Gregor Samsa

Gregor Samsa is a fictional character in The Metamorphosis, a novella by Franz Kafka, who tries to live his life after having been transformed into a "monstrous vermin". He is a travelling salesman. The name "Gregor Samsa" appears to derive partly from literary works Kafka had read. The hero of The Story of Young Renate Fuchs, by German-Jewish novelist Jakob Wassermann (1873–1934), is a certain Gregor Samassa. The Viennese author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1836–1895), whose sexual imagination gave rise to the idea of masochism, is also an influence. Sacher-Masoch (note the letters Sa-Mas) wrote Venus in Furs (1870), a novel whose hero is named Gregor. A "Venus in furs" literally recurs in The Metamorphosis in the picture that Gregor Samsa has hung on his bedroom wall. The name Samsa is similar to Kafka in its play of vowels and consonants: "Five letters in each word. The S in the word Samsa has the same position as the K in the word Kafka. The A "is in the second and fifth positions... full article at wikipedia