Influence of Kafkas Life on His Art of Writing - Essay Example

Influence of Kafka’s Life on his Art of Writing Kafka’s art is so much uncannily ambiguous that it leaves a number of apparently opposing ways of interpretations for the readers. But a good amount of knowledge of his life can provide the readers with a way out of these seemingly existent mazes of interpretations. The heroes of his literary works are mostly weird and self-deprecated. But the readers who are familiar with Kafka’s life and with the era in which he lived must acknowledge that Kafka throughout his whole life had fought back this self-efficacy and self-deprecation. Kafka, the son of a middle class German Jewish family and living in an age of declining Feudalism and rising working class, was in a fix to orientate his right position in the society. Since his father, Hermann Kafka, came from a poor family, Kafka was well-aware of the distress and struggling values of the lower class people, while he became familiar with the lifestyle and values of the aristocratic society from his mother’s family. Obviously Kafka’s family represents aristocracy in poverty. Being unable to resort to any established class-values of the society, the only way that was left for him was to shrink within himself and to observe the society around himself from a diminutive existence of a metamorphosis while brooding over what to do or what the right direction is. If in a society one’s identity is affirmed by his actions and beliefs, -as Nietzsche says, “There is no ‘being’ behind doing, acting, becoming…the doing itself is everything” (29), Kafka was deprived of any being that was supposed to be based on a set of traditionally valued actions. Being a member of the early modern society, anomie seems to pervade his existence as well as his writing. Growing individualism in the process of modernization and, disintegration and decay of the preceding feudalistic social bond Austrian society contributed to his alienation from his society as well as his close relatives. Such anomic alienation is vividly evident in his novella, “Metamorphosis”, “the Hunger Artist” and a number of other literary works. Critics mark Kafka’s portrayal of this alienation as the corruption of human relationship, as Robert W. Stallman notes, “The Hunger-Artist" is one of Kafkas perfections….Its theme of the corruption of inter-human relationships” (117). Indeed his novella “Metamorphosis” can be considered as the revelation of his lack of adequacy in his society, as Daniel Honrek notes, He began writing her long letters about everything, although mostly about himself and his feelings of inadequacy. In this first flush of love he wrote "The Judgment" on the night of 22-23 September, which he dedicated to her. He considered it his first mature work, and proudly read it to his family and friends. In November and December he wrote "The Metamorphosis." (Honrek 4) Indeed what critics mark as the corruption of human relationship was the typical anomic characteristic of the decay of the social bond and the earlier stage of the growth of individualism that were greatly induced the increasing division of labor in an industrialized society. Such decay of family bond and corruption of human relationship are also embryonic in his novella “Metamorphosis” with a new dimension of the ennui of a modern man. In Kafka’s modern society, inadequacy of a son to do anything decent was not taken lightly, as Gregor is treated by his own father. He is assaulted with “apples” by his father when he ventures into the living room, as the narrator describes the moments, “something or other thrown casually flew close [to Gregor] and landed in front of him. It was an apple. Immediately a second one flew after it” (Kafka 64). Kafka’s real life ennui is reflected at the ennui of Gregor in “Metamorphosis”. In his life, his promiscuous sexuality can be interpreted as his endeavor to get relief from the ennui and the frustration of the anomie of his era. He used to spend nights not only with the shop girls, waitresses, and barmaids but also his random and frequent visits to whorehouses are mentionable in which most of the people of Prague were pampered in. Actually, these matters were completely engaged to the sexual activities. Sexual satisfaction was the one and only mania accepts which, they used to think that their life is meaningless. This ennui of Kafka’s modern self is reflected on the character of Gregor. Gregor is also the victim of ennui. Gregor, too, is both taken care of and yet abandoned. While his sister tries to discover what food Gregor likes and his mother tries to rearrange his room, neither of them are interested in attempting to meaningfully communicate or interact with him. Eventually his family ceases to care about him and he is largely forgotten. His sister “exhausted from her daily work, had grown tired of caring for Gregor” (Kafka 73) and no longer properly cleans or feeds him. His room is filled with junk and his family increasingly resents him. It is clear that the family does not want to move due to the shame of taking Gregor with them and so, Gregor has become a burden for them. They finally begin to look to the future and think no more of the hapless Gregor. Many critics have tried to categorize Kafka’s art into various literary trends and fashions. But categorizing Kafka’s art is seemingly challenging to them for its ambiguous nature. Indeed Kafka’s literary works do not go along with any of the traditional definitions of art and literary works. Indeed his works are so much permeated with real life experiences and feelings that critics are often provoked to mark him as a hopeless and frustrated wanderer in the existentialists’ absurd realm. But the emergent voice and tenor with which he depicts life in modern context does not prove him as the passive reflector of the absurd reality. Rather than accepting life as it is, he puts his readers in such awkwardness and discomfiture that they intuitively feel the provocation to search for the evils, in their own lives, that go on to choke the possibility to live a desirable life. That is, the underlying discomfiture of Kafka’s works does not allow the readers as well as the critics to consent the choking reality to encroach into their lives; rather they are provoked to allow the angst and anguish to engulf them essentially, rising from within themselves, and then to search for the way-out of this situation desperately. Since Kafka’s angst rises from the uncanny revelation of the existential self of human being, readers’, though they become confused and horrified in the first place, feel relieved when they find that the reality which his works deal with is magically real. Indeed this sense of relief evolves from the fact that the story’s reality is not a part of the reality of their “waking state”. But since the story’s reality is surrealistic to a great extent, they cannot tell one thing for sure that Kafka’s reality does not pervade their anymore. Kafka’s art can be considered as a fusion of modernism, existentialism and magical realism. It is perfectly emblematic of the trend of his era. In Kafka’s contemporary society, the self of a man, that is, the individual was still at its developing stage. The transformation of Kafka’s society from the supernatural spell of religion to the realism and rationalism was not complete yet. It was continually being affected by the corrupting and disintegrating effect of modernization and by the zeal of religion also. But religion was barely capable of mitigating the effects of modernization. Kafka was not religious in his personal life, but he was not outside of its effects, as Panichas says, “A non-Christian and a German-speaking Jew born in Prague in l883, Kafka, though intuitively aware of salvation in its metaphysical tensions, relegates those tensions to their modern settings and circumstances, with their inherently existential anxieties, concerns, antinomies” (83). Kafka’s writing self was modern to a great extent, but was not so much modern that his art can be characterized as fully existentialist. He could feel the existential being of modern man, not to the fullest extent as Camus or Sartre did. Kafka’s magical realism is essentially projected from his personal religious belief. This religious symbolism is evident in “Metamosposis”. The “apple” that is thrown by his father remains stuck in Gregor’s back as a steady reminder of the lack of humanity his family shows him, until it becomes described as “the rotten apple.” This rotting coincides with the corrosion of his treatment by his family who by this point have stopped cleaning his room, barely find time to feed him and have filled his living quarters with unwanted junk. The rot in the apple is representative of the rot in the hearts of the family who have abandoned religious principles. So too in Marquez’s story does the symbolism of the crabs appear. Works Cited Honrek, Daniel. “Franz Kafka Birth and childhood”, 13 December, 2010. available at Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Nanaimo: Planet PDF, 1999. Nietzsche, Friedrich. On the Genealogy of Morals. trans. Douglas Smith, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Panichas, George. “Kafka’s Afflicted Vision: A Literary-Theological Critique”, Humanitas. Vol 17, No. 1, 2004 Stallman, Robert. “A Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka”, Accent, Vol. 8, No. 2, Winter, 1948, pp. 117-25 Read More