Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from restless dreams and found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as if armored, backwards and when he raised his head a little, he could see his brown belly like a dome divided into rigid arched segments on which the bedspread could barely stay in position and was just underfoot. about to slip completely. His many legs, which were woefully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, flailed helplessly before his eyes. "With his startling, bizarre, but surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, a stranger in his own home, a man essentially alienated. Heartbreaking, yet 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 WH Auden wrote: "Kafka is important to us because his situation is the situation of modern man.
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