2025 Reading Challenge 19 Metamorphosis
This was a last-minute swap in as I found I was going to be losing a weekend to an RPG con. Just seventy-odd pages, but he’s a writer I’ve loved since I first read The Trial back in my teens, and it was a real pleasure to reacquaint myself with him.
Okay, the story: a salesman wakes up and finds out he’s been transformed into an insect. His family and work colleagues are at turns shocked, sad, frustrated, angry and indifferent. He dies.
So why is this book so well regarded? Like Hemingway, it’s what’s not said that is important. As the bizarre but simple story unfolds, you find yourself questioning your own humanity and what makes society value you. Love seems to dissipate as soon as our form changes so drastically, it is incredibly disturbing.
I read through this in a couple of days, but it’s been living rent-free in my head for a good few more. I’m struggling to think of a story that pulls on the heartstrings as much as this. Even before Gregor transforms into a beetle, it seems his life is dull, constricted, and at the beck and call of others. His salary mainly goes to supporting his, ultimately ungrateful family. His company is some weird dystopian organisation that comes rushing round to his house within an hour of him missing the first train to work.
I mean, maybe becoming a beetle is a godsend.
I’ll leave the last words to the lovely, innocent Grete, who dotes on Gregor’s every word but then undergoes her own transformation: "We must try to get rid of it. We've done everything humanly possible to look after it... It’s got to go."
I rated it 9.0 out of 10.
TTRPG Thoughts:
I have to say this is a great example of Body Horror, which you should reference for your RPGs. Underlying a monstrous transformation is everything about humanity you hold dear thrown out and trampled on, leading to guilt, alienation, isolation, loss of identity, and shame.
A game like Cosmic Dark plays heavily on these themes. Your only attribute is a Changed score, reach 6, and your mind and body are lost… distanced so far from the human race, you cannot function.
Metamorphosis is a great text to play on all those different aspects of what it means to be human and then gradually snip away at them to leave PCs dangling over a mental precipice.