The Metamorphosis

By: Franz Kafka

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

Length: 2 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.”

With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young traveling salesman who, transformed overnight into a giant, beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. Rather than being surprised at the transformation, the members of his family despise it as an impending burden upon themselves.

A harrowing - though absurdly comic - meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of 20th-century fiction. As W. H. Auden wrote, “Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.”

FRANZ KAFKA (1883–1924), one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century, was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. His unique body of writing, much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously, is considered by some people to be among the most influential in Western literature, inspiring such writers as Albert Camus, Rex Warner, and Samuel Beckett.

©Public Domain (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

“In The Metamorphosis Kafka reached the height of his mastery: he wrote something which he could never surpass, because there is nothing which The Metamorphosis could be surpassed by - one of the few great, perfect poetic works of this century.” (Elias Canetti, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981)

Written in 1915

This starts out with a man who wakes up as a big bug. Like in Amy Rand's Atlas Shrugged, his whole family depends upon him to make a living. The story is less about him being a bug and more about how his Mother, Father and sister cope with losing the bread winner in the house.

It must be remembered that it was written in 1915. Recently I read a story that was a modern version of this story and the bug kills his family. I hate to admit it, but I liked the modern version better.

FK is a great writer of interpersonal relations, it just was not what I was expecting.

It was not bad and it is only 2 hours long.

Conservatively Depressing

Any additional comments?

This is a story about a man the turns into an insect, and then acts very conservatively British about it. But his family don't like it at all, and really make very little attempt to help him. The end is a bit of a downer, but life goes on, even for the characters in the story.

I’ll never look at a bug the same way.

I chose this book for the picture on the sleeve. It seemed to entice my senses by curbing my need for a story that would take me to a new place. My usual taste is ether Jane Austin’s or exploring space type books. I was not disappointed. He lived a good life with a pute heart.

A fantastic tragic short story

Honestly it was pretty hard for me to wrap my mind around this book but something spoke to me from the characters that can be related to us as people

Great Writing... but, what's the point?

An interesting story and good writing. Still, I don't understand it. Is it a metaphor for change or is it simply a study in what might happen if someone suddenly turns into a bug....?

Strange

Very strange book. I wish there was a little more detail. There were things I was confused about.

i don't know how to feel.

to give some context. I'm the bread winner for my family; consisting of my mother and my severely autistic brother.

on one hand I feel this book so much. as the fear of losing my ability to provide for my family would feel little different than what happened to gregor. he killed him self as a human so his family could live like discount dandies. when really they were the ones killing him by leeching off him.

on the other hand. after reading this book I finally understand better how other people view my life both past and present. to most people they see my brother as a Gregor. something inexplicable that has been saddled on my life. mind you I grew up in the 90s when doctors spoke of aids as a more honorable and survivable diagnosis than autism. being that were 2 years apart. I grew up with him as a norm. so to see such a surreal example of how something like that can change a families dynamic. change out Gregor's condition with cancer, death, dismemberment, addiction, etc. it is frightening.

over all this. this is why I picked up classical literature. going through them and looking not only at how the world is shaped by them. but how the world had shaped them. an invaluable read I'd say. not for parking what the author means. but rather what it means to you. I'll even go so far as to say the book is less about Gregor or his families metamorphosis; and much more about yours as the reader. definitely one I will come back to at a different point in my life and re-read..

Great... but different (In a good way)

I would recommend this pretty strongly to just about anyone, the story is great and certainly worth experiencing at least once, and the performance does it justice.

That being said if I had to critique it I would say there isn't much of a "story" it is simply a description of interesting events. What I mean is that there is no clear arc or catharsis in the story, so if those are important to you, then I wouldn't recommend it. That being said I think as a contemporary reader where this type of narrative catharsis is universal its valuable and interesting to read something that isn't interested in catering to those sensibilities.

So this guy wakes up as a bug...

So, this guy Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning as a cockroach. (Actually, the Wikipedia article has an interesting discussion about how Kafka never specified exactly what kind of bug Gregor turned into). His family freaks out a little, as you might expect, but then they sort of come to accept the situation. Gregor feels increasingly isolated as he cannot really communicate with them and he can no longer support them as he once did. Coexisting in a tiny apartment with a giant cockroachinsect becomes increasingly burdensome for the family. Eventually Gregor dies (implied, that he wills himself to death to spare his family further burden) and they're all relieved. The end.

Sort of a downer. I think it loses a lot in the translation, as apparently Kafka's prose in the original German was much of the reason for The Metamorphosis's high literary status.

This is a surrealistic piece which, technically, you could probably call "magical realism." (No explanation is ever given for Gregor's transformation into a giant bug, and no one seems curious about how such a thing could happen. They're just all rather distressed by the whole thing without ever really talking about it.

Frankly, as a story it was a bit flat and anti-climactic, and if there is some deeper meaning, I'm afraid I missed it. Would probably enjoy it more if I read it in the original German.

old scifi is so different

I love old scifi. It never follows our expected patterns. This isn't a "Horror" as we know it today and it is a bit sad but still very interesting.