Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free The Metamorphosis trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Metamorphosis trivia quiz covers Franz Kafka's 1915 novella from its famous first sentence to the family's tram ride: Gregor Samsa the travelling salesman, the chief clerk at the door, Grete's violin and rotten food, the woman in fur, the apple lodged in his back, the three lodgers, the charwoman and Gregor's quiet death. It also digs into what surrounds the story — what 'ungeheueres Ungeziefer' really means and its twenty-plus English translations, Kafka's order that the insect never be drawn, Nabokov's beetle sketch, the father-complex and feminist readings, Steven Berkoff's stage version, and Kafka himself: Prague, the insurance job, Max Brod, tuberculosis and the note asking for everything to be burned. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation. Enjoy this one? Try our Classic Literature and Famous Authors quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote The Metamorphosis?
Franz Kafka
The Prague-born writer published it in 1915; it is the longest of the stories he considered finished and released in his lifetime.
Q 02What is the name of the salesman who wakes up transformed?
Gregor Samsa
His sister is Grete; the similarity of their names has been read as a clue that they form two halves of one personality.
Q 03What is the novella's original German title?
Die Verwandlung
Kafka had read and even translated Ovid as a schoolboy, yet chose the everyday word for transformation rather than 'Metamorphose'.
Q 04In which year was The Metamorphosis first published?
1915
It appeared in the October issue of the journal Die weißen Blätter, then as a book that December.
Q 05What was Gregor's job before his transformation?
Travelling salesman
He sold cloth, hated the constant travel and stayed only to pay off his bankrupt father's debts.
Q 06What German phrase describes the creature Gregor becomes?
Ungeheueres Ungeziefer
The 'monstrous vermin' has been translated at least sixteen different ways into English.
Q 07What did Ungeziefer literally mean in Middle High German?
An unclean animal unfit for sacrifice
Its indeterminacy seems deliberate, though Kafka called Gregor an 'Insekt' in a 1913 letter to his publisher.
Q 08How did Willa and Edwin Muir render the creature in the first English translation of 1933?
Gigantic insect
Michael Hofmann chose 'monstrous cockroach' in 2007 and Christopher Moncrieff went for 'monstrous bedbug'.
Q 09Which family member becomes Gregor's caretaker after the change?
His sister Grete
She discovers he prefers rotten food, but eventually declares the creature is no longer Gregor and must go.
Q 10Which instrument does Grete play?
Violin
Gregor had secretly planned to announce at Christmas that he would send her to the conservatory.
Q 11Who flees the apartment after seeing the transformed Gregor?
The chief clerk from his office
He had come to scold Gregor for missing his train and hears only incomprehensible noises through the door.
Q 12What does Gregor's father hurl at him, leaving him gravely wounded?
Apples
One lodges in his back and rots there; he eats little afterwards.
Q 13Which picture does Gregor cling to when his room is being emptied?
A woman clad in fur
He fears losing all trace of his human past; his mother faints at the sight of him on the wall.
Q 21What did the old cleaning lady call Gregor?
Old dung beetle
Nabokov insisted this was just her friendly manner and that Gregor was 'merely a big beetle'.
Q 22What kind of creature did Vladimir Nabokov conclude Gregor had become?
A winged beetle capable of flight
The novelist-lepidopterist sketched it on his teaching copy, annotated 'just over three feet long'.
Q 23Whom did Nabokov call the cruellest person in the story?
The sister
He rejected the father-complex reading and saw the tale as an artist destroyed step by step by narrow minds.
Q 14Where does Gregor hide whenever someone enters his room?
Under the sofa
His mother and sister remove the rest of the furniture so he can crawl freely over walls and ceiling.
Q 15How many lodgers does the family take in?
Three
They are never told about Gregor and threaten legal action when they discover him.
Q 16What draws Gregor out of his room on the night the lodgers spot him?
Grete's violin playing
The charwoman had left his door ajar; the lodgers refuse to pay for their stay.
Q 17How does Gregor die?
Of starvation before sunrise
Some critics read his slow emaciation as an unconscious hunger strike that his family fails to notice.
Q 18Who finds Gregor's body and disposes of it?
The charwoman
The old widow was never afraid of him and cheerfully called him an old dung beetle.
Q 19What do the Samsas do on the day of Gregor's death?
Take a tram trip into the countryside
They notice that Grete has blossomed into a pretty young woman and think of finding her a husband.
Q 20What chronic ailment does Mrs. Samsa suffer from?
Asthma
It is a constant worry to Gregor, whose own concern for his family never fades.
Q 24What did Kafka instruct his publisher about the cover of the first edition?
The insect must not be drawn
'It is not even to be seen from a distance,' he wrote in October 1915.
Q 25Who edited the journal Die weißen Blätter, where the story first appeared?
René Schickele
Kurt Wolff then issued it as a book in his series Der jüngste Tag in December 1915.
Q 26Roughly how long is The Metamorphosis in print?
About 70 pages
That makes it the longest work Kafka regarded as complete and published while alive.
Q 27Which critic first read the story as an expression of Kafka's father complex, in 1948?
Charles Neider
Gregor's relationship with Mr. Samsa is often modelled on Kafka's own with his overbearing father Hermann.
Q 28Whose 1989 feminist reading argued that Grete's metamorphosis is as central as Gregor's?
Nina Pelikan Straus
Volker Drüke later suggested the title may point to Grete's growth from girl to woman as much as to Gregor.
Q 29Which translator titled his 2024 version The Transformation and defended the choice?
Mark Harman
He argued Kafka could have written 'Die Metamorphose' but deliberately chose the plainer German word.
Q 30Into how many English translations has The Metamorphosis been rendered?
More than twenty
Renderings of the first sentence alone range from 'gigantic insect' to 'gargantuan pest'.