Characters
Gregor Samsa -
A young traveling salesman who hates his job. Gregor goes into the business because his father, after the collapse of his business, owes his boss a large debt. Gregor becomes the family's sole breadwinner. As much as he hates the petty and degrading concern for which he works, he is proud of providing his mother, father, and sister Grete with a nice apartment and a fairly comfortable life. He secretly dreams of sending Grete to the conservatory to study violin. Things understandably change for Gregor when he wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into a giant bug. His human wants and emotions thereafter struggle with his insect needs and the reality of his intractably horrible situation.
Grete -
Before Gregor's transformation, Grete is his adoring and devoted younger sister. After the event, she takes on sole responsibility for his care, asserting herself as the de facto expert on Gregor's condition and needs. Gregor considers his sister's motives to be a mix of devotion to his memory (if not his person) and brazen youthfulness, a flexing of her will and capability in light of her parents' incapacity to deal with the singular bug-ness of their only son. It is Grete who at last voices the family's conviction of the futility of the situation and the impossibility of Gregor's returning to them in human form.
Gregor's father -
A slouching, defeated man whose business failure has seemingly sapped his vitality, Gregor's father finds new confidence and better posture once the economic necessity engendered by Gregor's misfortune forces him to work again. His fruit-flinging fit of rage is the catalyst for Gregor's declining health and eventual demise.
Gregor's mother -
A physically and constitutionally weak woman, Gregor's mother seems to suffer most from the fact of her son's metamorphosis. Despite her love for Gregor, the effect on her health is terrible whenever she catches sight of his bug form. Gregor's father and sister's protective feelings toward his mother lead them to resent Gregor.
