But his father was in no mood to notice such subtleties, "Ah!" he cried as he entered, in a tone that sounded as if he were at once furious and glad. Gregor turned his head away from the door and lifted it toward his father. He had not really imagined his father looking like this, as he stood in front of him now […]. And yet, and yet—was this still his father? Was this the same man who in the old days used to lie wearily buried in bed when Gregor left on a business trip […]? Now, however, he was holding himself very erect, dressed in a tight-fitting blue uniform with gold buttons […]; under his bushy eyebrows his black eyes darted bright piercing glances; his usually rumpled white hair was combed flat, with a scrupulously exact, gleaming part.

Basic set up:

Okay. Let's see if we have this right: a man wakes up in his own bed on an ordinary workday to discover… that he has turned into a disgusting bug. Nope. Nopenopenope.

Gregor Samsa is the typical alienated Kafka protagonist living in an absurd world that first negates his feelings and finally negates his existence. And in this quote, we see the unconscious meaning of the whole turning-into-a-bug nightmare: this is about Gregor's power vs. his father's power in the household.

It's no secret that Kafka had mad daddy issues. And boy, oh boy do they shine forth in The Metamorphosis. It's common practice to read Gregor (what a weird name) as a stand in for ol' Franz himself, which helps give this story more shades of Freudian meaning than Christian Grey has shades of snazzy ties.

So pre-bug transformation, Gregor's father felt a sense of dependency toward his son, which kept him from lashing out at Gregor. But now that his bouncing baby boy has six legs, he feels "both furious and glad." He's is furious that his son has transformed and can no longer shoulder his family responsibility, but also glad that this has happened so that he can express the rage and humiliation he has felt all along at being unseated as head of the family. 

Yikes. Can't we all just get along?

Mr. Papa Samsa used to lie listlessly around the house in a uniform covered with bits of old food (gross), which was symbolic of his lost respectability and social position. But now that he has been forced out of retirement, he wears a clean, well-fitting uniform with polished buttons.

He is "erect," signaling both his manhood (badoom ching!) and his power. He's ready to assume his position in the family and society again. Gregor, meanwhile, is a filthy beetle-thingy.

Okay, so what does this have to do with the unconscious? Well, remember that the unconscious is where all our ugly animal urges hang out. Lust, violence, a desire for chili cheese fries—they call the unconscious home. What's happening here is that Papa Samsa is gleeful that his son (who he's supposed to love, right?) is buglike, because that makes him Mr. Alpha Samsa once again.

We also have (this being a story and all) the fact that Franz Kafka's unconscious is shining through in the writing of this story, exposing his own fears of becoming obsolete (read: a bug) and having his Daddy Dearest delight in his son's downfall. Yeah, that sounds Freudian all right.

The passage is written in third person, but it is not the third person of an omniscient narrator like those fusty novelists of the 19th century used. Nope—this is free indirect discourse that allows us to slip in and out of the characters' heads and see what they are thinking.

The perspective in the novella is mostly Gregor's, but Kafka doesn't use first person since Gregor's identity is up for grabs in this text. After all, since Gregor doesn't know who or what he is—bug? Man? Manbug?—he's not deserving of the authoritative first person. Also, Gregor is steadily losing his ability to think analytically throughout the work (becoming a beetle does that, apparently) and he can't really reflect or philosophize.

So we get a chance to look into the mind of Daddy Samsa, who is thinking like some kind of reversed-Oedipal nightmare. Where your typical Oedipus complex situation has the son thinking "Must kill Father. Must take Head of Household status," Daddy Samsa is thinking "Sweet. My son is dead and I'm once again the top dog."

And of course (because we're playing psychologist here) this speaks volumes about Kafka's understanding of how his scary Dad thought about him. Poor Franz admitted that his "writing was all about [his father]," and in The Metamorphosis we see Kafka's dear old dad as relishing in his son's buggy new body. And, thanks to free indirect discourse, we get to see this front and center.