enough Gregor, though a very sick beetle—the apple wound is festering, and he is
starving—finds some beetle pleasure in crawling among all that dusty rubbish. In this
fifth scene of part three where all the changes come, the alteration in the family meals is
depicted. The mechanical movement of the bearded automatons is matched by the
automatic reaction of the Samsas. The lodgers “set themselves at the top end of the table
where formerly Gregor and his father and mother had eaten their meals, unfolded their
napkins and took knife and fork in hand. At once his mother appeared in the other
doorway with a dish of meat and close behind her his sister with a dish of potatoes piled
high. The food steamed with a thick vapor. The lodgers bent over the food set before
them as if to scrutinize it before eating, in fact the man in the middle, who seemed to pass
for an authority with the other two, cut a piece of meat as it lay on the dish, obviously to
discover if it were tender or should be sent back to the kitchen. He showed satisfaction,
and Gregor’s mother and sister, who had been watching anxiously, breathed freely and
began to smile.” Gregor’s keen envious interest in large feet will be recalled; now
toothless Gregor is also interested in teeth. “It seemed remarkable to Gregor that among
the various noises coming from the table he could always distinguish the sound of their
masticating teeth, as if this were a sign to Gregor that one needed teeth in order to eat,
and that with toothless jaws even of the finest make one could do nothing. ‘I’m hungry
enough,’ said Gregor sadly to himself, ‘but not for that kind of food. How these lodgers
are stuffing themselves, and here am I dying of starvation!’ ”
Scene VI: In this great music scene the lodgers have heard Grete playing the violin in
the kitchen, and in automatic reaction to the entertainment value of music they suggest
that she play for them. The three roomers and the three Samsas gather in the living room.
Without wishing to antagonize lovers of music, I do wish to point out that taken in a
general sense music, as perceived by its consumers, belongs to a more primitive, more
animal form in the scale of arts than literature or painting. I am taking music as a whole,
not in terms of individual creation, imagination, and composition, all of which of course
rival the art of literature and painting, but in terms of the impact music has on the average
listener. A great composer, a great writer, a great painter are brothers. But I think that the
impact music in a generalized and primitive form has on the listener is of a more lowly
quality than the impact of an average book or an average picture. What I especially have
in mind is the soothing, lulling, dulling influence of music on some people such as of the
radio or records.
In Kafka’s tale it is merely a girl pitifully scraping on a fiddle and this corresponds in the
piece to the canned music or plugged- in music of today. What Kafka felt about music in
general is what I have just described: its stupefying, numbing, animallike quality. This
attitude must be kept in mind in interpreting an important sentence that has been
misunderstood by some translators. Literally, it reads “Was Gregor an animal to be so
affected by music?” That is, in his human form he had cared little for it but in this scene,
in his beetlehood, he succumbs: “He felt as if the way were opening before him to the
unknown nourishment he craved.” The scene goes as follows. Gregor’s sister begins to
play for the lodgers. Gregor is attracted by the playing and actually puts his head into the
living room. “He felt hardly any surprise at his growing lack of consideration for the
others; there had been a time when he prided himself on being considerate. And yet just
on this occasion he had more reason than ever to hide himself since owing to the amount
of dust which lay thick in his room and rose into the air at the slightest movement he too