Page 45 - the-metamorphosis

emptied. Was he really eager to let the warm room, com-
fortably furnished with pieces he had inherited, be turned
into a cavern in which he would, of course, then be able to
crawl about in all directions without disturbance, but at the
same time with a quick and complete forgetting of his hu-
man past as well? Was he then at this point already on the
verge of forgetting and was it only the voice of his mother,
which he had not heard for along time, that had aroused
him? Nothing was to be removed; everything must remain.
In his condition he couldn’t function without the beneficial
influences of his furniture. And if the furniture prevented
him from carrying out his senseless crawling about all over
the place, then there was no harm in that, but rather a great
benefit.
But his sister unfortunately thought otherwise. She had
grown accustomed, certainly not without justification, so
far as the discussion of matters concerning Gregor was
concerned, to act as an special expert with respect to their
parents, and so now the mother’s advice was for his sister
sufficient reason to insist on the removal, not only of the
chest of drawers and the writing desk, which were the only
items she had thought about at first, but also of all the fur-
niture, with the exception of the indispensable couch. Of
course, it was not only childish defiance and her recent very
unexpected and hard won self-confidence which led her to
this demand. She had also actually observed that Gregor
needed a great deal of room to creep about; the furniture,
on the other hand, as far as one could see, was not of the
slightest use.

The Metamorphosis