[Image - total family confusion - figures twist and whirl around each other like a frenetic dance.]
Clerk: [rushing downstage - family’s movement becomes faster and faster as confusion breaks loose.] Did you make out a word of it - is he trying to make fools of us?
Gregor’s language is very informal, it is almost as though he’s speaking in bullet points, missing out words because he’s talking so fast and trying so hard to explain, when they can’t actually hear anything he says as actual words. His language changes as the play goes on, he becomes more calm and speaks in full sentences rather than missing bits out.
Gregor: I can hear you! You think I can’t understand you - simply because you can’t understand me, but I can, I can - I can hear every sound you make, every moan.
All of Gregor’s words are desperate, a call out when nobody can hear him or answer his call. This is done in order to create an empathy with Gregor, to make the audience feel sympathy for him and create a good vs. evil side, where slowly the whole family become the evil and Gregor is fighting alone.
Parts of the script are very short and fast, like the scene between Greta, Mr & Mrs Samsa. Berkof gives each character one word to say and it goes around each character at a fast pace in order to build up tension.
Greta: Gregor!
Mr S: Cash!
Greta: Gregor!
Mrs S: Shoes!
Greta: Gregor!
Mr S: Cigars!
And it carries on like this. It builds up the pressure and shows the audience how much the family rely on Gregor as their financial provider and emphasizes how important Gregor is to the family. The fast pace of that scene is all about Gregor’s life, how hard he works and how much he pushes himself to get all of his work done so that he can bring money home to his family. Although the language used in this scene is simple, just day to day words - the way they are spoken had a big effect, the unnatural speech pattern of listing at a fast pace.
This style is used again in the play further on, this time it’s Greta,Gregor, Mr & Mrs Samsa.
Mr S: Here’s a stale loaf.
Gregor: Yes!
Mrs S: A buttered role.
Gregor: Yes!
Greta: Nuts.
Gregor: Yes!
This time it is used for excitement, the fast pace and short sentences are used when Berkof needs to build up the scene, or emphasize something. In this case Gregor’s excitement that his family have finally realised what food he needs so that he can have a happier existence. If I were to direct either the listing scenes, I would have the actors being quick on queue straight after one another, and usually if a person is talking quite fast, they’re voice tends to get higher - so I would have the characters getting faster and higher in pitch as they listed each item.
There are also a lot of dashes used “ - ” in the dialogue, in order to break up the longer sentences and to give more room for the characters to say more into their sentences, without making it seem like a monologue. They also represent pauses in the sentences, some of them wouldn‘t make sense without a pause.. They were also used by Berkof in order to help his actors perform the play in the exact style that Berkof had in mind as he was writing the script.
Mr S: You know how I look forward to my breakfast - eating the rolls all hot and crisp from the bakery - and the smell of an early morning newspaper and coffee smalls - I don’t have much to look forward to - but that’s one of them.
None of the language in this play is particularly formal, as it is mostly dialogue between a family, most of the language is simple every day language and the only unnatural speech pattern found is when the family are listing things in fast pace as I mentioned earlier.