The everyman in Franz Kafka
professional middle class world that dominated his existence, an existence in which the human mind and body serve primarily as a tool to earn wages and provide for a somewhat (if one were to take from his writing) parasitic family unit, regardless of the personal and interpersonal harm it produces. This is humorously evident to any reader in that Gregor Samsa’s first practical concern having awoken as a ‘monstrous pest’ is that he will be late for his work: ‘Great heavenly father! He thought, it was half past six’. It is obvious that his profession consumes his existence, but he must endure it and ‘exercise restraint’ towards his domineering boss ‘for the sake of my parents’. The is an allegorical aspect to Metamorphosis and one could easily speculate that the hypochondriac Kafka intended the transformation of Gregor Samsa into an ‘Ungeziefer’ 3 was not literal but merely a metaphorical portrayal of an overworked son succumbing to a debilitating illness (perhaps tuberculosis), having already been reduced to a subhuman status. Much like the officer whose entire existence seems subsumed into being ‘the sole defender of the old Commandant’s legacy’ , these men are consumed into their practical role and present themselves with little recognizable facets of identity. Even the aspects of humanity that Samsa desperately clings to – a framed picture and an old desk from his childhood – are removed and he descends further and further from his family’s respect and tolerance. Kafka strips these faint characters of personhood, and so the figure that eventually perishes is little else than a confined husk devoid of spiritual life and disposed of by the maid as simple waste matter. Franz Kafka’s universe is not only an abstract force, but it is almost personified through the flawed father, essentially a stock character of his writing. In these stories the nameless Mr. Bendemann and Mr. Samsa (Kafka’s stories are replete with nameless characters) act as domineering, vaguely characterized, irrational forces upon the everyman protagonists, channelling the power and absurdity of his universe. Herbert Tauber notes that Mr Bendemann’s judgement is ‘absurd . . . as punishment for an established guilt’ , 4 and yet he looms large as the retiring patriarch of their household, paradoxically both unwell and immensely str ong, rotting in his room hardly eating and yet remains ‘a giant of a man to Georg’ ; he is a ‘terrifying’ almost supernatural ‘vision’ as he pronounces his fatal judgement over his son. Georg is incredulously pushed towards his fate by a nebulous and irresistible force, feeling himself ‘expelled’ from his father’s room and ‘sprang’ and ‘raced’ toward his death. Critics have wondered the extent to which a Judaic philosophy of guilt and atonement may have loomed over the thematic core of the story and the effe ct of Mr. Bendemann’s judgement. It was written on September 22 nd 1911 , in a single night preceding that year’s Yom Kippur , which acts primarily as the Jewish festival of atonement and repentance. Bendemann’s father could symbolically be ‘the God of the Jewish day of atonement’. Scholars have furthermore long noted a clear religious allegorical thread throughout Kafka’s work. The Old Commandant of In the Penal Colony is described as being ‘soldier, judge, engineer, chemist, and artist, all in one’ and Erwin Steinberg notes he is an ‘omniscient’ 5 presence over the events of the story, while Doreen Fowler expands on this to say he is ‘the creator of genesis’ 6 who, within Kafka’s analogy, has constructed a world ‘for the expiation of human guilt’. The officer’s death proves him to be the ‘Christ figure’ who inadvertently destroys the machine as the destructive god of the Old Test ament.
3 Hoffman (2007) translates this as ‘monstrous cockroach’, the word is closer to ‘vermin’ in modern German and is variously rendered based on information given about the animal’s appearance by Kafka. 4 Tauber, H. (1948). 5 Steinberg, E. (1976). 6 Fowler, D. (1979).
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