Chapter LXXVI: Kafkaesque

Esoteric--The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

Image of the Day: Floorplan of Samsa Residence






















"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." Thus begins Franz Kafka's often parodied, rarely understood monument of absurdist literature.

I had studied it in 12th grade and already knew all the important stuff, so when it was assigned in my English 350 class last week, I spent most of lecture time figuring out the floorplan to Gregor Samsa's apartment instead of listening. A daunting task, to be sure, as details were sparse, vague, and often contradictory (not unlike absurdist literature in general).

The first step was to determine what the major spaces were. The text explicitly mentions Gregor's room (3), Grete's room (6), the living room (9), the kitchen (12), the foyer (12), and the stairwell (15). Numbers in parentheses refer to pages in the Bantam Classics edition, translated by Stanley Corngold.

The existence of the parents' room is implied. After all, if even Grete--the youngest child--has her own room, then certainly the parents do also, given the norms in 1915. One can also conclude that there are no other major spaces than the ones enumerated above, since after a room is rented out (43), Grete must sleep in the living room (52).

I began the arrangement with Gregor's room, which is described as having "four familiar walls" (3). Gregor accesses the living room directly several times (14, 34, 45) through double doors and Kafka refers to a side door (5) and then the "other side door" (6) for a total of three entrances.

On page 9, Gregor is in his room and hears his father and the manager behind the "door on the left" and Grete, behind the "door on the right." Gregor's mother--also behind the "door on the left" communicates with Grete "by way of Gregor's room" (12). The door on the left is demonstrated to be the door to the living room since Gregor opens it and sees the manager and his father (14) while his sister sobs behind the door on the right (10).

The door on the right is a side door to Grete's room. This would seem to imply that Grete's room does not adjoin the living room, or else Grete would just open that door and shouting through Gregor's room would not be necessary. On the other hand, when Gregor sneaks into the living room in Chapter III (45), the renters are hurriedly shooed from the living room into their own room--which I take to be formerly Grete's room since she was displaced to the living room after they moved in (52).

Thus, I devised the arrangement of doors such that despite being in an adjoining room, someone standing at Gregor's living room door would have to shout through Gregor's room to communicate with someone at the door from Gregor's to Grete's room. This arrangement satisfies the right/left details if we assume Gregor was facing northwest during that scene.

The living room adjoins the foyer and the foyer the stairwell, since Gregor is able to see through the door to the foyer, and into the stairwell (15) while standing in the doorway from his room to the living room. It was tempting to place the foyer and stairwell directly west of Gregor's door, so that the living room door, foyer door, and stairwell door line up horizontally, but this could not be.

The reason is that in Chapter III, when the renters are eating in the living room and Grete begins playing the violin in the kitchen, the renters press their ears to the door from the living room to the foyer, implying that that is the closest they can get to the kitchen (45). Thus, while the living room adjoins the foyer and the foyer adjoins the kitchen, the living room does not adjoin the kitchen. Gregor is able to determine the music is coming from the kitchen as well, indicating his other side door leads to the kitchen (otherwise he would not be able to tell if it was coming from the foyer or the kitchen). Putting the foyer and stairwell on the west side of the living room would necessitate having an unrealistically huge foyer that wraps around the southwest corner in order to meet the kitchen adjoining Gregor's room.

Some indeterminacy exists since when Gregor dies (50), his parents get out of their "marriage bed" (52) and open a door into Gregor's room. Assuming they were not sleeping in the kitchen, that means they were in Grete's room. This indicates that the renters in fact rented out the parents' room, whereupon the parents moved into Grete's room, who was then pushed into the living room. Grete's room, then, no longer necessarily adjoins the living room (since the evidence was the renters being shooed into their room from the living room, and I thought they were living in Grete's room). However, if Grete's room does not adjoin the living room, that would mean the only way for the parents to get into their new room would be through either Gregor's room (not a viable option, all things considered), or through the renters' room, awkward at best.

I also placed a couple windows and bits of furniture.

Whew.