thesis statement of the metamorphosis

A Summary and Analysis of Franz Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Metamorphosis’ is a short story (sometimes classed as a novella) by the Czech-born German-language author Franz Kafka (1883-1924). It is his best-known shorter work, published in German in 1915, with the first English translation appearing in 1933. ‘The Metamorphosis’ has attracted numerous interpretations, so it might be worth probing this fascinating story more closely.

You can read ‘The Metamorphosis’ here before proceeding to our summary and analysis of Kafka’s story below.

Plot Summary

Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, wakes up one morning to find that he has been transformed into a giant insect. Although he briefly considers this transformation, he quickly turns his thoughts to his work and his need to provide for his parents (he lives with them and his sister) so that they can pay off their debts. He also thinks about how much he hates travelling.

He realises he is already late for work, but hesitates to call in sick because he has never had a day off sick before, and knows this might raise alarm bells. When he responds through the bedroom door after his mother calls to him, he realises that his voice has become different as a result of his metamorphosis into an insect. When his family try to enter his bedroom, they find the door locked, and he refuses to let them in.

Then there’s a knock at the door and it’s the chief clerk for whom Gregor works, wondering where Gregor has got to.

Still Gregor refuses to open the door to his family or to his visitor. The chief clerk is affronted and tells Gregor through the door that his work has not been good enough and his position at the company may not be safe. Gregor seeks to defend himself, and assures the clerk that he will soon return to work. However, because Gregor’s voice has changed so much since his transformation, nobody can understand what he’s saying.

Gregor opens the door and his mother screams when she sees him. He asks the chief clerk to smooth things over at the office for him, explaining his … sudden metamorphosis into an insect.

Later that evening, having swooned and dozed all day, Gregor wakes up at twilight and finds that his sister had brought him milk with some bread in it. Gregor attempts to drink the milk, but finds the taste disgusting, so he leaves it. He climbs under the couch so his family don’t have to look at him, while his sister tries to find him food that he can eat.

Gregor overhears his family talking in the other room, and discovers that, despite their apparent debts, his parents have some money stashed away. He has been going to work to support them when he didn’t have to.

As well as the changes to his voice, Gregor also realises that his vision has got worse since his transformation. He also discovers that he enjoys climbing the walls and the ceiling of his bedroom. To help him, his sister gets rid of the furniture to create more space for him to climb; Gregor’s mother disagrees and is reluctant to throw out all of Gregor’s human possessions, because she still trusts that he will return to his former state one day.

When he comes out of the room, his mother faints and his sister locks him outside. His father arrives and throws apples at him, severely injuring him, because he believes Gregor must have attacked his own mother.

After his brush with death, the family change tack and vow to be more sympathetic towards Gregor, agreeing to leave the door open so he can watch them from outside the room as they talk together. But when three lodgers move in with the family, and his room is used to store all of the family’s furniture and junk, he finds that he cannot move around any more and goes off his food. He becomes shut off from his family and the lodgers.

When he hears his sister playing the violin for the lodgers, he opens the door to listen, and the lodgers, upon spotting this giant insect, are repulsed and declare they are going to move out immediately and will not pay the family any of their rent owed. Gregor’s sister tells her parents that they must get rid of their brother since, whilst they have tried to take care of him, he has become a liability. She switches from talking about him as her brother and as an ‘it’, a foreign creature that is unrecognisable as the brother they knew.

Gregor, overhearing this conversation, wants to do the right thing for his family, so he decides that he must do the honourable thing and disappear. He crawls off back to his room and dies.

Gregor’s family is relieved that he has died, and the body is disposed of. Mr Samsa kicks the lodgers out of the apartment. He, his wife, and their daughter are all happy with the jobs they have taken, and Mr and Mrs Samsa realise that their daughter is now of an age to marry.

The one thing people know about ‘The Metamorphosis’ is that it begins with Gregor Samsa waking up to find himself transformed into an insect. Many English translations use the word in the book’s famous opening line (and we follow convention by using the even more specific word ‘beetle’ in our summary of the story above).

But the German word Ungeziefer does not lend itself easily to translation. It roughly denotes any unclean being or creature, and ‘bug’ is a more accurate rendering of the original into English – though even ‘bug’ doesn’t quite do it, since (in English anyway) it still suggests an insect, or at least some sort of creepy-crawly.

For this reason, some translators (such as David Wyllie in the one we have linked to above) reach for the word vermin , which is probably closer to the German original. Kafka did use the word Insekt in his correspondence discussing the book, but ordered that the creature must not be explicitly illustrated as such at any cost. The point is that we are not supposed to know the precise thing into which Gregor has metamorphosed.

The vagueness is part of the effect: Gregor Samsa is any and every unworthy or downtrodden creature, shunned by those closest to him. Much as those who wish to denigrate a particular group of people – immigrants, foreigners, a socio-economic underclass – often reach for words like ‘cockroaches’ or ‘vermin’, so Gregor’s transformation physically enacts and literalizes such emotive propaganda.

But of course, the supernatural or even surreal (though we should reject the term ‘Surrealist’) setup for the story also means that ‘The Metamorphosis’ is less a straightforward allegory (where X = Y) than it is a more rich and ambiguous exploration of the treatment of ‘the other’ (where X might = Y, Z, or even A, B, or C).

Gregor’s subsequent treatment at the hands of his family, his family’s lodgers, and their servants may well strike a chord with not just ethnic minorities living in some communities but also disabled people, people with different cultural or religious beliefs from ‘the mainstream’, struggling artists whose development is hindered by crass bourgeois capitalism and utilitarianism, and many other marginalised individuals.

This is one reason why ‘The Metamorphosis’ has become so widely discussed, analysed, and studied: its meaning is not straightforward, its fantastical scenario posing many questions.  What did Kafka mean by such a story? Is it a comedy, a tragedy, or both? Gregor’s social isolation from his nearest and dearest, and subsequent death (a death of despair, one suspects, as much as it is a noble sacrifice for the sake of his family), all suggest the story’s tragic undercurrents, and yet the way Kafka establishes Gregor’s transformation raises some intriguing questions.

Take that opening paragraph. The opening sentence – as with the very first sentence of Kafka’s novel, The Trial – is well-known, but what follows this arresting first statement is just as remarkable. For no sooner has Gregor discovered that he has been transformed, inexplicably, into a giant insect (or ‘vermin’), than his thoughts have turned from this incredible revelation to more day-to-day worries about his job and his travelling.

This is a trademark feature of Kafka’s writing, and one of the things the wide-ranging term ‘Kafkaesque’ should accommodate: the nightmarish and the everyday rubbing shoulders together. Indeed, the everyday already is a nightmare, and Samsa’s metamorphosis into an alien creature is just the latest in a long line of modernity’s hellish developments.

So the effect of this opening paragraph is to play down, as soon as it has been introduced, the shocking revelation that a man has been turned into a beetle (or similar creature).

Many subsequent details in Kafka’s story are similarly downplayed, or treated in a calm and ordinary way as if a man becoming a six-feet-tall insect is the most normal occurrence in the world, and this is part of the comedy of Kafka’s novella: an aspect of his work which many readers miss, partly because the comedic is so often the first thing lost in translation.

And, running contrariwise to the interpretation of ‘The Metamorphosis’ that sees it as ‘just’ a straightforward story about modern-day alienation and mistreatment of ‘the other’ is the plot itself, which sees Gregor Samsa freed from his life of servitude and duty, undertaking a job he doesn’t enjoy in order to support a family that, it turns out, are perfectly capable of supporting themselves (first by the father’s money which has been set aside, and then from the family’s jobs which the mother, father, and daughter all take, and discover they actually rather enjoy).

Even Gregor’s climbing of the walls and ceiling in his room, when he would have been travelling around doing his job, represents a liberation of sorts, even though he has physically become confined to one room. Perhaps, the grim humour of Kafka’s story appears to suggest, modernity is so hellish that such a transformation – even though it ends in death – is really the only liberation modern man can achieve.

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Themes and Analysis

The metamorphosis, by franz kafka.

'The Metamorphosis' is a masterpiece on hitting important themes, such as transformation, alienation, and responsibility.

Article written by Emma Baldwin

B.A. in English, B.F.A. in Fine Art, and B.A. in Art Histories from East Carolina University.

Such themes in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis touch on what it means to be human and what happens when those around you stop regarding you as such.  

The Metamorphosis Themes  

Transformation  .

The first and most important theme in The Metamorphosis is transformation. There is the primary transformation in the novel, that of Gregor, a human man, into a large insect , but there are several others as well. As the novel progresses, Gregor struggles to hang onto his humanity, it slips from him as he turns to the things that bring him pleasure in his new form. He finds sanctuary in dark places, joy in crawling on the ceilings and the walls, and is only able to stomach rotten food.  

Additionally, there is the transformation that his family members undergo. It is seen most prominently in Grete, his sister . At first, she cares for Gregor’s needs, feeding and visiting him. But as time goes on, Grete grows older and her priorities change. It becomes easier for the family to ignore the fact that Gregor exists than to continue caring for him.  

Gregor’s transformation brings with it a series of emotional transitions and obstacles that he has to overcome. The main one being the separation from his family, job, and previous role as the main breadwinner. Gregor is alienated from his former humanity, generally, as well as his former personality and role, specifically.  

Gregor is also physically alienated in his prison cell-like room. It is from there, separate from the family, that he listens to their lives carry on without him.  

Responsibility

When Gregor first discovers that he’s no longer in his human body, his first thought is for his family. He worries immediately that he’s not going to be able to get to work on time and is going to lose his job. The first pages of the novel are devoted to Gregor’s struggle to force his new body to do what his old one could easily. He cares about the responsibility he has to his family, to pay off his father’s debts and support his sister and mother.  

A reader should also consider what responsibility his family has for him after his transformation and how they didn’t fulfill it. His generosity was not repaid.

Analysis of Key Moments in The Metamorphosis

• Gregor wakes up and discovers that he’s been transformed into a giant insect.  
• Gregor’s family and boss come to check on him.  
• The family is confronted by Gregor’s new form.  
• Grete feeds Gregor and he discovers he loves rotten food.  
• Gregor leans to climb the walls and they take the furniture out of the room.  
• Gregor tries to save the image of the woman in furs.  
• Mr. Samsa attacks Gregor believing he hurt Mrs. Samsa. Gregor is badly injured.  
• Lodgers move into the house and Gregor watches his family from his room.  
• Gregor decides his family will be better off without him and he dies.  
• The family feels relief now that Gregor is gone, they move on with their lives.

Point of View and Poetic Techniques in The Metamorphosis

Narrative point of view.

As a modernist novel, there are several techniques that will likely be familiar with in The Metamorphosis. These are related to the point of view, language, and poetic techniques. The point of view employed by Franz Kafka in the novel is third-person/limited omniscient. This means the main perspective of the story comes from Gregor Samsa. The reader is within Gregor’s mind, hearing his thoughts and discovering what happened to his body at the same time as he does. Information is given to the reader when it’s available to Gregor, we are not aware of anything he isn’t. For example, Gregor struggles with eating and what it is, after his transformation, that he’s interested in.  

The reader doesn’t become aware until he is that he wants to eat rotten foods. All that being said, there are a few moments in the novel in which Kafka moves outside Gregor’s mind to give the reader a bit of information from the perspective of the other characters. These are rare moments and are reserved for occasions that benefit from the change in perspective.

Poetic Techniques

The Metamorphosis was originally written in German and titled Die Verwnadlung, this means that some poetic techniques will be lost or devised in the translation into English. Within the novel, a close reader can find examples of metaphor, irony, and symbolism. The first on this list, metaphor, is a comparison between two unlike things that does not use “like” or “as” is also present in the text.  

When using this technique a writer is saying that one thing is another thing, they aren’t just similar. It’s quite important in this novel and immediately confronts the reader. The theme of imprisonment is woven throughout the story. Metaphors reveal to the reader that Gregor is at once a prisoner of society, money, his family, and the most obvious, his new bug body. He’s trapped, in one way or another, but his prison varies.  

Another less obvious example is the weather. One moment, in particular, comes to mind at the beginning of the story when Gregor is waking up. He notes that he’s waking up late, feels poorly, and there is “still such a fog” outside. The fog lays heavy on the city. Its dreary, dark, and it obscures warmth and light. It is used as a metaphor and allusion to what is to come. His future lies within the house, not without, and it’s going to be just as dark as the weather that morning.  

Symbols in The Metamorphosis  

The picture of the woman  .

One of the most poignant symbols in The Metamorphosis is the picture of the woman on the wall of Gregor’s room. In the photo, she’s wearing furs, a hat, and a boa. It’s unclear who she’s supposed to be, but she’s there as a reminder of Gregor’s lost future, the warmth of human company, and his own distant humanity. More than anything else, the fact that he acquired, hung, and admired the photo while he was still human is important to him.  

When the furniture is removed from his room Gregor begins to panic. Gregor turns to the picture as the single thing he’s going to fight to keep. He’s desperate at this moment, and through his actions, a reader should interpret a need to hang on to some piece of his humanity.  

Gregor as an Insect  

The creature Gregor turns into, sometimes referred to as a giant insect, bug, or vermin, is representative of the life that Gregor led before he was transformed. His human day-to-day life was made physical. Once transformed, the toll that his job, family, colleagues, and money worries had on him is realized in the real world.

Food  

Food is a symbol of the Gregor’s family’s remaining regard for their son. Grete, the most important secondary character in the novel takes on the responsibility for feeding and checking on Gregor. It is due to Grete that he’s able to eat and maintain a shred of his humanity. At first, they believe he’s going to eat the same things he did when he was human, but they soon discover that he’s only able to eat rotten food. As time passes, the family loses interest in Gregor and become exhausted from remembering that he’s there. They stop feeding him and he is forced to suffer, starving, as the new lodgers eat in his kitchen.  

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About Emma Baldwin

Emma Baldwin, a graduate of East Carolina University, has a deep-rooted passion for literature. She serves as a key contributor to the Book Analysis team with years of experience.

About the Book

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka is best remembered as the Existentialist author of novellas and short stories such as ' The Metamorphosis ' and ' The Trial '.

Kafka Facts

Explore ten of the most interesting facts about Kafka's life, habits, and passions.

Kafka's Best Books

Explore the ten best books and stories Kafka wrote.

Kafka and Absurdism

What was absurdism and how does it relate to Franz Kafka's literary works?

You will get to know me better; there are still a number of horrible recesses in me that you don’t know . Franz Kafka

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — Metamorphosis — The Relationship between Gregor and Grete in The Metamorphosis

The Relationship Between Gregor and Grete in The Metamorphosis

• Categories: Kafka Metamorphosis

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Words: 1679 |

Published: Oct 4, 2018

Words: 1679 | Pages: 4 | 9 min read

The essay analyzes Franz Kafka's novel "The Metamorphosis," published in 1915, with a focus on the transformation of Grete Samsa, the sister of the main character, Gregor Samsa. The essay explores the evolution of Grete's character and her changing relationship with Gregor in the context of his insect transformation.

Initially, Grete is portrayed as a loving and caring sister, going to great lengths to understand and accommodate Gregor's needs as he adjusts to his new form. She takes on the role of caring for him and becomes the family's spokesperson when communicating with Gregor. However, as time passes, her attitude toward Gregor changes as she grows tired of the responsibility and the financial strain his transformation brings to the family.

Grete's transformation is not physical like Gregor's but rather a shift in her personality and priorities. She becomes inconsiderate of Gregor's feelings and starts to see him as a burden and a monster. Her transformation from a loving sister to someone who wants to get rid of Gregor is a central theme in the essay.

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Critical Analysis of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

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Introduction

Critical analysis of metamorphosis, symbolism in the novel: summary, what aspect of kafka’s the metamorphosis can readers mostly relate to today, metamorphosis critical analysis conclusion, works cited.

The Metamorphosis is one of the main novels by a famous Austrian writer Franz Kafka. In addition, it is one of the most bright and impressive works of modern literature. The main subject of the novel is the family relations and problem of a person’s worthiness in the society. The main character of the story, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning and realizes that he transformed into a terrible bug.

This fantastic change of the main character is just an artistic mean which serves as a basis and background for other actions and other metamorphoses in his family and society that surrounds him.

Thus, the central motif of the story is the “metamorphosis” of a person and society. The Metamorphosis analysis essay shall examine the main topics of the short novel. The author explores and analyses such social problems as a person’s worthiness and the ills of society, making use of a mixture of fantasy and reality, allegories, and analysis of the psychology of the society. The Metamorphosis provides a deep insight into the human soul and family relations in the middle-class Australian family.

In the novel, the author emphasizes that society is hostile, and it does not need unproductive members. In order to show social-person relations, the author shows the relationships of the protagonist with his family. It is a typical and, at the same time, unique work of the modern period.

As has already been mentioned, the Metamorphosis is a work that contains all traits of modernist literature. It explores the ideas of individualism and contradiction of a person and society. The main subject of modernistic literature is the problems of modern life and the role of the individual who faces these problems.

What does The Metamorphosis have in common with many other works of literature? The works of modernistic literature are marked with pessimism and a response to the emerging city life and its society. The stream of consciousness is the leading literary convention used to transfer the absurdness of life and an individual’s attitude to the world.

Extensive use of comparisons, personifications, intertextuality, and psychoanalysis are the significant signs of modernism. The Metamorphosis, as a typical example of the modernistic literature, contains many symbols and metaphors, “Kafka often used a plainly described world of persecution in which one irrational element would be introduced to complete the narrative down an absurd path” (Childs 125).

This work can be challenging to analyze for the unprepared reader, and different readers can find different themes and meanings in this novel as there are plenty of them. However, the line, which every reader notices, is the line of changes that are discovered at different levels. The first change is a physical change of the protagonist “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.” (Kafka 13).

The second change occurs with the mental state of the protagonist when he becomes aloof of the outer world, and “he was showing so little consideration for the others” (Kafka 22). Finally, the third line of changes appears within his family and its attitude to the protagonist. All these changes appear in real and fantastic context and, “Kafka’s ability to successfully join the fantastic and the real is often noted as being at the root of his genius” (Bloom 34).

The piece of writing has strict structure and develops in chronological order. The story opens with the scene when Gregor Samsa, a young man from a middle-class family, wakes up in the morning and discovers that he transformed into a terrible insect. The beginning of the story immediately provokes excitement and suspense. What is interesting is that Gregor does not feel worried about his transformation, but he is concerned about the fact that he will miss a train and will be late for a job. He had never missed even a day and, “in fifteen years of service Gregor had never once yet been ill.” (Kafka 16).

The fact of transformation is a strong literary convention that helps the author to explore the main subjects in his work.

After having transformed into a terrible insect, Gregor preserves his human soul, and he is still worried about his family, and he needs help and support of his family. But he receives them neither from his parents nor from his sister. The only thing that concerns them is that their single “source of income” will not be able to bring money. The only things that Gregor receives from his family are anger, fear, and even aggression.

Even the fact that this insect is their son and brother cannot excite their understanding and compassion. In his turn, Gregor understands his family members and makes everything possible not to bother them. Reading the novel, one realizes that behind the appearance of the bug, there is a king and tender soul of a young man.

Gregor tries to bring fewer concerns to his parents and family, he does not leave his room not to frighten his mother and hides under the bed when his sister cleans the room. A tense atmosphere in the family grows. All family members are starting to hate Gregor, and they behave as if he is not a human anymore.

The breaking point for the story comes when Grete, Gregor’s sister, declares that the insect in the room is not Gregor anymore and just a bug and they have to get rid of him:

“Things cannot go on any longer in this way. Maybe if you don’t understand that, well, I do. I will not utter my brother’s name in front of this monster, and thus I say only that we must try to get rid of it. We have tried what is humanly possible to take care of it and to be patient. I believe that no one can criticize us in the slightest.” (Kafka, 137).

The same night Gregor dies, and nobody misses him.

The problem of the individual and person’s worthiness appears though the text. When Gregor was still a human, he was discontent with his job but did it to pay the debts of his father. Thus, the author explores the conflict of society and human existence in it. Gregor’s transformation in the insect was a logical continuation of his involuntary dependence and his unhappy human life. The allusion to the insect is not accidental.

The bug is unprotected in front of society, as well as Gregor’s life was. After the transformation, the life in the family changed, “the house soon started to fall apart; the household was reduced more and more.” (Kafka 111). However, it was not for a long time.

Soon, a metamorphosis occurred to other members of the family as well. Gregor’s father “turned from a lethargic, failed businessman to a productive, active member of the work force” (Bloom, 44). The family does not need Gregor anymore.

They have got money, and it is the only thing they wanted from Gregor. It may seem that family’s attitude to Gregor changed after his metamorphosis. However, it is evident that this change only discovered the truth. Thus, Gregor was only a “machine” that brought money. It was his primary role in the family.

His family treats him as a working “bug.” However, not only his family but also the society where he lived as well treat him this way. He discovers that he was not worthy of anything, and even if he dies, nobody will notice it.

Gregor lived as a bug, and he transformed into a bug. But, the readers are not horrified with the transformation, but with the terrible attitude to a poor young man. Even the view of the reader suffers changes. We feel compassion towards Gregor, and his family’s behavior fills us with indignation. A terrible everyday life and attitude of parents to their son seem to be unacceptable. However, it is a terrible reality that depicts a real social structure.

In the character of Gregor Samsa, the author focused not only on the individual problem of one young man but the problem of the whole society. This novel is the brightest expression of the tragic perception of the world that was a characteristic feature of all Kafka’s works.

The situation of transformation can be interpreted in different ways. It may concern a family and social alienation, the loneliness of a person capable of compassion and self-sacrifice, one’s difference from others. Kafka depicts the protagonist’s mental and spiritual isolation as a result of his metamorphosis.

The author shows the essence of society realistic and believable: you are a member of the community while you can perform your job and serve it. However, if you are not capable of doing it, society does not need you anymore and can even get read of you.

Gregor is an unproductive individual, and his family is a symbol of the society which does not want to accept the one who does not bring any profit. In this novel. Kafka emphasizes the fact of human vulnerability in society. A person is just a powerless and helpless “toy” doomed to be lonely, even among the closest people, his/her family.

The Metamorphosis is an innovative work in the world of prose. It is full of symbolic and metaphorical images that emphasize the tragedy of a person’s fate, the alienation of the personality, its helplessness in front of society. The novel depicts the hostile world. It is one of the stories that make people think about “questions of life.”

It makes it one of the best modernistic works of literature and the most examined and criticized novels. As The Metamorphosis analysis essay evidences, different people can find different themes in this book. However, the dominant theme is the alienation of the person and its relations with society. Through the description of family relations in the Gregor’s family, the author makes allusions to the relationships in modern society.

The author provides the idea that society is cruel, and it does not need unproductive people. This idea is closely interrelated with the social problem of a person’s worthiness in the world. The author expresses his vision of the person’s role in society, making use of the fantastic transformation of the protagonist in the bug.

Bloom, Harold. Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2006.

Childs, Peter. Modernism. New York, Routledge, 2008.

Kafka, Franz. Metamorphosis. Delaware: Prestwick House Inc, 2005.

• Short Summary
• Chapter III
• Characters Analysis
• Symbols & Literary Analysis
• Important Quotes
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• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, May 17). Critical Analysis of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-social-problem-of-a-persons-worthiness-in-the-book-by-franz-kafka-the-metamorphosis/

"Critical Analysis of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka." IvyPanda , 17 May 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/the-social-problem-of-a-persons-worthiness-in-the-book-by-franz-kafka-the-metamorphosis/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Critical Analysis of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka'. 17 May.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Critical Analysis of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka." May 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-social-problem-of-a-persons-worthiness-in-the-book-by-franz-kafka-the-metamorphosis/.

1. IvyPanda . "Critical Analysis of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka." May 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-social-problem-of-a-persons-worthiness-in-the-book-by-franz-kafka-the-metamorphosis/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Critical Analysis of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka." May 17, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-social-problem-of-a-persons-worthiness-in-the-book-by-franz-kafka-the-metamorphosis/.

Temporal dynamics of gene expression during metamorphosis in two distant Drosophila species

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Complete metamorphosis of holometabolous insects is a complex biological process characterized by profound morphological, physiological, and transcriptional changes. To reveal the temporal dynamics of gene expression during this critical developmental transition, a detailed analysis of the developmental transcriptomes of two Drosophila species, Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila virilis , was conducted. We confirm partial recapitulation of the embryonic transcriptional program in pupae, but instead of the traditional hourglass model, which posits maximal conservation at mid-embryonic stages, at different stages of pupae we observe a more complicated pattern of alternating low and high diversity, resembling an inverted hourglass, or “spindle”. This observation challenges the notion of a singular conserved phylotypic period during holometabola ontogeny and underscores the complexity of developmental processes during complete metamorphosis. Notably, recently formed genes (specific to insects) exhibit pronounced expression peaks during mid-pupal development, underscoring their potential role in developmental transitions.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE269951

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