The Metamorphosis

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Kafka’s work often deals with systems of authority and power that have a bewildering effect on his characters, and The Metamorphosis is no different. What systems have power over you, and what options would you have if they turned against you?

Teaching Suggestion: Even students with no prior reading of Kafka’s work might have heard the term Kafkaesque; this question opens discussion on that idea. Getting readers to think about the various governmental, economic, and social structures that have a presence in their lives will help them to grapple with the novella’s themes of The Effects of Social Alienation and Work as a Dehumanizing Force.

• The New York Times article “The Essence of ‘Kafkaesque’” by Ivana Edwards contains a thorough and lucid explication of Kafka’s outsize influence on our understanding of modern life, which has only grown in the interim between this article’s writing and the present day. (Subscription may be required.)

2. Gregor Samsa’s changed body leads to a series of catastrophes for him that are absurd in their scope and tenor but grounded in real anxieties about health, the body, and our ability to be productive members of family and society. How do you rely on your body? How do you take it for granted? In what ways is bodily autonomy an invisible force in your life?

Teaching Suggestion: Students may be interested in thinking about the novella as a metaphor for the body, with Gregor Samsa’s transformation representing mental, chronic, or terminal illness. Grounding students in the precarity of health may open them up to this metaphorical idea and how it helps in establishing the themes of The Effects of Social Alienation and Family Duty and Guilt.

• The panel transcript “Writing the Body: Trauma, Illness, Sexuality, and Beyond” from LitHub provides several different angles on writing about the body from a selection of America’s most prominent authors on the subject that could be quoted and adapted as suggestions to students (Note: This link would be inappropriate for direct sharing with students due to expletives as well as frank discussion surrounding sex). Many of their discussion points can be applied to Kafka’s work and his presentation of the body as an object of shame and guilt.