The everyman in Franz Kafka
Power within these stories is reserved for that which effects an overwhelming judgement, and this judgement is imbued with a religious or supernatural power.
It is rather simple to view Kafka’s writing as an exercise in exploring his own turmoil. H e creates stories with autobiographical protagonists fighting a losing battle against loneliness, guilt, illness, economic difficulties and an archetypal overbearing father figure. By writing these stories with such simple conflicts he turns his everyman into a pitiable and universal hero of sorts, a faceless and downtrodden being weighed with the expectations of his world who can ultimately never escape these pressures before they destroy him. By providing a touch of absurdism – a sudden supernatural judgement, a transformation into vermin, an insane cult of capital punishment – he removes a veneer of regularity to this life, and it becomes nightmarish. It is through this nightmarish world that Kafka’s work in these stories seemingly becomes an exercise in the pathological destruction of his everyman.
Bibliography
Fowler, D. (1979) ‘‘ In the Penal Colony ’: Kafka’s Unorthodox Theology’, College Literature 6: 113-120 Hoffman, M. (2007) Metamorphosis and other stories. London (all direct quotes are from Hoffm an’s translation) Jofen, J. (1978) ‘Metamorphosis’, American Imago 35: 347-356 Neumeyer, P. (1979) ‘Do not teach Kafka’s ‘ In the Penal Colony ’’, College Literature 6: 103-112 Steinberg, E. (1962) ‘The Judgement of Kafka in ‘ The Judgement ’’ Modern Fiction Studies 8: 23-30 (1976) ‘The Judgement in Kafka’s ‘In the Penal Colony’, Journal of Modern Literature 5: 492-514 Tauber, H. (1948) Franz Kafka: an interpretation of his works. London Tearle, O. (2021) A summary and analysis of Franz Kafka’s ‘The Judgement . https://interestingliterature.com/franz-kafka-the-judgement-summary-analysis/
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