Gregor. ” ‘I won’t utter my brother’s name in the presence of this creature, and so all I say
is: we must try to get rid of it….
” ‘We must try to get rid of it,’ his sister now said explicitly to her father, since her mother
was coughing too much to hear a word. ‘It will be the death of both of you, I can see that
coming. When one has to work as hard as we do, all of us, one can’t stand this continual
torment at home on top of it. At least I can’t stand it any longer.’ And she burst into such a
passion of sobbing that her tears dropped on her mother’s face, where she wiped them off
mechanically.” Both the father and sister agree that Gregor cannot understand them and
hence no agreement with him is possible.
” ‘He must go,’ cried Gregor’s sister, ‘that’s the only solution, Father. You must just try to
get rid of the idea that this is Gregor. The fact that we’ve believed it for so long is the root
of all our trouble. But how can it be Gregor? If this were Gregor, he would have realized
long ago that human beings can’t live with such a creature and he’d have gone away on
his own accord. Then we wouldn’t have any brother, but we’d be able to go on living and
keep his memory in honor. As it is, this creature persecutes us, drives away our lodgers,
obviously wants the whole apartment to himself and wo uld have us all sleep in the
gutter.’ ”
That he has disappeared as a human brother and should now disappear as a beetle deals
Gregor the last blow. Painfully, because he is so weak and maimed, he crawls back to his
own room. At the doorway he turns and his last glance falls on his mother, who was, in
fact, almost asleep. “Hardly was he well inside his room when the door was hastily
pushed shut, bolted and locked. The sudden noise in his rear startled him so much that his
little legs gave beneath him. It was his sister who had shown such haste. She had been
standing ready waiting and had made a light spring forward. Gregor had not even heard
her coming, and she cried ‘At last!’ to her parents as she turned the key in the lock.” In his
darkened room Gregor discovers that he cannot move and though he is in pain it seems to
be passing away. ”The rotting apple in his back and the inflamed area around it, all
covered with soft dust, already hardly troubled him. He thought of his family with
tenderness and love. The decision that he must disappear was one that he held to even
more strongly than his sister, if that were possible. In this state of vacant and peaceful
meditation he remained until the tower clock struck three in the morning. The first
broadening of light in the world outside the window entered his consciousness once
more. Then his head sank to the floor of its own accord and from his nostrils came the
last faint flicker of his breath.”
Scene VIII: Gregor’s dead, dry body is discovered the next morning by the charwoman
and a great warm sense of relief permeates the insect world of his despicable family. Here
is a point to be observed with care and love. Gregor is a human being in an insect’s
disguise; his family are insects disguised as people. With Gregor’s death their insect souls
are suddenly aware that they are free to enjoy themselves. ” ‘Come in beside us, Grete, for
a little while,’ said Mrs. Samsa* with a tremulous smile, and Grete, not without looking
back at the corpse, followed her parents into their bedroom.” The charwoman opens the
window wide and the air has a certain warmth: it is the end of March when insects come
out of hibernation.
* In a note in his annotated copy Nabokov observes that after Gregor’s death it is never “father” and
“mother” but only Mr. and Mrs. Samsa.
Scene IX: We get a wonderful glimpse of the lodgers as they sullenly ask for their