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. He lay on his
armour-hard back and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown, arched
abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections. From this height the blanket,
just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place. His
numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his circumference,
flickered helplessly before his eyes.
“What’s happened to me,” he thought. It was no dream. His room, a proper room
for a human being, only somewhat too small, lay quietly between the four
well-known walls. Above the table, on which an unpacked collection of sample
cloth goods was spread out—Samsa was a travelling salesman—hung
the picture which he had cut out of an illustrated magazine a little while ago
and set in a pretty gilt frame. It was a picture of a woman with a fur hat and a
fur boa. She sat erect there, lifting up in the direction of the viewer a solid
fur muff into which her entire forearm had disappeared.
Gregor’s glance then turned to the window. The dreary weather—the rain
drops were falling audibly down on the metal window ledge—made him quite
melancholy. “Why don’t I keep sleeping for a little while longer and forget all
this foolishness,” he thought. But this was entirely impractical, for he was
used to sleeping on his right side, and in his present state he could not get
himself into this position. No matter how hard he threw himself onto his right
side, he always rolled onto his back again. He must have tried it a hundred
times, closing his eyes so that he would not have to see the wriggling legs, and
gave up only when he began to feel a light, dull pain in his side which he had
never felt before.
“O God,” he thought, “what a demanding job I’ve chosen! Day in, day out, on the
road. The stresses of selling are much greater than the work going on at head
office, and, in addition to that, I have to cope with the problems of
travelling, the worries about train connections, irregular bad food, temporary
and constantly changing human relationships, which never come from the heart. To
hell with it all!” He felt a slight itching on the top of his abdomen. He slowly
pushed himself on his back closer to the bed post so that he could lift his head
more easily, found the itchy part, which was entirely covered with small white
spots—he did not know what to make of them and wanted to feel the place with a
leg. But he retracted it immediately, for the contact felt like a cold shower
all over him.
He slid back again into his earlier position. “This getting up early,” he
thought, “makes a man quite idiotic. A man must have his sleep. Other travelling
salesmen live like harem women. For instance, when I come back to the inn during
the course of the morning to write up the necessary orders, these gentlemen are
just sitting down to breakfast. If I were to try that with my boss, I’d be
thrown out on the spot. Still, who knows whether that mightn’t be really good
for me? If I didn’t hold back for my parents’ sake, I’d have quit ages ago. I
would’ve gone to the boss and told him just what I think from the bottom of my
heart. He would’ve fallen right off his desk! How weird it is to sit up at that
desk and talk down to the employee from way up there. The boss has trouble
hearing, so the employee has to step up quite close to him. Anyway, I haven’t
completely given up that hope yet. Once I’ve got together the money to pay off
my parents’ debt to him—that should take another five or six years—I’ll do it
for sure. Then I’ll make the big break. In any case, right now I have to get up.
My train leaves at five o’clock.”
He looked over at the alarm clock ticking away by the chest of drawers. “Good
God!” he thought. It was half past six, and the hands were going quietly on. It
was past the half hour, already nearly quarter to. Could the alarm have failed
to ring? One saw from the bed that it was properly set for four o’clock.
Certainly it had rung. Yes, but was it possible to sleep through that noise
which made the furniture shake? Now, it is true he had not slept quietly, but
evidently he had slept all the more deeply. Still, what should he do now? The
next train left at seven o’clock. To catch that one, he would have to go in a
mad rush. The sample collection was not packed up yet, and he really did not
feel particularly fresh and active. And even if he caught the train, there was
no avoiding a blow-up with the boss, because the firm’s errand boy would have
waited for the five o’clock train and reported the news of his absence long ago.
He was the boss’s minion, without backbone or intelligence. Well then, what if
he reported in sick? But that would be extremely embarrassing and suspicious,
because during his five years’ service Gregor had not been sick even once. The
boss would certainly come with the doctor from the health insurance company and
would reproach his parents for their lazy son and cut short all objections with
the insurance doctor’s comments; for him everyone was completely healthy but
really lazy about work. And besides, would the doctor in this case be totally
wrong? Apart from a really excessive drowsiness after the long sleep, Gregor in
fact felt quite well and even had a really strong appetite.
As he was thinking all this over in the greatest haste, without being able to
make the decision to get out of bed—the alarm clock was indicating exactly
quarter to seven—there was a cautious knock on the door by the head of the bed.
“Gregor,” a voice called—it was his mother!—“it’s quarter to
seven. Don’t you want to be on your way?” The soft voice! Gregor was startled
when he heard his voice answering. It was clearly and unmistakably his earlier
voice, but in it was intermingled, as if from below, an irrepressibly painful
squeaking, which left the words positively distinct only in the first moment and
distorted them in the reverberation, so that one did not know if one had heard
correctly. Gregor wanted to answer in detail and explain everything, but in
these circumstances he confined himself to saying, “Yes, yes, thank you mother.
I’m getting up right away.” Because of the wooden door the change in Gregor’s
voice was not really noticeable outside, so his mother calmed down with this
explanation and shuffled off. However, as a result of the short conversation,
the other family members became aware that Gregor was unexpectedly still at
home, and already his father was knocking on one side door, weakly but with his
fist. “Gregor, Gregor,” he called out, “what’s going on?” And, after a short
while, he urged him on again in a deeper voice: “Gregor! Gregor!” At the other
side door, however, his sister knocked lightly. “Gregor? Are you all right? Do
you need anything?” Gregor directed answers in both directions, “I’ll be ready
right away.” He made an effort with the most careful articulation and inserted
long pauses between the individual words to remove everything remarkable from
his voice. His father turned back to his breakfast. However, the sister
whispered, “Gregor, open the door—I beg you.” Gregor had no intention of opening
the door, but congratulated himself on his precaution, acquired from travelling,
of locking all doors during the night, even at home.
First he wanted to stand up quietly and undisturbed, get dressed, above all have breakfast, and only then consider further action, for—he noticed this clearly—by thinking things over in bed he would not reach a reasonable conclusion. He remembered that he had already often felt some light pain or other in bed, perhaps the result of an awkward lying position, which later turned out to be purely imaginary when he stood up, and he was eager to see how his present fantasies would gradually dissipate. That the change in his voice was nothing other than the onset of a real chill, an occupational illness of commercial travellers, of that he had not the slightest doub
It was very easy to throw aside the blanket. He needed only to push himself up a
little, and it fell by itself. But to continue was difficult, particularly
because he was so unusually wide. He needed arms and hands to push himself
upright. Instead of these, however, he had only many small limbs which were
incessantly moving with very different motions and which, in addition, he was
unable to control. If he wanted to bend one of them, then it was the first to
extend itself, and if he finally succeeded doing what he wanted with this limb,
in the meantime all the others, as if left free, moved around in an excessively
painful agitation. “But I must not stay in bed uselessly,” said Gregor to
himself.
At first he wanted to get out of bed with the lower part of his body, but this
lower part—which, by the way, he had not yet looked at and which he
also could not picture clearly—proved itself too difficult to move. The
attempt went so slowly. When, having become almost frantic, he finally hurled
himself forward with all his force and without thinking, he chose his direction
incorrectly, and he hit the lower bedpost hard. The violent pain he felt
revealed to him that the lower part of his body was at the moment probably the
most sensitive.