Term Paper on "Franz Kafka's Life and Work"

Term Paper 6 pages (2042 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Franz Kafka's Life And Work

Franz Kafka was born July 3, 1883 in Prague, Bohemia. He was born into a German speaking, Jewish middle-class family. His farther owned a shop that was located below where the family lived. He father had a bad temper and he was very bad-mannered in regards to his son's love of literature and his pursuit of writing. This proved to be a constant source of conflict and misery in many of Kafka's works. Kafka became the eldest and only son when his two brothers died shortly after birth. He was dreadfully aware of this role in the family for the rest of his life. Kafka fought back against his father's materialism and often wrote metaphorically of the struggle to overcome a dismayingly gargantuan, overpowering and practically suffocating force, much like his own timid and shy self in relation to his father (Merriman, 2005).

Kafka's writing has often been thought to be visionary fiction. It often addressed things three decades ahead of his time along with the anxieties and change of the 20th century. Kafka was alienated from his own heritage by his parent's mechanical religious practice and minimal social custom in the Jewish community. Even though his style and influence is sometimes attributed to Jewish folk lore, Kafka eventually declared himself a socialist atheist, Spinoza, Darwin and Nietzsche were some of his greatest influences (Merriman, 2005).

In 1902 Kafka met Max Brod. Max became his translator, supporter and closest friend. Kafka attended the German University in Prague in 1901 in order to study German literature and law. He received his doctorate in 1906. Kafka led a relatively unpromising life. He was a very good employee with the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute in Prague from 1907 to 1922. He didn't really gain any fame until after his death when Max Brod published his three major works, the Trial (1925) and the Castle in 1926 and Amerika (1927). Kafka's work is often filled with black humor in the method of parable, meditations, poetic fragments, and sketches. Even though his works are often open to multiple interpretations, which cause difficulty labeling his work in any single genre, existentialism and modernism are often among the themes present (Merriman, 2005).

In 1911, Kafka was to spend his first of many curative periods in sanatoriums and spas for his bad health. In 1912 he became engaged to a woman from Berlin, Felice Bauer. Also in 1912 he finished Metamorphosis, a masterpiece of striking psychological, sociological and existential torment. He wrote Meditation in 1913. This is a collection of short prose pieces. In 1914 he completed Before the Law (Merriman, 2005).

In 1916 Kafka wrote the Judgement, this piece directly echoed his struggle with his father. In 1917 Kafka ended his second engagement to Felice Bauer. He was also diagnosed with tuberculosis following many years of being ill. In 1923, he finally got away from his paternal family and went to Berlin to write. He wrote a Hunger Artist in 1924. This was four stories that illustrated the short and logical style of Kafka's writing in his later years (Merriman, 2005).

Kafka's lack of confidence and personal misgivings about his work caused him to request that all his unpublished manuscripts be destroyed, however his friend, biographer and literary executor Max Brod didn't obey his wishes and in 1925 he published the Trial, indisputably Kafka's most successful novel in it's dark exploration of anxiety, paranoia and persecution. The main character, Joseph K, unsuccessfully confronts random rules and a hopeless court system without knowing the crime with which he is guilty of. Brod also published the Castle (1926) a broad metaphor of authority and bureaucracy and the search for grace and forgiveness and Amerika (1927) with a light and amusing angle but also an assessment of the symbolic horrors of modern life. The Great Wall of China was published in 1931. In 1924, Franz Kafka died from complications of tuberculosis in Kierling, near Vienna, Austria (Merriman, 2005).

The Metamorphosis is a short story by Franz Kafka that was first published in 1915. This piece is often cited as one of the most influential works of short fiction of the 20th century and is widely read in colleges and universities around the world. In this story Gregor Samsa awakes one morning to find himself mysteriously transformed from a human into a monstrous bug. Rather than worry about his transformation, he began worrying about how to get to his job as a traveling salesman. Gregor is the only financial provider for his parents and sister, and their comfort is dependent on his ability to work (Glatzer, 1971).

No longer able to rely on Gregor's income, the other family members are forced to take on jobs and Grete's caretaking deteriorates. At one point, Gregor comes out of his room and his father chases him around the dining room table and hits him with apples. One of the apples becomes stuck in his back. This eventually led to an infection. Because of his infection and his hunger, Gregor becomes unable to move. His parents end up taking in borders and use Gregor's room as a dumping area for unnecessary objects. Gregor soon became dirty, dusty and covered in old bits of rotten food. Gregor finally gives way to his wound and dies (Glatzer, 1971).

The point-of-view then shifts when the family discovers that he is dead. The family feels like a huge burden has been lifted from them. They begin planning for the future again. The family realizes that they aren't doing financially bad at all, especially since, following Gregor's demise; they can move to a smaller place. The process of forgetting Gregor and putting him out of their lives is done very quickly (Glatzer, 1971).

A Hunger Artist is a short story by Franz Kafka published in 1922. The main character is a typical creation of Kafka, an individual marginalized and mistreated by society at large. This story, written near the end of Kafka's life, connects the hunger artist with the author as an estranged artist who is dying. Whether or not the main character's starving is supposed to be seen as spiritual or artistic, the panther is definitely thought to be the hunger artist's contrast: satisfied and contented. The animal's physical presence is seen as a marked contrast to the hunger artist's slightness. The story has been measured a sympathetic depiction of a misunderstood artist who seeks to rise above the purely animal parts of human nature represented by the panther and who is faced with empty audiences. The hunger artist comes to represent a joy deprived man who shows no enthusiasm and the panther who replaces him clearly is meant to show a sharp contrast between the two. Kafka is expressing the world's unresponsiveness to his own artistic principles, in the course of the plight of the hunger artist (Glatzer, 1971).

The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. This is one of Kafka's best-known works. It tells the story of a man who is arrested and prosecuted by a distant, unreachable authority. The nature of his crime is never exposed either to him or the reader. It is thought that Kafka deliberately set out to write parables and not just novels all about the human state. The Trial is a parable that contains a smaller parable entitled Before the Law. There is undoubtedly a relationship set up between the two but the exact meaning of that relationship is left up to the individual reader to figure out. This short parable seems to point out that the reader is a lot like the man at the gate. There is a meaning in the story for everyone just as there is one gate to the Law for each person (Glatzer, 1971).

This particular parable within Kafka's masterpiece highlights the essence of his philosophy. Assigned distinctive roles in life, individuals must look deep within the apparent illogicality of existence to achieve spiritual self-realization. The old man is the symbol of this universal search that is innate to mankind. The Trial is not simply a novel about the possible disaster of over-bureaucratization in society but it is an examination of the personal and, particularly, spiritual, needs of all human beings (Glatzer, 1971).

For Kafka, writing was like a form of prayer. All his efforts were concentrated on spiritual fulfillment, on achieving a life which should be immaculately pure. It would not be true to say that he did not care what the world thought of him. It was simply that he had no time to worry about its opinion. His life was entirely absorbed by the effort to achieve the highest that lies within man's power; by the urge, intensified to the point of suffering and almost to madness, to eradicate from himself every vice, every human failing, while examining his own weaknesses (Janouch, 1953).

Kafka had an ability to capture like no other writer before him the anguish and isolation of the individual… READ MORE

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