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. Origin 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.Kafka (1996, 3). The name Samsa also resembles Kafka in its play of vowels and consonants: "Five letter

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