After "unsettling dreams," Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning and discovers he's been transformed into a "monstrous vermin" (1.1). He's not sure exactly what genre of "vermin" he is. But lying on his back, he notices that he now has a gigantic shell and numerous skinny legs that don't seem to do much.
He takes a look around his small room. Fabric samples from his job as a traveling salesman are spread out on a table. He sees a photo of a woman wrapped up in furs that he recently clipped from a magazine and framed up on his wall. None of these items offer a clue as to how he got into the state he's in.
Gregor tries to turn onto his side to go back to sleep—as anyone would do in this situation (!!!). But he can't quite get his new body to flip onto its side.
Gregor then thinks of how tough his job as a traveling salesman is, how travel is such a hassle, and how hard it is to get "intimate" with anyone (1.4). At this point, you probably want to poke his vermin head and say, "Dude, you're a bug." But we digress.
Gregor feels an itch on his body and sees some white dots. He'd like to scratch the area, but the idea of touching himself disgusts him, so he recoils.
Gregor goes back to bemoaning the life of the traveling salesman. Unlike the other traveling salesmen, who lead jolly lives, Gregor has to get up early because his boss is a real taskmaster. Gregor would quit if he could, but he has to work off the debt that his parents owe his boss.
That reminds him—he better get up to catch 5 o'clock train.
He looks up at the alarm clock and it's—6:30.
He wonders how it was possible for him to sleep through his alarm. He thinks he better get up and try to catch the train. But then he decides it's be no use because a messenger boy at the 5 o'clock train will have already noticed that Gregor is missing and report that fact back to his boss.