"The Metamorphosis" - Kafka : Analyzing the reasons behind Vladimir Nabokov's critique

Fear, jolting, trapping in a sense, and awakening in a more literal one, a nightmare is a dream forged from the inner reality of yourself. In "The Metamorphosis" by Kafka a traveling salesman named Gregor is mysteriously turned into a dung beetle, which not even his family can learn to accept let alone understand. His family is now faced with a lack of money, since Gregor was the only person working, leaving him to feel …

…The qualities mentioned pull the reader into the novel even as Kafka shows the horrors of his life. Although Kafka does not allow the narrating voice to sympathize with Gregor's circumstance the readers through their own humanity are able to understand. This writing provokes this feeling of understanding through a nightmare of subtle calmness that is broken in the end of the novella when the reader is jolted awake through disgust at the family's relief.