But regardless, he’s started down that path in life, through humility and contemplation. The Samsa family, which does not comprehend this less visual transformation in Gregor, interrupts it. Instead of liberation Gregor attains only confinement—both spatial and metaphysical.

In “The Metamorphosis” the physical transformation, rather than its dénouement, is merely a premise. By contrast, Ovid’s classic, Metamorphoses, focuses on the process and novelty of transformation. Ovid consistently establishes an explicit causal, if not moral, relationship between a character’s actions and the consequence of metamorphosis. In the tale of Arachne, another story of a human transformed into a bug, haughty Arachne refuses to admit that her spinning skills derive from any teacher or divine source. The spinster goes so far as to challenge Minerva (the Roman correlate of the Greek goddess Athena) to a spinning contest. After Arachne defeats Minerva, the latter strikes her with a wooden shuttle—an action much like a spanking or a public caning. Out of despair Arachne tries to hang herself, but Minerva simultaneously spares and punishes the weaver by changing her into a spider.

This metamorphosis is not mysterious. Arachne’s transformation is the direct result of Minerva’s anger, caused by Arachne’s own impudence. For Ovid, Minerva and the rest of the deities represent the highest authority; the gods are not to be challenged or regarded as equals. Even though Minerva is defeated, her authority is absolute. As Arachne attempts suicide—again, to make the final transformation—her agency is stripped by Minerva, who has other transformative plans in mind.

It is easy to decipher the story of Arachne, whether you take her side or Minerva’s, but Kafka’s moral, if there is one, is not obvious or logical. The abandonment a reader feels at the end of any text is especially acute with Kafka. The few clues he leaves us are not only incomplete, they are contradictory. Kafka is notoriously incapable of completion. His three novels—The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, all of them unfinished—were assembled by Max Brod, whom we have to thank for exhuming a Franz Kafka who seems to come very close, one might guess, to saying what he means. But whenever Kafka reached so deeply within himself—whether in the guise of Joseph K., simply K., or Karl Rossmann—he eventually abandoned the work. His one pride was the torrential composition of “The Judgment,” which he wrote in a single night. Perhaps any project that took more than eight hours to finish lost its luster; perhaps an “opening out of the body and the soul” (Diaries, 1910-1913, p. 276) was too painful for an extended period; and perhaps this explains why Kafka went years at a time without writing a word of fiction.

Kafka regarded the end of “The Metamorphosis”—its composition interrupted by a business trip—as “unreadable.” He also wrote in his diary that he found it “bad,” but of course Kafka relished his failure. Failure is precisely what he expected and resolved to accomplish—and he hid behind it. Kafka’s literature has no end, no borders like those that frame Escher’s artworks. He does not write in black and white. And unlike Escher, Kafka was unable to manage the subject of liberation with any success. Yet it is “The Metamorphosis,” and not necessarily “The Judgment,” that is remembered by readers and that will be taught in schools forever. Kafka, it seems, is at his best when he fails.

His failure puts the burden of meaning on readers. We must reconstruct Kafka, as we do Gregor Samsa. That is what critics have been trying to do for generations—indeed, Kafka’s reputation wasn’t made until after his death. He is locked in time and cannot be questioned.