Yet the burrow itself, which the narrator dubs “Castle Keep,” is the result of deliberate, extensive planning and constant maintenance. Further, the burrow’s effectiveness and impregnability inspire the narrator’s dreams: “tears of joy and deliverance still glisten on my beard when I awaken” (Complete Stories, p. 333).

The logic that gives rise to Castle Keep is one twisted by absolute isolation. It is the logic of both fantasy and ignorance, a child’s uninformed rationale. In fact, the burrow is much like a child’s fort—but one inhabited by someone driven insane with fear. The narrator’s incessant calculations and preparations become increasingly insular, until his mind is saturated with a baseless paranoia. This compulsively cogitative yet ultimately ignorant perspective is much like the psychology of Dostoevsky’s underground man. By the end of “The Burrow” the narrator’s mind no longer resembles human consciousness at all, but instead a fight-or-flight, animal mentality.

The rift between child and adult roles is at the heart of “The Metamorphosis.” Gregor, like the narrator of “The Burrow,” possesses the mentality of a child. In Kafka’s universe the child is the least authorial figure, and therefore can be likened to vermin. It is natural for Gregor’s parents and the head clerk to speak to Gregor condescendingly through the door. It’s almost as if they regard Gregor as throwing a childish fit. Later, the family, led ferociously by the father, forces Gregor into his room like a naughty child. And Gregor, for his part, has no interest in adult matters. He loathes his profession. He has no intention of finding a companion; the only woman in his life, besides his sister and mother, is the pin-up girl in the gilt frame. When Gregor looks around his room, Kafka, again with excruciating humor, describes it as “a regular human bedroom” (p. 7)—as if Gregor’s room would be decorated to the tastes of a monstrous vermin. But the precise phrase in the original German, kleines Menschenzimmer, implies that it resembles a child’s room.

Gregor, like Georg Bendemann of “The Judgment,” is typified by his familial relationships. (The other “son,” Karl Rossmann of “The Stoker,” differs because we meet him on his trip to America—he’s on his own.) Both Gregor and Georg are confined to their parents’ homes as adults. Adult children regularly slip into childhood roles when visiting their parents. But for Kafka’s characters, this stunting is not temporary. Kafka himself lived with his parents until a year before his death, and right before he died he was forced to return because of his tuberculosis. Living for so long in proximity to his parents made Kafka feel like a child—the same child he was prior to his physical and literary development. These developments vanished before his parents, who remained relatively unchanged—they even outlived him!—and whose authorial position over him was total. Walter Benjamin once described a photograph of Kafka in which Kafka’s “immensely sad eyes dominate the landscape” (“Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death”). Thomas Mann wrote about Kafka in much the same way—painting a man with “large dark eyes, at once dreamy and penetrating” and an “expression at once childlike and wise” (commentary in The Castle: The Definitive Edition). The only difference is that Mann was talking about Kafka’s final portrait, and Benjamin was looking at a picture of Franz taken when he was six years old. Kafka never grew up.

Kafka’s suffocation as an adult child leaves its trace on Gregor and Georg, who each suffers a child’s frustration at having no say, yet finds himself in a caretaker’s role fraught with responsibility and guilt. Each is sentenced to death by his parents. Gregor’s devotion to his parents and his sister forces him to interpret the family’s grievances as a condemnation, whereas Georg’s judgment is about as direct as you can get.