What the exam asks
In Paper 2, you answer one of four general questions in a closed-book comparative essay on two literary works. You do not need to memorize long quotations, but you do need precise references to moments and authorial choices. Part I of The Metamorphosis is ideal for questions on:
- Openings and shocks that disrupt an ordinary world.
- Conflict between the individual and authority (the boss, the chief clerk, the father).
- Setting and thresholds (the bedroom, the locked doors, the doorway).
- Voice and perspective (third-person limited narration, free indirect style and the loss of speech).
If you use Kafka’s stories for the Individual Oral, a continuous extract of up to 40 lines from Part I pairs well with non-literary texts on workplace exploitation, alienation or family duty.
Core ideas
The impossible stated as plain fact
Kafka opens with one of the most famous sentences in modern fiction, tucking the waking into a subordinate ‘when’ clause and stating the supernatural event in a flat, matter-of-fact main clause. Neither the narrator nor Gregor asks why or how the transformation happened. The prose treats the body with the dry precision of an office report, then immediately pans around the bedroom.
Free indirect style and the tyranny of the clock
Kafka writes in the third person, closely limited to Gregor’s point of view, and slips constantly into free indirect style (where the narrator’s third-person sentences carry Gregor’s own anxious voice, idioms and excuses without quotation marks). Because we hear Gregor’s thoughts from the inside, the central incongruity of Part I is that a creature with an “armour-like back” and “many legs” spends pages worrying about having missed the five o’clock train, his boss who sits up at his desk talking down to the staff, and the five or six years still needed to pay off his parents’ debt.
The spatial trap and the three-part structure
The Metamorphosis is built in three parts, each ending with Gregor emerging from his bedroom and being driven back inside:
| Part | Time and main event | Climax at the doorway | Father’s weapon / family verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Part I | Morning of discovery; the chief clerk arrives | Gregor opens the door with his jaws; tries to stop the clerk | The chief clerk’s stick and a newspaper; father hissing “like a wild man” |
| Part II | Weeks later; the furniture is cleared; Gregor clings to the picture | Mother faints; Gregor runs out | Father bombards him with apples; one rots in his back |
| Part III | Evening; Grete plays the violin for the lodgers | Gregor crawls into the living room | Grete declares “It’s got to go” and locks the door |