Gregor Samsa

As Gregor Samsa aroused one forenoon from uneasy dreams he found himself changed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he hoisted his head a little he could glimpse his domelike brown belly split up into rigid arched segments on peak of which the bed quilt could hardly stay in location and was about to skid off completely. His many legs, which were pitifully slim compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes….

First of all he liked to get up calmly, without any exhilaration; get clothed; and, the major thing, have breakfast, and only then believe about what to do next, for he glimpsed clearly that in bed he would not ever think things through to a reasonable conclusion. He remembered how even in the past he had often sensed some kind of minor agony, probably initiated by lying in an painful place, which, when he got up, turned out to be solely invented, and he was keen to glimpse how today's fantasy would gradually fade away. Thead covering the change in his voice was not anything more than the first signal of a awful freezing, an occupational ailment of the traveling salesman, he had no question in the smallest.

It was very very simple to hurl off the cover; all he had to do was puff himself up a little, and it dropped off by itself. But after this, things got tough, particularly since he was so oddly broad. He would have required hands and arms to lift himself up, but instead of that he had only his numerous little legs, which were in every distinct kind of perpetual motion and which, in addition to, he could not control. If he liked to angle one, the first thing that happened was that it stretched itself out; and if he finally did well in getting this leg to do what he wanted, all the other ones in the meantime, as if set free, began to work in the most intensely sore agitation. “Just don't stay in bed being useless,” Gregor said to himself.

First he tried to get out of bed with the smaller part of his body, but this smaller part—which by the way he had not glimpsed yet and which he could not form a clear image of—proved too tough to budge; it was taking so long; and when finally, almost out of his brain, he lunged ahead with all his force, without nurturing, he had picked the incorrect direction and banged himself violently against the smaller bedpost, and the searing pain he sensed educated him precisely the smaller part of his body was, for the instant anyway, the most sensitive.

He therefore endeavoured to get the top part of his body out of bed first and warily turned his head in the direction of the brim of the bed. This worked easily, and in spite of its width and heaviness, the mass of ...