1. One morning, upon awakening from agitated dreams, Gregor Samsa found
himself, in his bed, transformed into a monstrous vermin.
This quotation, one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature,
introduces the subject matter of The Metamorphosis and
indicates how that subject matter will be treated throughout the story. The line
has a notably flat, matter-of-fact tone that doesn’t remark on the oddness of
the incident. On the contrary, the line treats Gregor’s change as though it were
an ordinary event, and it never raises the issue of how or why Gregor undergoes
his metamorphosis, implying that the change has occurred without any particular
cause or for any particular reason. In doing so, it creates a sense that the
world we see in the story is inherently purposeless and random, rather than
rational and ordered, and that such events are to some degree to be expected.
Thus the opening line exemplifies the idea of absurdism, which asserts that
humans exist in an irrational, chaotic universe beyond our full
understanding.
Although the opening line is narrated in the third person, it also
reflects Gregor’s own attitude toward his change. Gregor never attempts to
determine why or how he transformed into a bug. Instead, he appears to accept
the change as an unfortunate incident, like an accident or illness, and doesn’t
get particularly upset about it. In fact, after his transformation he continues
to think about relatively normal subjects, like his family’s financial situation
and his own physical comfort. Consequently, Gregor himself embodies this
absurdist point of view exemplified in the opening line. He is the victim of an
evidently purposeless and random metamorphosis, which he treats as though it
were not completely unusual, suggesting he at least somewhat expects the world
he lives in to be an irrational and chaotic place.
