breakfast but instead are shown Gregor’s corpse. “So they entered and stood around it,
with their hands in the pockets of the ir shabby coats, in the middle of the room already
bright with sunlight.” What is the key word here? Shabby in the sun. As in a fairy tale, in
the happy end of a fairy tale, the evil charm is dissipated with the magician’s death. The
lodgers are seen to be seedy, they are no longer dangerous, whereas on the other hand the
Samsa family ascends again, gains in power and lush vitality. The scene ends with a
repetition of the staircase theme, just as the chief clerk had retreated in slow motion,
clasping the banisters. At the orders of Mr. Samsa that they must leave the lodgers are
quelled. “In the hall they all three took their hats from the rack, their sticks from the
umbrella stand, bowed in silence and quitted the apartment.” Down they go now, three
bearded borders, automatons, clockwork puppets, while the Samsa family leans over the
banisters to watch them descend. The staircase as it winds down through the apartment
house imitates, as it were, an insect’s jointed legs; and the lodgers now disappear, now
come to view again, as they descend lower and lower, from landing to landing, from
articulation to articulation. At one point they are met by an ascending butcher boy with
his basket who is first seen rising towards them, then above them, in proud deportment
with his basket full of red steaks and luscious innards—red raw meat, the breeding place
of fat shiny flies.
Scene X: The last scene is superb in its ironic simplicity. The spring sunshine is with the
Samsa family as they write their three letters—articulation, jointed legs, happy legs, three
insects writing three letters of excuse to their employers. “They decided to spend this day
in resting and going for a stroll; they had not only deserved such a respite from work, but
absolutely needed it.” As the charwoman leaves after her morning’s work, she giggles
amiably as she informs the family: ” ‘you don’t need to bother about how to get rid of the
thing next door. It’s been seen to already.’ Mrs. Samsa and Grete bent over their letters
again, as if preoccupied; Mr. Samsa, who perceived that she was eager to begin
describing it all in detail, stopped her with a decisive hand. . .
” ‘She’ll be given notice tonight,’ said Mr. Samsa, but neither from his wife nor his
daughter did he get any answer, for the charwoman seemed to have shattered again the
composure they had barely achieved. They rose, went to the window and stayed there,
clasping each other tight. Mr. Samsa turned in his chair to look at them and quietly
observed them for a little. Then he called out: ‘Come along, now, do. Let bygones be
bygones. And you might have some consideration for me.’ The two of them complied at
once, hastened to him, caressed him and quickly finished their letters.
”Then they all three left the apartment together, which was more than they had done for
months, and went by trolley into the open country outside the town. The trolley, in which
they were the only passengers, was filled with warm sunshine. Leaning comfortably back
in their seats they canvassed their prospects for the future, and it appeared on closer
inspection that these were not at all bad, for the jobs they had got, which so far they had
never really discussed with each other, were all three admirable and likely to lead to
better things later on. The greatest immediate improvement in their condition would of
course arise from moving to another house; they wanted to take a smaller and cheaper but
also better situated and more easily run apartment than the one they had, which Gregor
had selected. While they were thus conversing, it struck both Mr. and Mrs. Samsa, almost
at the same moment, as they became aware of their daughter’s increasing vivacity, that in
spite of all the sorrow of recent times, which had made her cheeks pale, she had bloomed
into a buxom girl. They grew quieter and half unconsciously exchanged glances of