The reading
The bead. Gregor is transformed through no act of his own into "a horrible vermin"; the family resolves to "get rid of it"; the contaminant dies; the closing renewal rides out to the open country in warm sunshine, the sister "blossoming into a well built and beautiful young lady." Purity restored to the household — at the cost of a life.
Engines
- purity/contamination · content · spine · ✓ — purifier's-POV shape. Slot 1 the arbitrary defilement ("found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin"); slot 2 the family's named cleansing ("'We have to try and get rid of it'… 'this animal is persecuting us'") completed with the contaminant's death; slot 3 the household renewal ("[Grete] was the first to get up and stretch out her young body"). The defilement is non-moral — Gregor is blameless — so the engine fills with zero moral guilt.
The bundle. Single-engine specimen, the purifier's-POV shape that controls the catalog's redemption-leak. The blamelessness of the defiled party closes the sin-overlay that Dracula's religious vocabulary left ambiguous, and surfaces the engine's role axis: defiled party and contaminant, told here from the purifiers' side (inverse of Dracula's defiled-victim POV). Adjacent finding (controlled by Naaman): the expulsion co-runs with belonging-loss — "we wouldn't have a brother any more" — so the purity-fill here is impure on the belonging axis.
Dual-use read. Purity/contamination's counterfeit is the cleansing-as-grift — the contaminant identified and expelled for the in-group's renewal, with the bearer-of-contamination playing the load-bearing structural role of the thing to be removed regardless of guilt or innocence. Value-flow call (subjective, per the README): Kafka writes the engine from inside the contaminant — Gregor's perspective is the reader's anchor through the cleansing, and the closing renewal is rendered as the household's escape from him. The structural sympathy is with the contaminant. The novella is the engine running honestly and the engine's pathos made visible — the family's payoff (restored purity, the daughter blossoming) is paid for by the reader's identification with what was expelled.
Verdict. Purity/contamination at its purifier's-POV shape — the specimen that closes the redemption-leak and surfaces the engine's role axis. The blameless-defilement is what makes the slot fills uncontaminated by sin-overlay.
Evidence. ✓ slot-proven — full record at The Metamorphosis. Slot-test cleared via verbatim quotes from Gutenberg #5200 (David Wyllie translation, PD).
The evidence
The engine's purifier's-POV shape, and the specimen that controls redemption's sin-overlay: the defiled party is blameless (arbitrarily transformed), so the cleansing is pure contamination-removal with no guilt in play.
Slot 1 — Defilement
Gregor is transformed, through no act of his own, into an unclean thing:
"[he] found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin." (l. 49)
The defilement spreads to the home — his room left to rot:
"little balls of dust and filth" (l. 1394)
Slot 2 — The cleansing, at cost
The family resolves to purge the contaminant. The sister names it, depersonalised to "it," "this animal":
"We have to try and get rid of it" (l. 1665)... "It's got to go... this animal is persecuting us" (ll. 1688, 1695)
The cleansing completes with the contaminant's death (the charwoman):
"it's dead, just lying there, stone dead!" (l. 1773)
The cost is a life — Gregor's.
Slot 3 — Purity restored
Purity returns to the household. The closing renewal, riding "out to the open country... filled with warm sunshine":
"[their] daughter was blossoming into a well built and beautiful young lady" (l. 1902)... "[Grete] was the first to get up and stretch out her young body" (l. 1907)
Guard / distinctness — controls the sin-overlay; surfaces the role axis
Gregor is blameless — arbitrarily transformed, no wrong done — so the engine fills with zero moral guilt, closing the redemption-leak that Dracula's religious vocabulary left open. It also reveals the role axis: the cleansing transaction has a defiled party and a contaminant, and the story is told here from the purifiers' side (the family restored, the contaminant expelled) — the inverse of Dracula's defiled-victim POV. (New adjacency, controlled by Naaman: the expulsion co-runs with belonging-loss — "we wouldn't have a brother any more" — so this fill is impure on the belonging axis.)
Result
All three slots fill, the defilement non-moral. Tagged purity/contamination — the purifier's-POV shape.