His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, waved about helplessly as he looked. If I didn't have my parents to think. He must have tried it a hundred times, shut his eyes wouldn't have.

"What's happened to me? " he thought. It wasn't a dream. His room, a proper human room although a little too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table - Samsa was a travelling salesman - and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. It showed a lady fitted out with a fur hat and fur boa who sat upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered the whole of her lower arm towards the viewer.