Everything you wanted to know about “Transformation” but were too lazy to Google. Gregor Samsa, the hero of Franz Kafka’s story “Metamorphosis”: characterization of the character Kafka’s metamorphosis summary

Transformation

The incident that happened to Gregor Samsa is described, perhaps, in one sentence of the story. One morning, waking up after a restless sleep, the hero suddenly discovered that he had turned into a huge scary insect...

Actually, after this incredible transformation, nothing special happens anymore. The behavior of the characters is prosaic, everyday and extremely reliable, and attention is focused on everyday trifles, which for the hero grow into painful problems.

Gregor Samsa was an ordinary young man living in a big city. All his efforts and concerns were subordinated to his family, where he was the only son and therefore felt an increased sense of responsibility for the well-being of his loved ones.

His father went bankrupt and spent most of his time at home, looking through newspapers. The mother suffered from attacks of suffocation, and she spent long hours in a chair by the window. Gregor also had a younger sister, Greta, whom he loved very much. Greta played the violin well, and Gregor's cherished dream - after he managed to cover his father's debts - was to help her enter the conservatory, where she could study music professionally. After serving in the army, Gregor got a job at a trading company and was soon promoted from a minor employee to a traveling salesman. He worked with great diligence, although the place was ungrateful. I had to spend most of my time on business trips, get up at dawn and go to the train with a heavy suitcase full of samples of cloth. The owner of the company was stingy, but Gregor was disciplined, diligent and hardworking. Besides, he never complained. Sometimes he was more lucky, sometimes less. One way or another, his earnings were enough to rent a spacious apartment for his family, where he occupied a separate room.

It was in this room that he woke up one day in the form of a giant disgusting centipede. Woke up, he looked around at the familiar walls, saw a portrait of a woman in a fur hat, which he had recently cut out from an illustrated magazine and inserted into a gilded frame, turned his gaze to the window, heard raindrops knocking on the tin of the window sill, and closed his eyes again. “It would be nice to sleep a little more and forget all this nonsense,” he thought. He was used to sleeping on his right side, but his huge bulging belly was now bothering him, and after hundreds of unsuccessful attempts to turn over, Gregor gave up this activity. In cold horror, he realized that everything was happening in reality. But what horrified him even more was that the alarm clock showed already half past seven, while Gregor had set it for four o’clock in the morning. Didn't he hear the bell and missed the train? These thoughts drove him into despair. At this time, his mother carefully knocked on the door, worried that he would be late. His mother's voice was, as always, gentle, and Gregor was frightened when he heard the answering sounds of his own voice, which was mixed with a strange painful squeak.

Then the nightmare continued. There was already knocking on his room from different sides - both his father and his sister were worried whether he was healthy. They begged him to open the door, but he stubbornly did not unlock the lock. After incredible effort, he managed to hang over the edge of the bed. At this time the bell rang in the hallway. The manager of the company himself came to find out what happened. Out of terrible excitement, Gregor jerked with all his might and fell onto the carpet. The sound of the fall was heard in the living room. Now the manager has joined the calls of the relatives. And it seemed wiser to Gregor to explain to the strict boss that he would certainly correct everything and make up for it. He began excitedly blurting out from behind the door that he was only slightly ill, that he would still catch the eight o'clock train, and finally began to beg not to fire him because of involuntary absenteeism and to spare his parents. At the same time, he managed, leaning on the slippery chest, to straighten up to his full height, overcoming the pain in his torso.

There was silence outside the door. No one understood a word of his monologue. Then the manager said quietly: “It was the voice of an animal.” The sister and the maid ran after the locksmith in tears. However, Gregor himself managed to turn the key in the lock, grabbing it with his strong jaws. And then he appeared before the eyes of those crowding at the door, leaning against its frame.

He continued to convince the manager that everything would soon fall into place. For the first time, he dared to express to him his feelings about hard work and the powerlessness of the position of a traveling salesman, whom anyone could offend. The reaction to his appearance was deafening. The mother silently collapsed on the floor. His father shook his fist at him in confusion. The manager turned and, looking back over his shoulder, began to slowly walk away. This silent scene lasted several seconds. Finally the mother jumped to her feet and screamed wildly. She leaned on the table and knocked over a pot of hot coffee. The manager immediately rushed towards the stairs. Gregor set off after him, clumsily mincing his legs. He definitely had to keep the guest. However, his path was blocked by his father, who began to push his son back, making some hissing sounds. He nudged Gregor with his stick. With great difficulty, having injured one side on the door, Gregor squeezed back into his room, and the door was immediately slammed behind him.

After this terrible first morning, Gregor began a humiliated, monotonous life in captivity, with which he slowly became accustomed. He gradually adapted to his ugly and clumsy body, to his thin tentacle legs. He discovered that he could crawl along the walls and ceiling, and even liked to hang there for a long time. While in this terrible new guise, Gregor remained the same as he was - a loving son and brother, experiencing all family worries and suffering because he brought so much grief into the lives of his loved ones. From his captivity, he silently eavesdropped on the conversations of his relatives. He was tormented by shame and despair, since now the family found itself without funds and the old father, sick mother and young sister had to think about earning money. He painfully felt the disgust that those closest to him felt towards him. For the first two weeks, mother and father could not bring themselves to enter his room. Only Greta, overcoming her fear, came here to quickly clean up or put down a bowl of food. However, Gregor was less and less satisfied with ordinary food, and he often left his plates untouched, although he was tormented by hunger. He understood that the sight of him was unbearable for his sister, and therefore he tried to hide under the sofa behind a sheet when she came to clean up.

One day his humiliating peace was disturbed, as the women decided to empty his room of furniture. It was Greta's idea, who decided to give him more space to crawl. Then the mother timidly entered her son’s room for the first time. Gregor obediently hid on the floor behind a hanging sheet, in an uncomfortable position. The commotion made him feel very ill. He understood that he had been deprived of a normal home - they took out the chest where he kept a jigsaw and other tools, a closet with clothes, a desk where he prepared his homework as a child. And, unable to bear it, he crawled out from under the sofa to protect his last wealth - a portrait of a woman in furs on the wall. At this time, mother and Greta were catching their breath in the living room. When they returned, Gregor was hanging on the wall, his paws wrapped around the portrait. He decided that under no circumstances would he allow him to be taken away - he would rather grab Greta in the face. The sister who entered the room failed to take the mother away. She “saw a huge brown spot on the colorful wallpaper, screamed, before it dawned on her that it was Gregor, shrilly and shrill,” and collapsed in exhaustion on the sofa.

Gregor was filled with excitement. He quickly crawled into the living room after his sister, who rushed to the first aid kit with drops, and helplessly stomped behind her, suffering from his guilt. At this time, his father came - now he worked as a delivery boy in some bank and wore a blue uniform with gold buttons. Greta explained that her mother had fainted and Gregor had “broken out.” The father let out a malicious cry, grabbed a vase of apples and began to throw them at Gregor with hatred. The unfortunate man ran away, making many feverish movements. One of the apples hit him hard on the back, getting stuck in his body.

After his injury, Gregor's health worsened. Gradually, the sister stopped cleaning his house - everything was overgrown with cobwebs and a sticky substance oozing from his paws. Guilty of nothing, but rejected with disgust by those closest to him, suffering from shame more than from hunger and wounds, he withdrew into miserable loneliness, going over his entire past simple life on sleepless nights. In the evenings, the family gathered in the living room, where everyone drank tea or talked. Gregor was “it” for them - every time his family closed the door of his room tightly, trying not to remember his oppressive presence.

One evening he heard that his sister was playing the violin for three new tenants - they were renting rooms for the sake of money. Attracted by the music, Gregor ventured a little further than usual. Because of the dust that lay everywhere in his room, he himself was completely covered with it, “on his back and sides he carried with him threads, hair, remnants of food; his indifference to everything was too great to lie down, as before, for several once a day on your back and clean yourself on the carpet." And now this unkempt monster slid across the sparkling floor of the living room. A shameful scandal broke out. Residents indignantly demanded their money back. The mother broke into a coughing fit. The sister concluded that it was impossible to live like this any longer, and the father confirmed that she was “a thousand times right.” Gregor struggled to crawl back into his room. From weakness he was completely clumsy and out of breath. Finding himself in the familiar dusty darkness, he felt that he could not move at all. He almost no longer felt pain, and still thought about his family with tenderness and love.

Early in the morning the maid came and found Gregor lying completely motionless. Soon she joyfully informed the owners: “Look, it’s dead, here it lies, completely, completely dead!”

Gregor's body was dry, flat and weightless. The maid scooped up his remains and threw them out with the trash. Everyone felt undisguised relief. Mother, father and Greta allowed themselves a walk outside the city for the first time in a long time. In the tram car, full of warm sunshine, they animatedly discussed the prospects for the future, which turned out to be not so bad at all. At the same time, the parents, without saying a word, thought about how, despite all the vicissitudes, their daughter had become prettier.

Waking up one morning from troubled sleep, Gregor Samsa found himself transformed in his bed into a terrible insect. Lying on his armour-hard back, he saw, as soon as he raised his head, his brown, convex belly, divided by arched scales, on the top of which the blanket was barely holding on, ready to finally slide off. His numerous legs, pitifully thin compared to the size of the rest of his body, swarmed helplessly before his eyes.

“What happened to me?” - he thought. It wasn't a dream. His room, a real room although a little too small, but an ordinary room, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. Above the table where unpacked samples of cloth lay spread out – Samsa was a traveling salesman – there hung a portrait that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. The portrait showed a lady in a fur hat and boa, she sat very upright and held out to the viewer a heavy fur muff in which her entire hand disappeared.

Then Gregor's gaze turned to the window, and the cloudy weather - he could hear raindrops hitting the tin of the window sill - brought him into a completely sad mood. “It would be nice to sleep a little more and forget all this nonsense,” he thought, but this was completely impossible, he was used to sleeping on his right side, and in his current state he could not accept this position. No matter how hard he turned onto his right side, he invariably fell back onto his back. Closing his eyes so as not to see his floundering legs, he did this a good hundred times and gave up these attempts only when he felt some hitherto unknown, dull and weak pain in his side.

“Oh my God,” he thought, “what a troublesome profession I have chosen!” On the road every day. There is much more business excitement than on the spot, in a trading house, and besides, please endure the hardships of the road, think about the train schedule, put up with poor, irregular food, strike up short-lived relationships with more and more new people, which are never cordial. Damn it all! He felt a slight itch in the upper abdomen; slowly moved on his back towards the bars of the bed so that it would be more convenient to raise his head; I found an itchy place, completely covered, as it turned out, with white, incomprehensible dots; I wanted to feel this place with one of the legs, but immediately pulled it away, because even a simple touch caused him, Gregor, to shiver.

He slid back to his previous position. “This early rise,” he thought, “could drive you completely crazy. A person must get enough sleep. Other traveling salesmen live like odalisques. When, for example, I return to the hotel in the middle of the day to rewrite the orders received, these gentlemen are just having breakfast. And if I dared to behave like that, my master would have kicked me out immediately. Who knows, however, maybe it would even be very good for me. If I had not held back for the sake of my parents, I would have announced my resignation long ago, I would have approached my master and told him everything I thought about him. He would have fallen off the desk! He has a strange manner of sitting on the desk and talking from its height with the employee, who, in addition, is forced to come close to the desk due to the fact that the owner is hard of hearing. However, hope is not completely lost; As soon as I save enough money to pay off my parents' debt - which will take another five or six years - I will do so. This is where we say goodbye once and for all. In the meantime, we need to get up, my train leaves at five.”

And he looked at the alarm clock that was ticking on the chest. “Good God!” - he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were calmly moving on, it was even more than half, almost three quarters already. Didn't the alarm clock ring? From the bed it was clear that it was positioned correctly, at four o'clock; and he undoubtedly called. But how could one sleep peacefully while listening to this furniture-shaking ringing? Well, he slept restlessly, but apparently soundly. However, what to do now? The next train leaves at seven o'clock; in order to keep up with it, he must be in a desperate hurry, and the set of samples has not yet been packed, and he himself does not at all feel fresh and easy-going. And even if he was on time for the train, he still could not avoid being scolded by his boss - after all, the bellboy of the trading house was on duty at the five o’clock train and had long ago reported on his, Gregor’s, lateness. The delivery boy, a spineless and stupid man, was the owner's protege. What if you tell someone sick? But this would be extremely unpleasant and would seem suspicious, because during his five years of service, Gregor had never been sick. The owner, of course, would bring a doctor from the health insurance fund and begin to reproach the parents for being a lazy son, deflecting any objections by citing this doctor, in whose opinion all people in the world are completely healthy and just don’t like to work. And would he be so wrong in this case? Apart from the drowsiness, which was really strange after such a long sleep, Gregor actually felt great and was even damn hungry.

While he was thinking about all this, not daring to leave his bed—the alarm clock had just struck a quarter to seven—there was a gentle knock on the door at his head.

“Gregor,” he heard (it was his mother), “it’s already a quarter to seven.” Weren't you planning to leave?

This gentle voice! Gregor was frightened when he heard the answering sounds of his own voice, to which, although it was undoubtedly his former voice, some kind of latent, but stubborn painful squeak was mixed in, which is why the words only sounded clearly at first, and then were distorted by the echo so much that it was impossible to say with certainty whether you had heard correctly. Gregor wanted to answer in detail and explain everything, but due to these circumstances he only said:

- Yes, yes, thank you, mom, I’m already getting up.

Those outside, thanks to the wooden door, apparently did not notice how his voice had changed, because after these words the mother calmed down and shuffled away. But this short conversation drew the attention of the rest of the family to the fact that Gregor, contrary to expectation, was still at home, and now his father was knocking on one of the side doors - weakly, but with his fist.

- Gregor! Gregor! - he shouted. - What's the matter?

And after a few moments he called again, lowering his voice:

- Gregor! Gregor!

And behind the other side door the sister spoke quietly and pitifully:

- Gregor! Are you feeling unwell? Can I help you with anything?

Answering everyone together: “I’m ready,” Gregor tried, with careful pronunciation and long pauses between words, to deprive his voice of any unusualness. The father actually returned to his breakfast, but the sister continued to whisper:

– Gregor, open, I beg you.

However, Gregor did not even think of opening it; he blessed the habit he had acquired while traveling and at home, prudently locking all the doors at night.

He first wanted to get up calmly and without interruption, get dressed and, first of all, have breakfast, and then think about the future, because - it became clear to him - in bed he would not have thought of anything worthwhile. He remembered that more than once, while lying in bed, he had felt some kind of slight pain, perhaps caused by an uncomfortable position, which, as soon as he got up, turned out to be a pure play of the imagination, and he was curious how his current confusion would dissipate. That the change in voice was merely a harbinger of the traveling salesman’s professional illness—a severe cold—he had no doubt about that.

Throwing off the blanket was easy; It was enough to inflate the stomach a little, and it fell by itself. But things got worse from there, mainly because it was so wide. He needed arms to get up; but instead he had many legs that did not stop moving randomly and which he also could not control. If he wanted to bend any leg, it first stretched out; and if he finally managed to accomplish with this leg what he had in mind, then the others, as if having broken free, came into the most painful excitement. “Just don’t stay in bed unnecessarily,” Gregor told himself.

His father went bankrupt and spent most of his time at home, looking through newspapers. The mother suffered from attacks of suffocation, and she spent long hours in a chair by the window. Gregor also had a younger sister, Greta, whom he loved very much. Greta played the violin well, and Gregor’s cherished dream - after he managed to cover his father’s debts - was to help her enter the conservatory, where she could study music professionally. After serving in the army, Gregor got a job at a trading company and was soon promoted from a minor employee to a traveling salesman. He worked with great diligence, although the place was ungrateful. I had to spend most of my time on business trips, get up at dawn and go to the train with a heavy suitcase full of samples of cloth. The owner of the company was stingy, but Gregor was disciplined, diligent and hardworking. Besides, he never complained. Sometimes he was more lucky, sometimes less. One way or another, his earnings were enough to rent a spacious apartment for his family, where he occupied a separate room.

After his injury, Gregor's health worsened. Gradually, the sister stopped cleaning his house - everything was overgrown with cobwebs and a sticky substance oozing from his paws. Guilty of nothing, but rejected with disgust by those closest to him, suffering from shame more than from hunger and wounds, he withdrew into miserable loneliness, going over his entire past simple life on sleepless nights. In the evenings, the family gathered in the living room, where everyone drank tea or talked. Gregor was “it” for them - every time the family closed the door of his room tightly, trying not to remember his oppressive presence.

One evening he heard that his sister was playing the violin for three new tenants - they were renting rooms for money. Attracted by the music, Gregor ventured a little further than usual. Because of the dust lying everywhere in his room, he himself was completely covered with it, “on his back and sides he carried with him threads, hair, remnants of food; His indifference to everything was too great to lie down, as before, several times a day on his back and clean himself on the carpet.” And now this unkempt monster slid across the sparkling floor of the living room. A shameful scandal broke out. Residents indignantly demanded their money back. The mother broke into a coughing fit. The sister concluded that it was impossible to live like this any longer, and the father confirmed that she was “a thousand times right.” Gregor struggled to crawl back into his room. From weakness he was completely clumsy and out of breath. Finding himself in the familiar dusty darkness, he felt that he could not move at all. He almost no longer felt pain, and still thought about his family with tenderness and love.

Early in the morning the maid came and found Gregor lying completely motionless. Soon she joyfully informed the owners: “Look, it’s dead, here it lies, completely, completely dead!”

Option 2

One morning Gregor Samsa was horrified to discover that he had been transformed into a huge, ugly centipede. At first it seemed to the young man that this was just a continuation of a nightmare, but everything turned out to be true. The hero is terrified: now, according to the rules, he needs to get out of bed, have breakfast and get ready for the morning train. Gregor works as a traveling salesman, he is hardworking and therefore is in good standing with his superiors. The next thought seemed to paralyze him: who will take care of his mother, father and sister Greta if he remains like this forever? After all, it is thanks to his good salary that they manage to rent a spacious apartment and run a household.

There's a knock on the door. It was his mother who came to find out why he was taking so long to get up. Gregor cannot utter a word, his father and sister join his mother, and soon the boss comes, concerned about his absence. With great difficulty, Gregor manages to crawl out of bed and utter a few words, he tries to assure everyone that he is a little unwell, but very soon everything will return to normal. Silence reigned outside the door, people were horrified by the sound they heard. Gregor manages to open the door and everyone present lets out a scream of horror. He tries to explain something to them, even intends to pursue the fleeing boss, but his father kicks him into the room.

Thus began Gregor's new life. He sat in his room all day long, completely alone, only Greta came to him to clean up the mess and put out a bowl of food. This food was alien to the centipede, he wasted away and weakened, but continued to worry about his family, hoping that this nightmare would end and one day he would wake up again as an ordinary traveling salesman. His mother and father could not see him in this state, and Greta began to visit him less and less. One day, together with his mother, he took out all the furniture from his room so that he would have more space, but this only saddened Gregor: the last grains of his usual life were taken away from him.

Several months passed, and his room turned into a dirty room, where a barely alive, dirty centipede slowly moved along the shabby walls. Gregor heard the music and realized that it was Greta playing the violin for the guests. Gathering his last strength, he moved to the door and crawled to the living room. There was a bright light there, the family was drinking tea and laughing. The mother turned and saw Gregor at the door, followed by a terrible commotion, screams and cursing. Everyone agreed that it was impossible to live like this any longer.

They forgot about Gregor. A couple of weeks later, a maid came into the room and saw his dried body on the dirty floor. She happily informed the family about the death of this monster. Everyone remained indifferent to this news, and Gregor’s body, along with the rest of the trash, immediately went into the trash can.

Mother, father and Greta went for a walk for the first time in a long time. There they discussed their future life and they had the most rosy plans for it. It was also noted that Greta had become an extraordinary beauty. And this despite everything that their family has had to go through recently. But, words to God, everything was resolved successfully!

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Summary of Transformation Kafka

Vladimir Nabokov, in his critical article “The Metamorphosis” of Franz Kafka, noted: “If Kafka’s Metamorphosis seems to someone to be more than an entomological fantasy, I congratulate him on joining the ranks of good and excellent readers.” . This work certainly deserves its status as one of the greatest literary creations and represents an example of the author's amazing imagination.

Death

One night, the residents invite Greta to play the violin in their room. Gregor, delighted with the game, crawls right into the middle of the room, inadvertently catching the eyes of the audience. First confused and then horrified, the tenants announce that they intend to move out the next day without paying rent. After they leave, the family confers about what to do next. Greta insists that Gregor must be gotten rid of at any cost. Our hero, who at that moment is still lying in the center of the room, returns to his bedroom. Hungry, tired and upset, he dies early the next morning.

A few hours later, the cleaning lady discovers Gregor's corpse and announces his death to the family. After the tenants leave, the family decides to take a day off and go to the village. This is how Franz Kafka ends the story “Metamorphosis”. You just read a summary of it.

Genre - magical realism, modernism

This work, published in 1915, was written in 1912 by Franz Kafka. "Metamorphosis", a summary of which you just read, belongs to the genre of modernist literature. The fate of Gregor, a lonely traveling salesman, expresses the general modernist concern with the alienation effect that appears in modern society. As with other works in this genre, it uses the "stream of consciousness" technique to depict the complex psychology of the main character. The story "Metamorphosis" is a book (Kafka F.), which is also considered modern with its comparison of fantastic incidents with reality.

Time and place

It is impossible to say exactly where and when the events of the story take place (Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”). The summary does not answer the question of the exact time and place of the action, just as the work itself does not answer it. The narrative does not point to a specific geographic location or specific date. With the exception of the final scene, when the Samses go out of town, all the action takes place in their apartment. This apartment overlooks the busy streets of the city and the hospital across the street, located near Gregor's bedroom window. Apparently, the apartment is located in the city center. She herself is quite modest.

Sandwiched between his parents' and Greta's rooms, Gregor's room is adjacent to the living room. By limiting the space of the story to an apartment, the author emphasizes the isolation of the protagonist, his alienation from society.

Gregor's character: analysis. ("Metamorphosis", Kafka)

Let's take a look at two ordinary young people. None of them stands out for their special intelligence, beauty or wealth. One might even say that they are somewhat cowardly. So they both wake up one day and suddenly realize that they have the abilities of insects...

One of them becomes a superhero (Spider-Man). Defeats the bad guys. Wins a girl. Easily climbs skyscrapers in his signature suit, causing the admiration of those around him.

What is the other person about whom the story (F. Kafka, “Metamorphosis”), a summary of which you just read, tells? He remains walled up in the room and feeds on garbage. His family ignores Gregor, if not outright hostility. Dirty, covered in garbage and scraps, he dies of loneliness. This is how the hero of the story “The Metamorphosis” (Kafka) ends his life ingloriously. Reviews of this story are very mixed...

Gregor's transformation is so involuntary and grotesque that one involuntarily wants to turn to the past when trying to answer the question of what led to the fact that an ordinary guy ended his life so ingloriously, having experienced such a transformation. Kafka, reviews of whose works have always been very ambiguous, and this time does not give a clear answer about the reasons for such a sharp turn of events in the life of his hero, leaving critics with wide scope for hypotheses. A job you don't like, the need to support your family, dissatisfaction in your personal life - all this, of course, is very unpleasant, but not so much that such a situation can be called unbearable. Common problems for an ordinary person, right? Even Gregor's attitude towards his transformation confirms this. Instead of thinking about his new position, the hero is concerned about not being late for work. This is especially emphasized by Franz Kafka ("Metamorphosis"). See the summary of the work above.

New opportunities

But ironically, Gregor's mediocrity, which also manifests itself in relation to this situation, does not prevent him from discovering some of the abilities of his new body. The fantastic situation, which has become a new reality for him, prompts Gregor to reflect on his existence in a way that he would never think about while being involved in the routine of everyday affairs.

Of course, at first this situation causes him nothing but disgust, but gradually, mastering new skills and abilities, the hero begins to experience pleasure, joy, even the experience of contemplative emptiness, which refers to Zen philosophy. Even when Gregor is tormented by anxiety, natural insects bring him some relief. Before he dies, he feels love for his family. Now the hero is completely different from who he was before - the dissatisfied life of a traveling salesman, as we see Gregor at the beginning of the story. Despite his outward pitiful state, he seems more humane and humane than the other heroes of the story.

The final

Let us not, however, embellish his fate. Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis" ends with Gregor dying in the form of an insect, covered in garbage. He wasn't even given a proper burial. The gloomy fate of the hero, its analysis (Kafka wrote “Metamorphosis” in such a way that any reader involuntarily thinks about the fate of Gregor) reveal both the advantages of an unusual life and the hardships that those who are different from others and for one reason or another are forced to give up from a full life in society.

There was silence outside the door. No one understood a word of his monologue. Then the manager said quietly, “It was the voice of an animal.” The sister and the maid ran after the locksmith in tears. However, Gregor himself managed to turn the key in the lock, grabbing it with his strong jaws. And then he appeared before the eyes of those crowding at the door, leaning against its frame.

After this terrible first morning for Gregor there came a humiliated -

the monotonous life of captivity, which he slowly got used to. He gradually adapted to his ugly and clumsy body, to his thin tentacle legs. He discovered that he could crawl along the walls and ceiling, and even liked to hang there for a long time. While in this terrible new guise, Gregor remained the same as he was - a loving son and brother, experiencing all family worries and suffering because he brought so much grief into the lives of his loved ones. From his captivity, he silently eavesdropped on the conversations of his relatives. He was tormented by shame and despair, since now the family found itself without funds and the old father, sick mother and young sister had to think about earning money. He painfully felt the disgust that those closest to him felt towards him. For the first two weeks, mother and father could not bring themselves to enter his room. Only Greta, overcoming her fear, came here to quickly clean up or put down a bowl of food. However, Gregor was less and less satisfied with ordinary food, and he often left his plates untouched, although he was tormented by hunger. He understood that the sight of him was unbearable for his sister, and therefore he tried to hide under the sofa behind a sheet when she came to clean up.

One evening he heard that his sister was playing the violin for three new tenants - they were renting rooms for the sake of money. Attracted by the music, Gregor ventured a little further than usual. Because of the dust lying everywhere in his room, he himself was completely covered with it, “on his back and sides he carried with him threads, hair, remnants of food; His indifference to everything was too great to lie down, as before, several times a day on his back and clean himself on the carpet.” And now this unkempt monster slid across the sparkling floor of the living room. A shameful scandal broke out. Residents indignantly demanded their money back. The mother broke into a coughing fit. The sister concluded that it was impossible to live like this any longer, and the father confirmed that she was “a thousand times right.” Gregor struggled to crawl back into his room. From weakness he was completely clumsy and out of breath. Finding himself in the familiar dusty darkness, he felt that he could not move at all. He almost no longer felt pain, and still thought about his family with tenderness and love.

Early in the morning the maid came and found Gregor lying completely motionless. Soon she joyfully informed the owners: “Look, it’s dead, here it lies, completely, completely dead!”

Retelling - V. L. Sagalova

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