The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka wrote stories of people in impossible situations. His subject matter was the absurd, alienation and entrapment. His themes reflected his own situation. He has tuberculosis eighty years ago. At that time there was no cure. He was a Jew in central Europe after the end of the First World War. Two decades later, if he had lived that long, he would have been killed by his neighbors. He grew up in Prague, studied in schools that taught in the German language. Before the war, Prague was part of the German speaking Austrian Empire. After, it was the capital of Czechoslovakia. The local language was Czech. He of course, wrote in German
The two principal characters are Gregor, who wakes up one morning to find that he has changed into a dung beetle, and his sister Greta who cares for him, though less so as the dynamics between parents, the sister and Gregor evolved.
I selected the singer Madonna to model Greta. I pictured her wearing a traditional German dirndl dress.


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Gregor, I made as a rather colorful if not fanciful dung beetle.



In the story, his father throws apples at Gregor, to force him back into his room. One of the apples gets stuck in his back between the shell sections, where his is unable to remove it. the family finds him so disgusting that no one would touch him, much less remove the apple.