Gregor Samsa wakes in his bed and discovers he has transformed into a giant bug. Wondering what has happened, he looks around his small room, where everything appears normal. He sees the fabric samples that he uses in his job as a traveling salesman, a picture of a woman in furs that he tore out of a magazine and framed, and the rain dripping down outside his window. He tries to roll over and go back to sleep in order to forget about what has happened, but because of the shape of his back, he can only rock from side to side.
Feeling sore from his effort, Gregor thinks about what a difficult job he has and the fact that his constant traveling prevents him from making any lasting friendships. He thinks that he would leave his overbearing employer but he has to work off a debt that his parents incurred. He suddenly realizes that he has overslept and does not have a good excuse to give his boss.
The opening line of The Metamorphosis, which reports Gregor’s discovery that he has become a giant insect, sets the tone for the rest of the story. The line recounts the bizarre event of Gregor’s transformation in a sober, straightforward manner, and this contrast between an extraordinary situation and the ordinary terms used to describe it creates the sense that the narrator expects the world in the story to be absurd and chaotic, rather than rational and orderly. Gregor embodies this absurdist tone from the very beginning. When he first recognizes his transformation, he doesn’t appear significantly bothered by it, and treats it almost like any ordinary disturbance to his sleep, as if it were not entirely out of the ordinary. As the story progresses, he remains focused on largely ordinary concerns, such as losing his job, his physical comfort, and his family’s financial situation, thus maintaining the story’s absurdist overtone throughout
This quotation, one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature, introduces the subject matter of The Metamorphosis and indicates how that subject matter will be treated throughout the story. The line has a notably flat, matter-of-fact tone that doesn’t remark on the oddness of the incident
I was born and raised in Athens, next to a tender rock that throughout the years has always been by my side; others call her Maro. I call her mom.
Growing up I wanted to be a football player, then a doctor, a fashion and furniture designer, whilst, at the same time, I was a scout, a climber and a secret observer of my feelings before I ended up studying architecture at AA in London.
That’s where I experienced new locus and focus to all, which I loved.|Dionisis Sotovikis
