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Franz Kafka Interpretation

The document discusses elements that are characteristic of Franz Kafka's fictional works. It describes how Kafka's stories usually involve protagonists with unspecified names who are defined by their jobs and quests in societies with oppressive, nonsensical rules. The document also analyzes themes like the conflict between individuals and seemingly omnipotent, insane systems and the abnormal nature of what is considered normal in Kafka's worlds.

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Yashika Saraf
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8 views

Franz Kafka Interpretation

The document discusses elements that are characteristic of Franz Kafka's fictional works. It describes how Kafka's stories usually involve protagonists with unspecified names who are defined by their jobs and quests in societies with oppressive, nonsensical rules. The document also analyzes themes like the conflict between individuals and seemingly omnipotent, insane systems and the abnormal nature of what is considered normal in Kafka's worlds.

Uploaded by

Yashika Saraf
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Before the Law is a parable about a man who seeks admittance to the Law.

However, the
doorkeeper standing before the gate of law refuses admittance by saying “It is possible, but
not at the moment”. When the man tries to peek in, the doorkeeper tells him, “ If you’re so
drawn to it, try to go in despite my veto. But take note: I am powerful, and I am only the least
of the doorkeepers. From hall to hall there is one doorkeeper after another, each more
powerful than the last. The third doorkeeper is so terrible that I cannot even bear look at
him.” After facing difficulties in entering the door to Law, he questions it’s accessibility. He
sits for days and years waiting to be admitted. The doorkeeper asks the man questions about
him and other things, however he does so indifferently. The man gives him everything he had
to seek admission, eventually his eyesight begins to fail and his end comes near. Finally the
man asked the doorkeeper why he had been the only one ever seeking admittance, for which
he replies that no one else could be admitted there since it was made only for him.

The Trial
The Trial  is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer whose dilemma in life is
that he has been arrested but is unable to determine the crime with which he is charged. The
story is told by a priest to Joseph K., the novel's main character, in a cathedral into which K.
has wandered while waiting for a foreign dignitary to whom he was to give a tour of the
cathedral.'

Elements of Kafkaesque

characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka's


fictional world.
Most of his stories are like parable and can’t be just taken to it’s face value.
Hannah Arendt calls Kafka’s world a terrible one. The structure of society that his works
present bear uncanny resemblance to the world we live in today.
The way of nature is always that of a ruin and a society that blindly subjects itself to the
necessity of laws it has made for itself must necessarily perish. Only salvation and not ruin
depends upon the freedom of man and his capacity to change the world and its natural course.
All of Kafka’s works have a fatal belief that the task of a man is to submit to a process
predetermined by some power (natural or manmade) which hastens the natural process of
ruin.
The words of the prison-chaplain in The Trial reveal a secret theology and the deep faith of
the bureaucrats to be a faith in necessity and the bureaucrats as functionaries of this necessity.
Kafka’s horrific and atrocious stories still to an extent feel unreal even though the reality has
fulfilled or surpassed the intensity of them.
Kafka’s stories usually have protagonists with unspecified names, usually referred to with
their initials. These individuals live in a society where they are given certain jobs and are
identified by the same. They consider themselves distinct from the society and assume the
central role because they don’t have a defined place in the world of professionals.
The protagonists do not exhibit any psychological features because they simply do not exist
out of their roles, positions and occupations. They are possessed completely by their quests,
in this novel it is to win the trial and in the extract before the law it is to get through the door.
Kafka doesn’t explain the conflict between a functionary’s private life and his function. He
immediately confronts the readers with the development. His stories don’t give a lot of
background, but directly jump to the action. For example, the trial starts directly with “for
without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning” and Before the Law
directly starts with the man seeking admittance to law.
The pretence of omnicompetence (ability to deal with all matters), the appearance of
superhuman capacities is the hidden motor that drives the destructive machinery in which
Kafka’s protagonists are caught and that is responsible for the seamless functioning of what is
senseless in and of itself.

The main theme of Kafka’s novels is the conflict between a world depicted in terms of a
seamlessly functioning machinery of this kind, and a protagonist trying to destroy it.
In Kafka’s novels the protagonist discovers that the normal world is actually abnormal and
that the judgements of its generally respected members are insane. In Before the Law where
the man seeks admittance, he doesn’t receive it, the abnormality here is that law is supposed
to accessible to all.
Kafka’s interest lies in the unreal structures of the real world and his radical interest in the
facades or just mere aspects of the world. It’s like constructing a model. His works are like
blueprints not doing justice to the actual model, but something without which making the
actual model is not possible.

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