Gregor Samsa

Yeah.

Also, there was a large silver, like Gregor Samsa-ass looking cockroach on its back mounted on the wall at some point in the fancy room.

Right before...

Well, anyway, we'll just say in a fancy room.

So before we go on, let's quickly revisit Kafka's classic novel.

Gregor Samsa awakens one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect.

Despite his new physical state, his first thoughts are of his job as a traveling salesman.

He worries he might be late to the office.

I mean, it is the metamorphosis, really.

It's Gregor Samsa waking up and finding that he'd been turned into, the most accurate translation, is a huge vermin, not a beetle, as people often sense.

But again, there's the sense of... how do I put it? It's sort of like, I mean, obviously it's things being where things shouldn't be, but there's also the sense of doom.

There's a sense of helplessness really where you're sort of in both cases where for Samsa, he just, it just happens and he doesn't know how to deal with it.

And the drawing is of a giant cockroach waking up in his bed with a stricken look on his face.

And it says, roach problem, call Gregor Samsa.

1-800-ROACH-BE-GONE.

I love it.

Part 1 of Metamorphosis.

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous, verminous bug.

He lay on his armor-hard back, and saw, as he lifted his head up a little, his brown-arched abdomen divided up into rigid bow-like sections.

From this height the blanket, just about ready to slide off completely, could hardly stay in place.

[upbeat music] Well, you've heard the pitch before.

The first line is, "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect." Gregor's been supporting his parents and his sister with his work as a traveling salesman, and he's alarmed by this change in himself, but he, like, really takes it in stride to a surprising degree.

He starts-

Shocking amount.

You're not worth anything.

Like, I don't know.

I think probably six hours of therapy, and Gregor Samsa or, you know, I mean, Franz Kafka have kind of got this thing-

[laughs] Yeah

1919.So bureaucracy for him is something that is impersonal, something that you can actually feel, something that can kill you.

In Kafka's work, I mean, the classic example is Metamorphosis, where Gregor Samsa wakes up as a monstrous insect.

But then he said to himself, "Before it strikes a quarter past 7:00, I must be quite out of this bed, without fail."

The Metamorphosis, Kafka's 1915 novella.