1. Lines 1-8 Analyze Author’s Choice: Text Structure
Authors make decisions about all aspects of a story, including where it is best to begin. In this story, Kafksa sets up a situation that hooks readers and makes them want to continue reading.
What does Kafka reveal about the main character in the first paragraph? Cite the line that this information can be found int.

2. Lines Analyze Theme
Authors reveal a theme throughout a text, shaping and refining it with specific details.
One of Kafka’s themes is isolation. Cite details from the text that supports this theme.

3. Lines 20-48 Support Inferences
Readers use textual evidence and personal experience to make inferences, or logical conclusions.
How does Gregor initially react to his situation? What can you infer about his character and his feels based on these lines?

4. Lines 41-55 Analyze Characters
Understanding a character’s motivations or reasoning for doing things helps readers better understand a character.
What motivates Gregor to keep his job? What does this tell you about his character?

5. Lines 100-115 Analyze Word Choice
An author’s choice of words can effectively convey characters’ feelings and their relationships.
What does Gregor’s father do when Gregor oversleeps? What particular words explain how his father feels? What kind of relationship can we infer Gregor has with his father?

6. Lines 111-115 Support Inferences
Readers often use details to infer how a character’s actions help develop the central theme.
What inference can you make about the theme based on Gregor’s actions? Identify textual evidence that supports your inference.

7. Lines 121-135 Support Inferences
Look for details that help you make inferences about characters and events. In the first paragraph of this story, Gregor easily accepted that he was not dreaming, even though his body was no longer human.
What can you infer about Gregor based on these lines?

8. Lines 156-158 Analyze Impact of Word Choice: Tone
An author’s choice of words, details, and sentence structure often communicate the tone.
What is the tone of this story? Identify key phrases that help you develop the tone.

9. Lines 172-175 Support Inferences
Inferences and conclusions are always based on textual evidence, but up to the reader to ultimately figure out.
What inference can you make about Gregor’s employer? Identify textual evidence that supports this.

10. Lines 226-235 Support Inferences
Complex characters change throughout the story and often have conflicting feelings and motivations.
Explain whether Gregor thinks his situation is unique to him. Given the strangeness of the situation, what can you infer about the type of person Gregor is?

11. Lines Analyze Theme
Once an author sets a theme, they are sure to reinforce it throughout the story.
Cite details that reinforce the theme.

12. Lines 256-264 Cultural Background
Authors can express the cultural background of a place through the opinions and actions of a character. By doing this, authors reveal what the society of particular place value. An author’s point of view, or attitude towards a subject, supports and develops a theme or message about society and human nature. Through the narrative, Kafka has shown Gregory’s anxiety about being late for work and possible consequences for that action.
Explain what Kafka is revealing to readers about society’s opinion of workers. How do these revelations help develop a theme?

13. Lines 304-321 Analyze Character
Authors sometimes use dialogue, or the conversation between characters, to build tension in a narrative. Dialogue can reveal motivations and the way characters think and feel.
Explain what Gregor’s dialogue in these lines evokes. What words create this feelings?

14. Lines 315-321 Support Inferences
Authors do not always explicitly reveal a character’s feelings and motivations. Readers must use information to make an inference about what is not stated directly.
What inference can you make about the reason Gregor is NOT worried? Cite with textual evidence.

15. Lines Analyze Theme
A story’s theme is the overall message the author wants to share. Themes are perceptions about human nature or society and they are usually unstated and must be inferred based on the way a character deals with and resolves conflict.
Cite details that shape and refine the story’s theme.

16. Lines 385-391 Support Inferences
Authors provide clues throughout a text about a character’s development and readers use those clues to infer information about the character.
Review what you leave learned about Gregor’s personality. Cite information in the text that supports their inferences.

17. Lines 403-408 Support Inferences
Making inferences is important to help them understand and relate to the characters and recognize how certain actions advance the plot.
What inferences can you make about the way the chief clerk, his mother, and his father react after seeing Gregor? Why do you think they react this way?