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What are readers saying about Metamorphosis (Bantam Classics)?
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-09-12 03:09:33.
(Language: English)
 
Great book
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-05-28 09:57:38.
(Language: English)
Kafka is a genius.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-10-14 04:10:05.
(Language: English)
nice
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Janell posted a review at 2010-05-30 01:09:13.
(Language: English)
When this book was pitched to me by a friend, I thought of the premise as a bit silly. Strangely enough, Kafka has an amazing ability to draw you in immediately and insist on your emotional investment. Its a short story, almost like a novella but it gets your attention in the first paragraph. I was hooked the entire way.
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-10-07 01:53:15.
(Language: English)
I've said it before but when I die, I wish to have written on my gravestone "no man was more right than Kaftka."
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-05-02 11:46:10.
(Language: English)
A must read classic
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-05-17 02:30:39.
(Language: English)
The nightmarish tale of Gregor Samsa is a darkly comedic take on alienation in highly industrialized and absurdly bureaucratic early 20th Century Europe but also a deeply philosophical rumination on one's own subjective existence itself. Small wonder this short story has been cited as a major influence by nearly every great thinker or writer since it was first published. This collection I believe also includes 'In the Penal Colony', another harrowing allegorical masterpiece from Kafka.
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Sizenando posted a review at 2010-07-10 07:45:58.
(Language: English)
Interesting but overvalued.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-07-23 11:21:30.
(Language: English)
My husbands fav story. xxoocf
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-06-28 10:07:32.
(Language: English)
good stuff.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-05-18 12:04:53.
(Language: English)
Read it while in high school. I had to, the teacher of literature wanted us to.. It's difficult to write a review about it, as it is about every book of modern literature. Every reader gets from it part of the message i think.. if there is any ;) Anyway, read it, and you'll find something you'll like about it, for sure.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-08-01 02:49:12.
(Language: English)
Deliciously neurotic. There's no end to the unreasonable way Gregor's being treated in this story.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-10-14 03:48:57.
(Language: English)
The title story embodies many themes that are still relevant today. It begins with the male character waking up to find himself transformed into an insect! This story follows Gregor Samsa and his family as he learns to deal with his new form and further, his new "being" in society. I would compare this piece, (Metamorphosis,) with "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman dealing, as it does, with mental imbalance. There is certainly an element of autobiography in both texts. In "Metamorphosis" the insect discovers more about his family ties and relationship with the world; readers are invited to reflect upon their own. A perfect text to "dissect" in a reading group and a poignant piece as a whole.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-02-18 09:18:30.
(Language: English)
Kafka is someone that is often talked about as being the greatest writer of his generation. I don't know if he was the best but he was certainly very good.The Metamorphosis is a disturbing work where a man is transformed in his sleep into a giant beetle and forced to live out the remainder of his days hiding in his bedroom a terror to his family.Surprisingly this text is quite funny, the oil black humour showing through at varying times, mainly when Gregor is experiencing his life as a beetle.Kafka really seemed to know what it was like to be in this situation!I would certainly recommend reading it; if you think you know literature and you haven't read this, you don't know squat. Everyone should look at this bleak literary vision.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-02-04 10:19:57.
(Language: English)
Endlessly dissected, ripped apart, its guts laid out on a slab, sewn back together, reconstructed, reinterpreted, misunderstood, misinterpreted, parodied, plagiarized, overanalyzed, and sadly sometimes underappreciated. Kafka’s \The Metamorphosis\ is one of those jumping off points for modern literature, a key touchstone where so many good writers -- Borges, Nabokov, García Márquez – found inspiration in his work and studied it like a textbook on great writing. But what is the metamorphosis? A dark fantasy about a man who wakes up one day to find himself transformed into a vile insect-like creature? Or an absurdist tale of a schizophrenic who believes he’s been turned into a human-sized beetle, terrorizing his family with his decrepit mental state? Kafka left that open for us to decide, even asking his original publisher to remove any imagery involving an insect off the cover. The first edition cover (you can find it on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis) is not a definitive statement on the story either. Is it the afflicted Gregor Samsa we see or his unnerved father fleeing from the sight of the creature in his son’s room? As it was written in German, Kafka never definitively stated what Gregor had become. The term he used, in what has now become one of the more famous opening lines in literature, to describe Gregor’s transformation was “ungeheueres Ungeziefer,” which literally means “unclean animal not suitable for sacrifice.” This has been translated (and mistranslated) as “gigantic insect” in some cases, but in later years, more translators have settled on “monstrous vermin,” as this seems to suit Kafka’s vague intent much better. But if you want to read the numerous theories, Google the book. I’ll leave it to those who are far more and far less philosophical than I. In its construction, \The Metamorphosis\ is flawless. Kafka upends the entire structure of modern storytelling, giving us the climax first, never explaining the possible source for Gregor’s affliction. Instead, Kafka leaves us in the dénouement, showing us the ugly effects of Gregor’s transformation on his too dependent family, who must now care for this unwanted monstrosity. As the tables are turned, the family shuns Gregor, locking him away. We then see Gregor move in two opposing directions -- becoming more louse-like in his basic behavior (such as eating garbage), but also more human in his fantasies (and sudden appreciation of music). It is this complex contrast that makes Gregor seem more human to us, thus playing into Kafka’s slippery reality that confuses as much as illuminates. And yet, \The Metamorphosis\ is not all doom and gloom. It’s actually quite funny. Sure, it has a dark, black sense of humor, but nevertheless, you can’t help but laugh at parts. When the new house maid spies Gregor for the first time, she does not turn tail, screaming in horror like his family. She merely states, “Come over here for a minute you old dung beetle!” Or the lodgers, who upon seeing Gregor slowly crawling towards them, do not try to smash him or exit the premises. They try to negotiate out of paying rent to Gregor’s father in light of the “disgusting conditions prevailing in this apartment and family.” Even Gregor’s ultimate fate, which I won’t give away, is handled in a way that the cast members from Monty Python’s Flying Circus would certainly appreciate. With so many layers to it, \The Metamorphosis\ still remains one of the most studied and widely imitated novels of the 20th century. But in its purest sense, it is an amazing, perfectly crafted, dark little fable.
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A Reader posted a review at 2010-10-20 01:36:11.
(Language: English)
Liked this one without reservations!
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A Reader posted a review at 2011-09-25 01:42:54.
(Language: English)
Unforgettable in a bad way, but somehow less repugnant to me than the imagery of the wound in The Country Doctor.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-06-12 02:04:38.
(Language: English)
It's much more than a short story about a man who one day wakes up and finds himself a beetle. This book deals with so much, it could be said to have some pinches of existentialism, but in all reality it is basically a book about isolation. About..alienination. How a family can go from loving and caring about their son, to the next day being disgusted by his every move, locking him up in his room, and never wanting to see him again. This book does reveal that humanity, does indeed "suck", but it's much more than that. It could be said that we as human beings are more "cold-blooded" so to speak as anything else out there, how we can easily abandon the ones we love and care about, if only it would make things better for us. Kafka, and pardon my French, fucking nailed it. His style's of writing is one of the best in literature, it doesn't get boring, it feels like it's all one complete thought, grammar and punctuation don't mean a thing to him, and they don't have to. Wonderful damn read.
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James posted a review at 2011-08-17 07:08:35.
(Language: English)
Where would we be without Kafka?
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-05-14 06:18:56.
(Language: English)
So this is the one thing I should stop teaching, according to my students this year. I don't think I can do it, though! It's so preposterous and yet humane at the same time. I love Gregor's fixation on getting to work despite his "condition", and his pathetic connection to the lady in furs that he framed (from a magazine!). Kafka is clearly surrealist and existentialist (the ending of Gregor dying and the sister "stretching her young body" is so appropriate!) and I still think this is underappreciated by 17 year olds.
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A Reader posted a review at 2008-02-13 01:20:31.
(Language: English)
I only had the tenacity to read the Metamorphosis and neglect the other stories. So i will base this solely on this novella. The Metamorphosis is an interesting story about a man named Gregor Samsa. What gave this novella such acclaim is the introduction where a spontaneous Metamorphsis occurs to the protagonist. Gregor Samsa, the only bread winner of his family is turned into an insect with no clue as to why? The random change into a bug is symbolic to the times he wrote this story because it reflects the extreme judgment a family must take once their bread winner is of no use. This read was pleasant but did not invoke any inner spirits wating to be revived. i would say read it for it's literary accomplishment and character judgements.
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Anna posted a review at 2010-07-08 04:11:53.
(Language: English)
Too creepy for my taste. Couldn't go beyond the initial description of samsa's transformation.
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A Reader posted a review at 2007-07-11 12:27:22.
(Language: English)
A very short work that is rich in themes of modern alienation. Maybe I'm morbid, but I found the book very humorous in an absurd way, especially the earliest part when Gregor is trying to figure out how to get out of bed. There is something absurdly hilarious about a man who's turned into a giant bug trying to get out of bed without hurting himself. Inversion figures heavily in the story, both in style and substance. Stylistically, the story is inverted in the sense that Kafka writes very non-chalantly about a fantastical thing, as if nothing is out of the ordinary. In terms of substance, Kafka inverts the real self with the projected self, making the bug, an alien form, into the symbolism of the "real" that is repressed by society, and turning the human form into a projected image. The metamorphosis, therefore, is the transformation from the projected, public self to the inner, authentic self, a self that is alien both to the individual and to outsiders. Kafka merely exaggerates this strangeness of authenticity by embodying it in the form of a giant bug. And the fact that Kafka seems to suggest the revelation of the true-self results in death indicates, to me, just how pessimistic this work is about modern conditions of alienation. The story itself is very short, and one should be able to read it within an hour, although this definitely bears re-reading time and again. The explanatory notes and the critical essays attached are extremely value, in my opinion, to a better understanding of context and criticism. I highly recommend that readers read the notes and critical essays, because they will definitely enrich your grasp of this dense work of fiction.
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A Reader posted a review at 2009-03-16 07:30:16.
(Language: English)
So far this is the best modern piece of literature I have read in my life, if you dont understand it, then you are not ready for it, if you dont like it then I feel sorry for you... Kafka's Metamorphosis is not about transformation or change that takes place in Gregor's life as most of the people think... He is already changed, he is already an insect when we first meet him... It is about enormous fear that Samsa has to experience by accepting the fact that he is not a human being any more. Hero is trying to convince himself that this is just a dream, a nightmare...
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