Completely Kafkaesque

Typological aspects - a typology by Franz Kafka

Kafka's novel fragments and stories thrive on strong contrasts and a highly antithetical visual language, which is often referred to as the origin of all "filmic-literary storytelling".

• More than almost any other author, Kafka used recurring motifs, what, throughout his entire work Literary scholars a typology of the author in the sense of Vladimir Propp's view of typological classification enables.
• If one wants to try such a typology, then Kafka's inclination towards polar motifs should be more infinite Wide and oppressive constriction are mentioned, which are always designed as a reflection of the inner workings of Kafka's protagonists is.
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• Kafka's characters usually find themselves in seemingly hopeless situations, although their constriction often reproduced on the image level using motifs such as narrow alleys, narrow streets or walled city quarters will.
• In order to make the narrowing even more noticeable, Kafka often contrasts it with the motif of natural expanse. He often describes scenes such as fields and bodies of water that appear to be infinite, but at the same time he limits the apparent infinity. For example, fog hangs over the actual infinity of the fields or rocks limit the boundlessness of the water surfaces described.


The grotesque in Franz Kafka's novel "The Trial"

Franz Kafka's fragmentary novel "Der Proceß" is particularly ambiguous ...

• The contrast between the width and the narrowness makes the narrowness appear even more oppressive. Kafka uses the stylistic device of polarity and antithetics for reinforcement. His protagonists long for infinity, they long for a way out and yet they feel that they are prisoners of their situation.
• In doing so, Kafka basically always gives his protagonist a way out of the distress. For example, he describes scenes such as narrow spaces in which his protagonists are, but he describes such spaces mostly as a room with windows from which one can imagine the vastness out there, or he mentions possible vanishing points - such as Doors.
• Kafka does not conceive situations from which a way out can be foreseen despite all the constraints because he wants his protagonist to find a way out. Most of the time they don't find it and are stuck in their situation of imprisonment.
• The fact that Kafka's characters could solve their seemingly hopeless situation and still not do it makes the reader feel even more constricted. Kafka's protagonists are responsible for their imprisonment, because although they long for the distance and Although it would be possible to break out of their own tightness, they do not use their chance to break out and stay Prisoners.

Interpretation of the entire Kafkaesque works

Kafka's characters are prisoners of themselves, Kafka's human being is a prisoner of his kind, whereby he violates unwritten or written laws of the Humanity or even himself finds himself in an often meaningless, but always absurd and mysteriously gloomy situation, from which he can hardly escape despite all efforts able.

• If the above basic essence from Kafka's writings can also be filtered through literary analysis, then this is interpretation from Kafka's work to this day a very controversial one.
• Some interpret Kafka's writings as religious statements that, under the influence of Nietzsche, highlight the godlessness and meaninglessness of the want to clarify human existence, others want to recognize particularly biographical aspects in Kafka's stories and fragments of novels, see below among other things in Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", which is supposed to reproduce the difficult relationship in a generation conflict, in which Kafka is to his own Father stood.
• Just as often, literary scholarship has rated Kafka's work as a social criticism, which primarily focuses on the injustice, The chaos and lawlessness of the world as well as the apparently meaningless obsession with research of mankind have become clear want.
• The recurring motif of the bed as the place of origin of all evil now just as easily allows a psychological interpretation of Kafka's writings. Thus, for example, with the bed, the dream world and with that, in turn, everything subconscious can be associate what an interpretation of the subconscious and super-ego as the greatest enemy of humans conceivable power.
• No matter how one would like to interpret Kafka's work, it is certain in any case that Franz Kafka as one of the most important German writers of the modern age - perhaps even of all times can.

His gloomy worldview in the sense of the Kafkaesque reproduced in constructions of real unthinkable worlds and his talent to soberly sober those unthinkable worlds treat them so that they become conceivable for the reader, have made Kafka a legend that he himself would probably never have dreamed of in his lifetime.