This word-count ceiling is somewhat fuzzy, however, with many major writing prize s and magazines requesting submissions of no more than 7, words. In addition, there are subsets of short stories with even more restrictive word counts. For example, works under 1, words are commonly considered flash fiction.
Learn how to surprise and delight your readers with this course from literary editor Laura Mae Isaacman. Get started now. Word count is merely a number. Many shorter works of fiction have made a cultural impact that far exceeds their modest length.
Note: the listed word counts are approximate. In addition, there is also some debate around which category a few of the books belong to. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 17, words. And there you have it — the long and short of how long and short these three types of story should be! If you're a self-published author looking to sell hardcover copies of your book on Amazon, check out our guide to hardcover printing with Kindle Direct Publishing. Find the book printing service that best suits your needs with Reedsy's guide to offset, volume, and on demand printing.
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Do you want to work with a traditional publisher? But sometimes he couldn't, like the big bug couldn't open the door and leave, he was trapped with the family he knew he disappointed. Can someone tell me the reasons why this book is named The Metamorphosis? What are the reasons behind this name? I really need it and I wanna know why. Annemary Noble Metamorphosis was first written by Ovid; it's about the changing of gods, demi-gods and heroes. Kaffka as I know wanted to show the 'modern' changin …more Metamorphosis was first written by Ovid; it's about the changing of gods, demi-gods and heroes.
Kaffka as I know wanted to show the 'modern' changing of people: if one becomes useless his family will not care about him same things may happen to old and sick people as well. See all 34 questions about The Metamorphosis…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Metamorphosis.
Nov 12, Miranda Reads rated it did not like it. Here's a link to a BooktTube Video - all about the fabulous and not so fabulous old books I've read. It's like Do you think I'm going around making nearly a thousand fake a Here's a link to a BooktTube Video - all about the fabulous and not so fabulous old books I've read.
Do you think I'm going around making nearly a thousand fake accounts on my free time so I can like it myself or something? I'm in grad school for crepes sake. I got a thesis to write. If anything, I feel like the popularity of the review shows that there must be a lot of people out there who agree Sometimes I want to say, hmm..
Perhaps it is just going over your heads? But then I realize that it's not up to me to convince them. And that it isn't my job nor my right to force someone to think positively of something that they don't like. Could you imagine a world like that? Where you are ONLY allowed to think positively about literature and if you aren't, then an angry mob of "literature lovers" will harass you for literally years?
What a world that would be I appreciate them. I don't think any other review I've written has come even close to that.
High five to those of you who have read this book and felt like me, that it was a rather pointless tale about a bug that died. Don't let anyone ever tell you different ha. It's me. Your friendly neighborhood reader. You all want to know why people don't like reading the classics? Try reading the comments. I didn't like this book and wrote a jokey review in People freaked out because A I didn't like the book and B poked fun at this classic in my review. The horror. I'm tired. I'm bored.
Feel free to talk about my lack of intelligence all you want down below but I really don't have anything to say in the comments anymore. People are not the forgiving sort if you don't like this book. It seems that some classics must be liked, or else. Since publishing this review, many people have posted their interpretations of this book - some of which I can see, some of which I don't buy and some that really are quite brilliant. They are doomed.
Even if the most stunningly accurate interpretation of the novel comes into my life, that doesn't change the fact that I didn't like the book. I'm not a professional. I'm not an English teacher. I have never claimed to be anything other than an avid reader. Just because I'm a "casual" doesn't mean that I'm only going to stick to fluffy novels.
I like to branch out, sometimes with awesome and sometimes with awful results. And this one just didn't work for me. The Original Review - February If you are someone who is looking for a serious interpretation kindly check out another. There plenty of brilliant interpretations of this novel, and so many people LOVE it. Unfortunately, I did not. I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself. Allow me to explain it to you then: You Gregor turned into a giant bug.
Your family alternated between fearing, caring, and loathing you in your bug-body. Ultimately, you began doing lots of creepy bug-things and became a burden to them.
Then you starved to death and your parents got their spare bedroom back. Nor if books that give off a consistently dreary feeling throughout. I could summarize the entire book as: Gregor turns into a bug, it was not a smart move. Which is slightly misrepresenting the book - cause the book actually has Gregor turning into a bug without any rhyme or reason.
Wait a moment. This is probably one of those books where everything is a representation of something significant in real life. An "Important Novel", if you will. Lemme Wikipedia this. I'm back. I mean, maybe? I guess that could be what the book means? There's a cruel father and a gifted daughter I guess the book is so open to interpretation that it could literally mean just about anything.
It kind of feels like one of those books just written for the hell of it and then some English teachers got a hold of it and now it's become an Important Novel. Therefore, I'm going to stick with my original interpretation - it's a rather pointless novel about a bug that dies.
Personally, I did not like the style, the characters and the ending. It felt painful to read, the emotions and the feelings associated with the events just felt incredibly depressing. Plus, as a personal pet peeve - plenty of things happen without a solid explanation or clear motivation Ultimately, this took up time that I can never get back and I don't think I'll ever enjoy it.
View all comments. The blue I had almost forgotten this was still going on. The blue Meishuu Tea time! Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to discover he's been transformed into a giant beetle-like creature. Can he and his family adjust to his new form?
The Metamorphosis is one of those books that a lot of people get dragooned into reading during high school and therefore are predisposed to loath.
I managed to escape this fate and I'm glad. The Metamorphosis is quite a strange little book. Translated from German, The Metamorphosis is the story of how Gregor Samsa's transformation tears his family apa Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning to discover he's been transformed into a giant beetle-like creature. Translated from German, The Metamorphosis is the story of how Gregor Samsa's transformation tears his family apart.
I feel like there are hidden meanings that are just beyond my grasp. I suspect it's a commentary about how capitalism devours its workers when they're unable to work or possibly about how the people who deviate from the norm are isolated. However, I mostly notice how Samsa's a big frickin' beetle and his family pretends he doesn't exist. There's some absurdist humor at the beginning.
Samsa's first thoughts upon finding out he's a beetle is how he's going to miss work. Now, I'm as dedicated to my job as most people but if I woke up to find myself a giant beetle, I don't think I'd have to mull over the decision to take a personal day or two. Aside from that, the main thing that sticks out is what a bunch of bastards Samsa's family is.
He's been supporting all of them for years in his soul-crushing traveling salesman job and now they're pissed that they have to carry the workload.
Poor things. It's not like Gregor's sitting on the couch drinking beer while they're working. He's a giant damn beetle! Cut him some slack. All kidding aside, the ending is pretty sad. I'll bet Mr. Samsa felt like a prick later. The Metamorphosis gets four stars, primarily for being so strange and also because it's the ancestor of many weird or bizarro tales that came afterwords. It's definitely worth an hour or two of your time. View all 33 comments.
Jul 08, Rebecca rated it really liked it. I once used my copy to kill a beetle. Thereby combining my two passions: irony and slaughter. View all 36 comments. A paraphrase. When my ex husband went out one evening from unsettling dreams of how faraway his wife was, he went out drinking and whoring.
Next morning he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. A cockroach. Much he knew it though. None of his friends recognised it, in fact they preferred the cockroach to the person he had been and he had a great time. When it was time for him to come home, armour-plated as he was he crushed his wife underfoot well fists and kicks, but same A paraphrase.
When it was time for him to come home, armour-plated as he was he crushed his wife underfoot well fists and kicks, but same thing. Unlike Kafka's poor cockroach whom no one could come to terms with and is destroyed by their ultimate hatred of creepy, crawly insects that roam the house, my ex was embraced by all and became the most popular party person. Although at one stage I did have to fight off a woman who was swinging her handbag at me and tell a Spanish prostitute that my husband's unwanted attentions were no business of mine.
The moral of the story is that there is more than one type of human cockroach and Kafka only wrote about one. It's all in the shell, if you are ugly, big, brown and with six legs you are hated.
But handsome, big, brown and with only two, you are adored. Read this book back in and loved it. Social isolation for visible or invisible characterists reverberated with me, as did the cold gang mentality that rules once each has identified themselves as a sympathetic member. The author shows the struggle of human existence- the problem of living in modern society- through the narrator.
Gregor Samsa wakes in his bed and finds himself changed into an a mammoth bug- the vermin; he battles to discover what really has transpired, he checks out his little room and everything looks ordinary to him anyway it gets a peculiar inclination it may not be so. He attempts to turn over and return to stay in bed request to disregard what has occurred, but since of the state of his back, he can just shake from side to side. Gregor becomes accustomed to his creepy vermin body and his family takes care of him mostly an inappropriate things, however they couldn't care less and expels furniture from his room with the goal that he can uninhibitedly move around and climb the walls.
Be that as it may, they would prefer not to see his appalling structure, he is kept to his room, and normally stows away under the couch when his sister enters with his food, to save her sensibilities as opposed to the pleasantly human creepy crawly Gregor, his sister isn't chivalrous in any way, yet progressively hostile and barbarous ; his brutish dad as Kafka himself had been quite afraid of his father pursues him back by tossing apples at him when he once comes out.
The relatives additionally need to take employments for they can no longer soak up the fruitful child. What's more, the circumstance separates, and the family crumbles. The problem of alienation is explored to depth in the novella- Gregor become insect and behaviour of his family members change towards him, he may transformed to something unusual at the core he is still the same however he faces problem of acceptance by society due to his transformed appearance, which ridicules his being- his existence- as if he is thrown into the hell of nothingness without any notice.
The feebleness of his existence disintegrates his being into nothingness, under the sheer pressure of the society- the 'Other'. The novella raises some very basic and profound questions of human existence- alienation, identity, being. Kafka questions all our presuppositions of life- success, social position, money, that a healthy life is characterized by a steadily improving standard of living and a socially-acceptable appearance which we think matter most- through Gregor's metamorphosis.
These presuppositions of our life pose more serious questions- which are very chilly and which can rip us apart from any sense of our inauthentic existence.
The author robs Gregor-the protagonist- of every sense of his inauthentic existence by stealing off all assumptions of his life, now he is striped down to the very core of his existence. The protagonist is encountered with basic problems of human existence- what it takes to be? Was the socially-acceptable persona in fact ourselves, or is there more essential self-ness in the being we have now become?
Or have we, in fact, been nobody in the first place, and are we nobody still? Gregor Samsa can make us ponder our own character, our identity, about the smoothness of what we take to be steady and fixed, and about the dangers and supernatural occurrences of our own metamorphosis. Kafka gives us that how the conventions of normal society are twisted because of our incompetence to look past the surface to the individual inside.
View all 55 comments. One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggling to adjust to this new condition.
The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, with differing interpretations being offered. The Hunter Gracchus is a short story by Franz Kafka. The story presents a boat carrying the long-dead Hunter Gracchus as it arrives at a port. The mayor of Riva meets Gracchus, who gives him an account of his death while hunting, and explains that he is destined to wander aimlessly and eternally over the seas.
An additional fragment presents an extended dialogue between Gracchus and an unnamed interviewer, presumably the same mayor. View 2 comments. Dec 27, Nicole rated it it was amazing Shelves: classic-literature , morbid-humor , favorites , philosophical. Gregor waking up one morning as a bug was a hilarious analogy of the effects an illness can have on someone, as well as on those who are close to him. Though the underlying story behind the hilarity of the analogy was anything but funny.
I took it as more of a warning of what NOT to do when a loved-one is afflicted by some unfortunate disease or circumstance. I found his resistance of acknowledging to himself that he had become a bug in the beginning of the story to be very interesting.
When he Gregor waking up one morning as a bug was a hilarious analogy of the effects an illness can have on someone, as well as on those who are close to him. When he couldn't ignore his state any longer, he looked to others' reactions as to how he would look at his own condition. As he was trying to unlock his bedroom door to let his parents and supervisor in, he thought, "If they took fright, then Gregor would have no further responsibility and could rest in peace.
But if they took it all calmly, then he had no reason to get excited either and he could, if he hurried, actually be at the station by eight. He became completely ashamed of himself, striving to completely hide himself from view, though it took great effort and pain on his part to do so. His imprisonment, or rather, his confinement from the company of others, had a devastating affect upon his mental well-being and in turn, affected his physical well-being.
Such a sad story and the fact that his family didn't feel remorse for their actions, but relief for themselves at his death I don't believe Kafka was trying to say this is how humans are indubitably, even though most of them try to put on a show of galantry and higher morals.
But that humans certainly can become some of the most self-serving, self-centered creatures on Earth. It serves as a warning to us all that while it is good to allow others to serve us from time to time, it is far better to always serve others. Gregor's family had all become accustomed to being taken care of by him.
They didn't even mind that he was held in servitude to pay off their debts. This was made evident when the fact was made known that Gregor's father had been saving up extra money earned by Gregor, when it could have been used to pay for his freedom much sooner.
Gregor, on the other hand, had been serving his family and loved them purely because of it. His first thought was not of himself, but of the hardship his condition would cause his family.
So lest we fall into such an ugly state of existence, let us guard ourselves by serving those we love, thus loving more those we serve. View all 23 comments. Mar 01, Adina rated it it was amazing Shelves: w-modern-world-literature , czech , classics. A family mother, father and sister are forced to become responsible and find jobs when the son, the sole provider of the family, has a sort of a disease and cannot work anymore.
As he becomes useless he is marginalized and despised. I almost forgot, the disease is that the son wakes up in the morning as a cockroach. Methamorphosis is considered one of the best books ever written which is quite remarkable considering its size. To succeed to have such an impact in a few pages is an accomplishment. At a first glance it is the story of Gregor Samsa, who wakes up transformed as a vermin and becomes treated like one by the family.
As with great literature, and with Kafka in particular, there is more than meets the eye. View all 49 comments. Aug 29, Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it Shelves: 20th-century , classics , fiction , literature , german , novellas , fantasy , philosophy , horror.
View all 4 comments. Apr 16, Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing. Some modern personal transformations are no less dramatic than those immortalized by Ovid … 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.
The bedding was hardly able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off any moment. His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the siz Some modern personal transformations are no less dramatic than those immortalized by Ovid … One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.
His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. On turning into the loathsome insect, Gregor Samsa actually acquired his authentic essential nature — his body just had come into accordance with his inner insectival self. In his new shape, his parents had no sympathy for him and for his sister he has become a kind of a pet. Gregor drew his head back from the door and lifted it to look at his father. Truly, this was not the father he had imagined to himself; admittedly he had been too absorbed of late in his new recreation of crawling over the ceiling to take the same interest as before in what was happening elsewhere in the flat, and he ought really to be prepared for some changes.
And yet, and yet, could that be his father? The man who used to lie wearily sunk in bed whenever Gregor set out on a business journey; who welcomed him back of an evening lying in a long chair in a dressing gown; who could not really rise to his feet but only lifted his arms in greeting, and on the rare occasions when he did go out with his family, on one or two Sundays a year and on high holidays, walked between Gregor and his mother, who were slow walkers anyhow, even more slowly than they did, muffled in his old greatcoat, shuffling laboriously forward with the help of his crook-handled stick which he set down most cautiously at every step and, whenever he wanted to say anything, nearly always came to a full stop and gathered his escort around him?
Now he was standing there in fine shape; dressed in a smart blue uniform with gold buttons, such as bank messengers wear; his strong double chin bulged over the stiff high collar of his jacket; from under his bushy eyebrows his black eyes darted fresh and penetrating glances; his onetime tangled white hair had been combed flat on either side of a shining and carefully exact parting. It makes me wonder how many paltry insects are really hiding behind human masks. View all 11 comments.
Sep 24, s. It was no dream. Gregor Samsa awakes one day, changed forever. How unpredictable is life, one moment leading to a new labyrinth of existence where forward is the only motion available, our scars and choices following us in a tuneless parade with few interested spectators. Despite our lives being a personal struggle, it is constantly judged, criticized and appraised by all those whom we encounter.
Oh, the injuries we inflict upon one another. We alienate and assume instead of communicate, we fear It was no dream. We alienate and assume instead of communicate, we fear differences and we yell when we should love. Strange how the ones we love tend to be the ones we hurt, or hurt us the most.
What is most compelling about Kafka is his ability to construct a tale from personal anxiety and injury that broadcasts as a universal message to all that read it, honing in on the guilt, loneliness and frustration in every heart.
Gregor lives a life of solemn servitude to his job and, most importantly, his family. While Gregor has provided the family with a modest home which he shares with them, the debt seems an unquenchable burden he can never fulfill.
There is the guilt at being unable to satisfy the father, to live up to the father, and the senior Samsa is a quick tempered man. Kafka struggled with a strained relationship with his own abusive father, a struggle that he transformed into a literary theme permeating much of his artistic output.
Despite his transformation, what initially upsets Gregor most is that he is missing work. I felt this sting deep within myself, being the head of a household and barely making ends meet despite long hours. The burden of the working class is to be so dependant on a job as life-blood creating a system of guilt and depraved necessity that pulls us from bed to work despite any affliction; we must work, we must provide, we must survive.
To stumble is to die, yet even staggering onward seems just a slow suicide climbing towards an unattainable surface from our pit of existence. One Hundred Years of Solitude. Snow Falling on Cedars. Moll Flanders. A Tale of Two Cities. The Silmarillion. Sense and Sensibility. Pride and Prejudice.
Twilight Book 1. The Tenth Circle. Throne of Glass. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Wuthering Heights. Gullivers Travels. Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban. A Distant Shore. To Kill a Mockingbird. The Hunger Games Book 1. Welcome to the Monkey House. All the Pretty Horses. Anne of Green Gables.
The Girl on the Train. The Left Hand of Darkness. Song of Solomon. Joy Luck Club. Pere Goriot. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Harry Potter: Chamber of Secrets. Cry, the Beloved Country. The Diary of a Young Girl. The English Patient. The Dark Is Rising. The Secret Garden. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
The Picture of Dorian Gray. A Farewell to Arms. The Catcher in the Rye. White Fang. The Woman Warrior. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Drinking Coffee Elsewhere.
The Sun Also Rises. A Clockwork Orange. The Fault in Our Stars. Treasure Island. The Color Purple. The Color of Magic. The Martian Chronicles. Brave New World. The Scarlet Letter. All Quiet on the Western Front. Lord of the Flies. War of the Worlds. Black Beauty. The Wind in the Willows. A Separate Peace. As I Lay Dying. The Hours. The Notebook. The Outsiders. The Red Badge of Courage. The Great Gatsby. Fahrenheit The Stranger. Old Yeller. The Time Machine.
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