“Their daughter was the first to get up, and stretched her nubile young body”

The last paragraph serves immense importance in tying the story up and conveying its overall message, but so much of the emphasis from readers has been focused on the dialogue between the parents in which it’s inferred they will go back to their old ways of taking advantage of one of their children. However, I believe it’s important to really focus within the last sentence of that passage and the story itself. As the story winds down, we see another metamorphosis taking place, but instead of evolving into that of a cockroach, Gregor’s sister’s evolution mirrors that of a butterfly. Stretching out her nubile young body can be interpreted as if she had been stuck in a place of confinement or isolation for quite a bit of time and then she stretches her young body out akin to that of a butterfly hatching itself from its cocoon.

Kafka’s metamorphosis is about exactly what the title suggests, transformation. Many could see the ending as a negative in which the parents have learned nothing from Gregor’s trial and tribulations. However, the family seems to genuinely enjoy one another’s company for once as they took the time to go to the park together. They eventually make the compromise to move into a smaller, inexpensive house, something they weren’t willing to earlier in the story. The ending to me implies that Gregor had inhibited the family from making their own unique transformation, and for them to do so would involved him making his own transformation which was him sacrificing himself. Due to Gregor’s actions, his sister is finally able to complete her own metamorphosis into a young, beautiful, woman marking the metamorphosis of the entire family complete.