the coffeepot on the breakfast table so that it pours over the rug. ” ‘Mother, Mother,’ said
Gregor in a low voice, and looked up at her. The chief clerk, for the moment, had quite
slipped from his mind; instead, he could not resist snapping his jaws together at the sight
of the streaming coffee. That made his mother scream again.” Gregor, looking now for
the chief clerk, “made a spring, to be as sure as possible of overtaking him; the chief clerk
must have divined his intention, for he leaped down several steps and vanished; he was
still yelling ‘Ugh!’ and it echoed through the whole staircase.”
Scene VII: The father brutally drives Gregor back into his room, stamping his feet and
flourishing a stick in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Gregor has difficulty getting
through the partly opened door, but forced by his father he tries until he gets stuck. “One
side of his body rose up, he was tilted at an angle in the doorway, his flank was quite
bruised, horrid blotches stained the white door, soon he was stuck fast and, left to
himself, could not have moved at all, his legs on one side fluttered trembling in the air,
those on the other were crushed painfully to the floor—when from behind his father gave
him a strong push which was literally a deliverance and he flew far into the room,
bleeding freely. The father caught at the handle of the door with the stick and slammed it
behind him, and then at last there was silence.”
PART TWO
Scene I: The first attempt is made to feed coleopteron Gregor. Under the impression that
his condition is some kind of foul but not hopeless illness that may pass with time, he is
placed at first on the diet of a sick human being and he finds that a human meal of milk
has been offered to him. We are always aware of those doors, doors opening and closing
stealthily in the dusk. From the kitchen, across the hallway, to the hallway door of
Gregor’s room light footsteps had come, his sister’s, awakening him from sleep, and he
discovers that a basin with milk has been placed within his room. One of his little legs
has been damaged in the collision with his father; it will grow better, but in this scene he
limps and trails it uselessly behind him. He is a big beetle as beetles go, but he is smaller
and more brittle than a human being. Gregor makes for the milk. Alas, while his still
human mind eagerly accepts the notion of that sweetish sop, with soft white bread in the
milk, his beetle stomach and beetle taste buds refuse a mammal’s meal. Although he is
very hungry the milk is repulsive to him and he crawls back to the middle of the room.
Scene II: The door theme continues and the duration theme settles in. We shall begin to
witness Gregor’s usual day and dusk during this fantastic winter of 1912, and his
discovery of the security of the couch. But let us look and listen with Gregor through the
crack of the parlor door on the left. His father used to read aloud the newspapers to his
wife and daughter. True, this has now been interrupted and the flat is silent though not
empty of occupants, but on the whole the family is getting used to the situation. Here is
the son and brother plunged into a monstrous change that should have sent them scuttling
out into the streets for help with shrieks and tears, in wild compassion—but here they are,
the three philistines, cosily taking it in their stride.
I don’t know if you read a couple of years ago in the papers about that teenage girl and
boy who murdered the girl’s mother. It starts with a very Kafkaesque scene: the girl’s
mother has come home and found her daughter and the boy in the bedroom, and the boy
has hit the mother with a hammer—several times—and dragged her away. But the
woman is still thrashing and groaning in the kitchen, and the boy says to his sweetheart,