents came to believe that it was their duty to
Gregor sustains them. It is through metamorphosis that Gregor frees himself from his burden: his
work and the dependence of his family.

(...) his efficient professional performance provided him with significant commissions in
money, which he placed on the living room table, under the admiring and joyful gaze of the family.
As all this became customary, the initial surprise and joy
they cooled down and thus, Gregor handed over the money with spontaneous pleasure and the family, of
Good degree, received" (KAFKA, 2001, p. 39).

Before the metamorphosis happened, the family was parasitizing Gregor; after the metamorphosis, the family
is parasitized, since Gregor, in his current state, only consumes and provides nothing.
from the moment that all family members get a job and the issue
the financial issue is already resolved, the father even wants to get rid of the son/insect, which causes in
Gregor a pain not only physical but also psychological: the pain of rejection.

(...) something brushed against his head and rolled a little further ahead: it was an apple,
logo followed by another. Fearful, Gregor stopped, thinking it useless to continue running,
for the father had decided to bomb him (...)" (KAFKA, 2001, p. 52).

With the reading of the excerpt above, we can also infer that such an excerpt conveys to the reader
the troubled relationship of Kafka with his father, a person with whom he never had a good
relationship, as he always undermined his son's achievements and never supported him, taking on
many times a tyrannical stance. Kafka, in his condition as an insect, sees himself as inferior
in relation to the father, who attacks him. Here what Modesto Carone says could be applied.
ensaioO parasita da família, “(...) A Metamorfose (…) deve ser lida não como uma
simple fantasy novel, but like a tragic family story.

Starting from the metaphor of metamorphosis, Kafka critiques society, whose interests
they are extreme capitalists, and not emotional. When transformed into an insect, Gregor
represents someone who has always cared for others but never for themselves,
someone who no longer produces and therefore is cruelly rejected by the family, which, in turn,
represents society.

The end of the story is atrocious: Grete, the sister who had always treated him before the metamorphosis.
in an affectionate way and that, even after the transformation, had never really given him
the back, expels Gregor from their lives. He, already weak - which is due both to the bad
nutrition as much by the psychological shock he received - dies in his room during the
night.
"- He has to leave! - shouted the sister. - It's the only way, father. You need to..."
to get rid of the idea that it is Gregor. Believing in this for so long has been the
our misfortune. How could it be Gregor? If it were, he would have realized a long time ago that beings
humans cannot live with a creature like that. And it would have left on its own
(KAFKA, 2001, p. 70-71).

Gregor's death is judged as a release for everyone. The family does something that has long been overdue.
it didn't take time: take a tram ride around the city. And on this ride, the parents
they realize how their daughter had transformed into a beautiful young woman, and that it was already time to
to find her a husband. With this ending, the author implicitly conveys the intention of the parents
support their daughter financially in the near future.

Considered one of the geniuses of literature, Kafka managed to turn The Metamorphosis into a
a cruel and intelligent work, whose reading remains relevant despite the book having been written years ago
more than 100 years.

***

Franz Kafka

We need books that affect us like a disaster, that distress us

deeply, like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, like being
banished to forests distant from all, like a suicide. A book must be the axe.
to the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka
 Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague,
in Bohemia (currently corresponding to the Czech Republic). Kafka, however, was literate
in German. In life, he published little; among these materials is found
Metamorphosis, her most well-known work.

Your troubled relationship with your father inspired you to write Letter to Father, published
only posthumously. The text reflects - sometimes in an exaggerated way - the relationship between father and
son, where this one assumes a position of failure towards that one.

Kafka wrote The Metamorphosis in 21 days (between November 17 and December 7 of

1912). When he presented the first chapter of the work to his friends, his reading was
first received with laughter. However, Max Brod saw the quality of the work and
sought someone who could edit the story.
Through immense anguish, Kafka wanted to make the reader of his works perceive the
that was happening in the world, wanted to make him "wake up with a blow to the head"
as it says in a letter from 1904.

As stated in the biography The prodigious world I have in my head, authored by Louis
Begley, shortly before he passed away, Kafka had left a letter to his friend Max Brod,
asking him to burn all his writings. Brod did not do it, and that is why we have access to
several works of the writer.

Kafka died on June 3, 1924, in Vienna, at the age of 40.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
ARISTOTLE, HORACE & LONGINUS. Classical Poetics. São Paulo, Cultrix, 1995.
BEGLEY, Louis.O mundo prodigioso que tenho na cabeça.São Paulo, Companhia das
Lyrics, 2010.
CARONE, [Link]ção de Kafka. São Paulo, Companhia das Letras, 2009.
KAFKA, Franz.A Metamorfose. São Paulo, Nova Alexandria, 2001