- end_line
- 1068
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-27T20:59:33.330Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1020
- text
- hear his mother express her joy, but once at the door she went silent.
First, of course, his sister came in and looked round to see that
everything in the room was alright; and only then did she let her
mother enter. Gregor had hurriedly pulled the sheet down lower over the
couch and put more folds into it so that everything really looked as if
it had just been thrown down by chance. Gregor also refrained, this
time, from spying out from under the sheet; he gave up the chance to
see his mother until later and was simply glad that she had come. “You
can come in, he can’t be seen”, said his sister, obviously leading her
in by the hand. The old chest of drawers was too heavy for a pair of
feeble women to be heaving about, but Gregor listened as they pushed it
from its place, his sister always taking on the heaviest part of the
work for herself and ignoring her mother’s warnings that she would
strain herself. This lasted a very long time. After labouring at it for
fifteen minutes or more his mother said it would be better to leave the
chest where it was, for one thing it was too heavy for them to get the
job finished before Gregor’s father got home and leaving it in the
middle of the room it would be in his way even more, and for another
thing it wasn’t even sure that taking the furniture away would really
be any help to him. She thought just the opposite; the sight of the
bare walls saddened her right to her heart; and why wouldn’t Gregor
feel the same way about it, he’d been used to this furniture in his
room for a long time and it would make him feel abandoned to be in an
empty room like that. Then, quietly, almost whispering as if wanting
Gregor (whose whereabouts she did not know) to hear not even the tone
of her voice, as she was convinced that he did not understand her
words, she added “and by taking the furniture away, won’t it seem like
we’re showing that we’ve given up all hope of improvement and we’re
abandoning him to cope for himself? I think it’d be best to leave the
room exactly the way it was before so that when Gregor comes back to us
again he’ll find everything unchanged and he’ll be able to forget the
time in between all the easier”.
Hearing these words from his mother made Gregor realise that the lack
of any direct human communication, along with the monotonous life led
by the family during these two months, must have made him confused—he
could think of no other way of explaining to himself why he had
seriously wanted his room emptied out. Had he really wanted to
transform his room into a cave, a warm room fitted out with the nice
furniture he had inherited? That would have let him crawl around
unimpeded in any direction, but it would also have let him quickly
forget his past when he had still been human. He had come very close to
forgetting, and it had only been the voice of his mother, unheard for
so long, that had shaken him out of it. Nothing should be removed;
everything had to stay; he could not do without the good influence the
furniture had on his condition; and if the furniture made it difficult
for him to crawl about mindlessly that was not a loss but a great
advantage.
- title
- Chunk 7