Do we like them?

Do we like Gregor Samsa?

A character from The Metamorphosis (1915)

Our score: 8 out of 10. Yes, we'd back him. He's gentle, hardworking and endlessly self-sacrificing, and his only real fault is that he never stands up for himself.

Gregor Samsa is a traveling cloth salesman in Prague who works a draining job to pay off his family's debt. He is the household's main earner. One morning he wakes to find his body has become that of an enormous insect-like creature, which Kafka never names more precisely. The story is about how he, his family and his employer deal with this.

Gregor's first worry is that he will be late for work and let people down. That says a lot about him: he is conscientious and anxious to please, and he puts others' needs ahead of his own. He is gentle and never lashes out, even when his family is frightened and frustrated by him.

We score him high because he is kind and patient and shows real love for his family, especially his sister. We hold back a couple of points because he is so passive. He has let others lean on him for years without asking for anything, and that may be part of why he is so isolated. He is more a figure to pity than a hero to follow, but he is thoroughly decent.

As the story goes on, the family's care for him fades and the people he supported turn away from him. Gregor accepts this quietly and dies. His death frees the family, which is Kafka's bleak point about how conditional their love was.