Gregor wanted to avoid being seen at the window during the day, the few square meters of the floor did not give him much room to crawl about, it was hard to just lie quietly through the night, his food soon stopped giving him any pleasure at all, and so, to entertain himself, he got into the habit of crawling up and down the walls and ceiling. he was especially fond of hanging from the ceiling; it was quite different from lying on the floor; he could breathe more freely; his body had a light swing to it; and up there, relaxed and almost happy, it might happen that he would surprise even himself by letting go of the ceiling and landing on the floor with a crash. but now, of course, he had far better control of his body than before and, even with a fall as great as that, caused himself no damage. franz kafka, the metamorphosis (david wyllie, trans.) what can you infer about gregor from this excerpt? a. he is acting more like a bug and less like a human. b. he is trying to call the hospital so that someone can him. c. he is thinking about the time he spent at the window when he was human. d. he is plotting his escape because he hates being locked up.

The answer is A: He is acting more like a bug and less like a human.

In Kafka´s story the reader witnesses what the French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, termed a becoming animal. Gregor, the main character of the story, ceases to be a human being while at the same time, begins his transformation as a bug, and yet, he is not quite a bug nor a human being anymore, he is something novel, a bug that speaks and thinks like Gregor, and a human being getting accustomed and shaped by a new and unwanted experience: being turned into a bug. Kafka´s story shows the inconsistencies of human consciousness and the unexpected turns that shape it into what it is, and what it is, never is something fully determined nor constituted.

he can eat everything and drink whatever he wants

explanation:

with mrs. linde, nora reveals her insensitivity and lack of shame about the forgery she committed. she implies that mrs. linde has obviously aged since they last met 10 years earlier, which accounts for nora’s inability to recognize her old friend. although nora seems sympathetic to mrs. linde’s plight, she can’t seem to control herself from boasting about her three children, her husband’s recent promotion, and how good she feels to finally have some money to spend. in a way, she seems to be flaunting her good fortune in front of mrs. linde who, deprived of all these benefits, has come to ask nora for . it is also through her interactions with mrs. linde that we realize something deeper lies under nora’s seemingly childish exterior. she reveals the secret of her forgery to mrs. linde and seems to see herself as quite resourceful for having done it.

in the company of dr. rank, nora is freer than she is with her own husband. she openly laughs with joy at knowing that all the other bank employees will be under her husband’s control. she offers dr. rank a macaroon, apparently forgetting that he knows she is forbidden to eat them. she then quickly covers for herself by claiming that mrs. linde brought them. nora seems much more assertive and free with these other characters, as well as unabashedly willing to scheme, lie, and justify her transgressions as altruistic.  

krogstad provides an interesting parallel to nora. like nora, he too is guilty of committing forgery, for which torvald condemns him and decides to fire him. although krogstad is a man and nora a woman, their crimes of forgery unite them. in fact, krogstad might represent what nora would be like if she were a man and were not strictly scrupulous like her husband is. for example, she tells mrs. linde that "a barrister's profession is such an uncertain thing, especially if he won't undertake unsavoury cases; and naturally torvald has never been willing to do that." perhaps nora would have delved into the unsavory, given how opposite she is to her husband. krogstad's is also the only harsh voice of reality that nora is forced to hear, and that is because he blackmails her for her regaining his job at the bank. finally, torvald’s reaction to krogstad’s forgery seems to foreshadow his harsh and cold reaction to nora’s forgery.