As some commentators have noted, The Metamorphosis begins with what should be its climax. The protagonist's great transformation, often the pivotal moment in a work of fiction, gets plopped unceremoniously on our lap in the story's first sentence. No buildup, no tension, just boom: Gregor Samsa is now a bug, and we must all deal with the consequences of this fact. The remainder of the story marks his ineluctable drift into oblivion, with very few surprises along the way.

But no other surprises are necessary. That first simple, declarative sentence and the clear prose that follows it have unleashed a truly staggering torrent of criticism. To attempt to wade through the secondary literature is more than likely to drown in it. The interpretations seem endless, and endlessly possible (if variously plausible). The psychoanalysts, the Marxists, the Symbolists, the New Critics, the biographers--all have thrown their well-worn hats into the ring. The ability of the story to support so many divergent formulations of its "meaning" is clearly one of The Metamorphosis's most salient features.

Some hold Gregor's transformation to be symbolic, which is to say that his metamorphosis into an insect is a symbolic, not actual, event. It may symbolize the empty, insignificant, and outcast life that Gregor leads as a traveling sales lackey. Or perhaps it symbolizes the degraded nature of modern existence in general, or bourgeois life in particular, or merely Gregor's failure in the business world. Or Kafka's low opinion of himself as imagined through his father's eyes. A Freudian reader can find many a symbol throughout and, with the wave of a magic cigar, trace each back to Kafka's subconscious, and eventually to his strained relationship with his father.

On the other hand, the story has been read as an allegory, a literal transformation and subsequent demise that stands in for, say, a description of the writing act itself--the isolation, the ultimate failure. Others claim that all interpretations of The Metamorphosis inevitably diminish and do injustice to what is an irreducible whole, which is resonant with the interplay of many meanings.

The sheer straightforwardness of the narrative has challenged generations of readers to search for something else lurking beneath its surface. But there is no reason to read the story in just one way, to the exclusion of all others. Despite the reams of analysis, one aspect of The Metamorphosis that is often overlooked is its humor. When Kafka read the story to his circle of companions in Prague, they laughed out loud--as did he. This is certainly a stark brand of comedy, but laughter has long been a way of coping with life's absurd afflictions.