SOURCE: "Kafka's Die Verwandlung: Metamorphosis of the Metaphor," in Mosaic, Vol. 3, No. 4, Summer, 1970, pp. 91-106.

In the following essay, Corngold analyzes Kafka's literalization of metaphorical language in The Metamorphosis.

To judge from its critical reception, Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) is the most haunting and universal of all his stories; and yet Kafka never claimed for it any particular distinction. His comments on the story in his letters and diaries are almost entirely negative. "A pity," he wrote to Felice Bauer on December 6, 1912, "that in many passages in the story my states of exhaustion and other interruptions and worries about other things are clearly inscribed. It could certainly have been more cleanly done; you see that from the sweet pages."¹ His disappointment with the ending was especially great. "My little story is finished, but today's conclusion doesn't make me happy at all; it should have been better...