One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled
dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a
horrible vermin. He lay on his armour-like back, and if
he lifted his head a little he could see his brown
belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff
sections. The bedding was hardly able to cover it and
seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs,
pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of
him, waved about helplessly as he looked.
"What's happened to me?" he thought. It wasn't a dream.
His room, a proper human room although a little too
small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A
collection of textile samples lay spread out on the
table - Samsa was a travelling salesman - and above it
there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an
illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame.
It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa
who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered
the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.
Gregor then turned to look out the window at the dull
weather. Drops of rain could be heard hitting the pane,
which made him feel quite sad. "How about if I sleep a
little bit longer and forget all this nonsense", he
thought, but that was something he was unable to do
because he was used to sleeping on his right, and in his
present state couldn't get into that position. However
hard he threw himself onto his right, he always rolled
back to where he was. He must have tried it a hundred
times, shut his eyes so that he wouldn't have to look at
the floundering legs, and only stopped when he began to
feel a mild, dull pain there that he had never felt
before.
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