Gregor's Hard Shell.

If Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" strikes anyone as something more than an entomological fantasy, then I congratulate him on having joined the ranks of good and great readers. In his story "The Metamorphosis," Kafka presents a conventional, respectable protagonist whose life is suddenly and permanently changed by a physical disability -- a "metamorphosis," or transformation -- which catapults him out of his efficacious complacency into a sudden confrontation with the greater questions of existence. As soon as Gregor opens his eyes, he finds himself positioned in an uncomfortable manner and transformed into a monstrous vermin or a gigantic insect, a worthless creature,

"One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found
himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin. He lay on
his armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little he could
see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff
sections."

With his hard armor-plated back lying on the bed. With this arresting opening, Kafka has set his mysterious psychological fantasy in motion. Now what exactly is the "vermin" into which poor Gregor, the seedy commercial traveler, is so suddenly transformed? It obviously belongs to the branch of "jointed leggers" (Arthropoda), to which insects, and spiders, and centipedes, and crustaceans belong. But surprisingly, Gregor’s bizarre new state is not the central transformation in the novel. Instead, Kafka uses Gregor’s surreal change as a catalyst for an almost more shocking metamorphosis: that of Gregor’s family, as they move from helplessness and sympathetic fear to emancipation and hostile rejection. In fact, it is Gregor who remains largely unchanged. He struggles to maintain his daily routine during most of the story, until his body finally forces him to surrender and accept that he is no longer fully human.