Gregor Samsa
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Gregor Samsa is a fictional character in The Metamorphosis, a novella by Franz Kafka, who tries to live his life after having been transformed into a "monstrous vermin". He is a travelling salesman.
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[edit] Role
[edit] Origin
The name "Gregor Samsa" appears to derive partly from literary works Kafka had read. The hero of The Story of Young Renate Fuchs, by German-Jewish novelist Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934), is a certain Gregor Samassa. The Viennese author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–1895), whose sexual imagination gave rise to the idea of masochism, is also an influence. Sacher-Masoch (note the letters Sa-Mas) wrote Venus in Furs (1870), a novel whose hero is named Gregor. A "Venus in furs" literally recurs in The Metamorphosis in the picture that Gregor Samsa has hung on his bedroom wall.[1] The name Samsa also resembles Kafka in its play of vowels and consonants: "Five letters in each word. The S in the word Samsa has the same position as the K in the word Kafka. The A [is in the second position in both words.]"[2]
[edit] Trivia
- Apache Xalan, an XSLT processor, names its default "translet" class "GregorSamsa", as a reference to this character.
- The character Mr. Samsa (A normal cockroach) in Johnny the Homicidal Maniac is a reference to this novella
- There's a spoof of Gregor Samsa in the anime Dokuro-Chan.
[edit] Notes
[edit] References
- Kafka, Franz (1996). The Metamorphosis, ed. Stanley Corngold. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-96797-2.
