The Metamorphosis is a story of symbolism, written by Austrian writer Franz Kafka and originally published in German as Die Verwandlung in 1915. The Metamorphosis begins with a boy, Gregor Samsa, waking up one morning from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed into a giant insect. Although Samsa has sometimes been described as a cockroach, the German word Ungeziefer does not refer to any specific species of bug. His cruel father shuts him away in his bedroom, and, after his father throws an apple at him, Gregor slowly dies from both his family’s negligence and his own guilty hopelessness.