complete agreement, having come to the conclusion that it would soon be time to find a
good husband for her. And it was like a confirmation of their new dreams and excellent
intentions that at the end of their journey their daughter sprang to her feet first and
stretched her young body.”*
* “The soul has died with Gregor; the healthy young animal takes over. The parasites have fattened
themselves on Gregor.” Nabokov’s note in his annotated copy.
Let me sum up various of the main themes of the story.
1. The number three plays a considerable role in the story. The story is divided into three
parts. There are three doors to Gregor’s room. His family consists of three people. Three
servants appear in the course of the story. Three lodgers have three beards. Three Samsas
write three letters. I am very careful not to overwork the significance of symbols, for
once you detach a symbol from the artistic core of the book, you lose all sense of
enjoyment. The reason is that there are artistic symbols and there are trite, artificial. or
even imbecile symbols. You will find a number of such inept symbols in the
psychoanalytic and mythological approach to Kafka’s work, in the fashionable mixture of
sex and myth that is so appealing to mediocre minds. In other words, symbols may be
original and symbols may be stupid and trite. And the abstract symbolic value of an
artistic achievement should never prevail over its beautiful burning life.
So, the only emblematic or heraldic rather than symbolic meaning is the stress which is
laid upon three in “The Metamorphosis.” It has really a technical meaning. The trinity,
the triplet, the triad, the triptych are obvious art forms such as, say, three pictures of
youth, ripe years, and old age, or any other threefold triplex subject. Triptych means a
picture or carving in three compartments side by side, and this is exactly the effect that
Kafka achieves, for instance, with his three rooms in the beginning of the story—living
room, Gregor’s bedroom, and sister’s room, with Gregor in the central one. Moreover, a
threefold pattern suggests the three acts of a play. And finally it must be observed that
Kafka’s fantasy is emphatically logical; what can be more characteristic of logic than the
triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. We shall, thus, limit the Kafka symbol of three to
its aesthetic and logical significance and completely disregard whatever myths the sexual
mythologists read into it under the direction of the Viennese witch doctor.
2. Another thematic line is the theme of the doors, of the opening and closing of doors
that runs through the whole story.
3. A third thematic line concerns the ups and downs in the well-being of the Samsa
family, the subtle state of balance between their flourishing condition and Gregor’s
desperate and pathetic condition.
There are a few other subthemes but the above are the only ones essential for an
understanding of the story.
You will mark Kafka’s style. Its clarity, its precise and formal intonation in such striking
contrast to the nightmare matter of his tale. No poetical metaphors ornament his stark
black-and-white story. The limpidity of his style stresses the dark richness of his fantasy.
Contrast and unity, style and matter, manner and plot are most perfectly integrated.