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The excerpt below is from David Wyllie's translation of Kafka's The Metamorphosis:

Was it really not enough to let one of the trainees make enquiries - assuming enquiries were even necessary - did the chief clerk have to come himself, and did they have to show the whole, innocent family that this was so suspicious that only the chief clerk could be trusted to have the wisdom to investigate it? And more because these thoughts had made him upset than through any proper decision, he swang himself with all his force out of the bed. There was a loud thump, but it wasn't really a loud noise. His fall was softened a little by the carpet, and Gregor's back was also more elastic than he had thought, which made the sound muffled and not too noticeable. He had not held his head carefully enough, though, and hit it as he fell; annoyed and in pain, he turned it and rubbed it against the carpet.

I am trying to understand the meaning of the emboldened part. What's the object of "than"? Is the object "through any proper decision"? I thought an object of "than" should only be a noun phrase.

Help me parse and understand the sentence.

Thanks, regards.

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  • The complement of "than" is the preposition phrase "through any proper decision".
    – BillJ
    Commented Dec 24, 2023 at 15:46
  • I don't think translations like this are a suitable way to learn English. If it wasn't a translation, I'm sure no competent native Anglophone writer would ever write anything like the cited paragraph. Regardless of the exact phrasing, it simply doesn't reflect how Anglophones think, let alone how we express ourselves in words.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Dec 24, 2023 at 16:00
  • Me neither @FumbleFingers, but it was a part of the course. However, a good thing about translation is that there're a lot of versions to which I could refer, so that I can learn different ways of constructing sentences that convey the same meaning; other versions also help me understand better. This one, however, happens to be similar to other translations.
    – English Learner
    Commented Dec 25, 2023 at 14:56
  • Thank you, @BillJ.
    – English Learner
    Commented Dec 25, 2023 at 14:58

1 Answer 1

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Than introduces the second of two things that are being compared, whatever parts of speech they may be.

I like apples better than oranges.

i would call her slim rather than skinny.

Gregor got out of bed more (because his thoughts had upset him) than (because he had decided to get up) - it was an unconscious decision rather than a conscious one.

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