The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis climaxes in the very first line--the protagonist has indeed been transformed. The critical questions lie in the interpretation of the transformation. Kafka has been said to have offered everything from a psychological parable of Oedipal struggle to a caricature of psychological readings.

The title, Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis, part of Chelsea House Publishers’ Modern Critical Interpretations series, presents the most important 20th-century criticism on Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis through extracts of critical essays by well-known literary critics. This collection of criticism also features a short biography on Franz Kafka, a chronology of the author’s life, and an introductory essay written by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University.