The Metamorphosis By Franz Kafka (1915)

emptied. Was he really eager to let the warm room, comfortably
furnished with pieces he had inherited, be turned
into a cavern in which he would, of course, then be able to
crawl about in all directions without disturbance, but at the
same time with a quick and complete forgetting of his human
past as well? Was he then at this point already on the
verge of forgetting and was it only the voice of his mother,
which he had not heard for along time, that had aroused
him? Nothing was to be removed; everything must remain.
In his condition he couldn’t function without the beneficial
influences of his furniture. And if the furniture prevented
him from carrying out his senseless crawling about all over
the place, then there was no harm in that, but rather a great
benefit.
But his sister unfortunately thought otherwise. She had
grown accustomed, certainly not without justification, so
far as the discussion of matters concerning Gregor was
concerned, to act as an special expert with respect to their
parents, and so now the mother’s advice was for his sister
sufficient reason to insist on the removal, not only of the
chest of drawers and the writing desk, which were the only
items she had thought about at first, but also of all the furniture,
with the exception of the indispensable couch. Of
course, it was not only childish defiance and her recent very
unexpected and hard won self-confidence which led her to
this demand. She had also actually observed that Gregor
needed a great deal of room to creep about; the furniture,
on the other hand, as far as one could see, was not of the
slightest use.
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But perhaps the enthusiastic sensibility of young women
of her age also played a role. This feeling sought release at
every opportunity, and with it Grete now felt tempted to
want to make Gregor’s situation even more terrifying, so
that then she would be able to do even more for him than
now. For surely no one except Grete would ever trust themselves
to enter a room in which Gregor ruled the empty
walls all by himself. And so she did not let herself be dissuaded
from her decision by her mother, who in this room
seemed uncertain of herself in her sheer agitation and soon
kept quiet, helping his sister with all her energy to get the
chest of drawers out of the room. Now, Gregor could still
do without the chest of drawers if need be, but the writing
desk really had to stay. And scarcely had the women left the
room with the chest of drawers, groaning as they pushed
it, when Gregor stuck his head out from under the sofa to
take a look how he could intervene cautiously and with as
much consideration as possible. But unfortunately it was his
mother who came back into the room first, while Grete had
her arms wrapped around the chest of drawers in the next
room and was rocking it back and forth by herself, without
moving it from its position. His mother was not used to the
sight of Gregor; he could have made her ill, and so, frightened,
Gregor scurried backwards right to the other end of
the sofa, but he could no longer prevent the sheet from moving
forward a little. That was enough to catch his mother’s
attention. She came to a halt, stood still for a moment, and
then went back to Grete.
Although Gregor kept repeating to himself over and