Kafka, Hawthorne, and Coetzee - Essay Example

KAFKA, HAWTHORNE, AND COETZEE Few have been as influential in the 20th century as the Czech Franz Kafka. His strange and disturbing novels and stories have had a major impact beyond his short, troubled life. They speak to a hidden aspect of our own lives and they have an outsized power to shake us up and make us consider our relationship with our family, with society, and with ourselves. His work is to some extent prefigured by the work of Hawthorne in the Scarlet Letter as will be discussed below, but is in other ways sui generis. The impact of a massive machinery moving against a single person, crushing them without reason, is a hall-mark of the Kafkaesque and can now be found in much contemporary literature, in particular in Coetzees The Life and Times of Michael K. The protagonist of Kafkas The Trial, Josef K, and the protagonist of Coetzees book share a lot in common, even if the latter book is more political than anything by Kafka. These issues, and the full power of Kafkas The Trial, will be explored in this paper. Many might suggest that Kafkas work has no fore-bearers and that it appeared fully formed. There is sense in this suggestion. The period and place in which his books and stories were written were historically unique. The First World War had demolished many naive beliefs about the world and the rapid industrialization of the modern world was creating difficult conditions for many people. World War II and the destruction of European Jewry lurked on the horizon. The sense of dread in Kafkas work seemed in some way to have the power of a fortuneteller. It is truly terrifying. It is almost as if Kafka knew what was awaiting the world. If he had lived, he too may have perished in the Holocaust. Nevertheless, there were works of literature before Kafka that in someways suggest his work. One of these is Nathaniel Hawthornes the Scarlet Letter. In this famous novel, Hester Prynne is branded with a scarlett A, after committing adultery. She is ostracized from her community and refuses to publicly identify the father of the child that is then illegitimately born. The community has turned against her. She is removed from the community by the force of the institutions that protect public morals. This is similar to Kafkas The Trial, but the most important distinction to be made, however, is what each authors real subject is. Hawthornes target is societys hypocrisy and its willingness to ostracize essentially good people. But however much we may dislike the methods of the town people and their treatment of Hester Prynne, we nevertheless recognize their cruelty and hypocrisy as deeply human. We are familiar with the human hypocrisy which these people represent. Additionally, we might even understand that adultery would be a big problem in a small town in New England during that period. The treatment of Hester may be over the top, but perhaps she did deserve some sort of censure. Kafkas work, however, is very different. There is little to be understood about the forces arrayed against his various protagonists. These forces are not really human, they seem to not even be living. In the Trial, Josef K. is accused of an unspecified crime which he did not commit. Although the institution that tries him appears to be human, it is clear that it is instead a monstrous machine at work, slowly seeking to crush him. There can be no appeal to passion or humanity, as in the Scarlet Letter. Josef K. is trapped by forces that do not feel. At first, he feels like if he just explains himself to the court they will understand: “He had often wondered whether it might not be a good idea to work out a written defence and hand it in to the court. It would contain a short description of his life and explain why he had acted the way he had at each event that was in any way important, whether he now considered he had acted well or ill, and his reasons for each. There was no doubt of the advantages a written defence of this sort would have over relying on the lawyer, who was anyway without his shortcomings . . .” (206-7). Josef K. believes he can treat the forces arrayed against him in this manner, and he is sorely mistaken. Perhaps if Hester wrote a similar letter, simply explaining what motivated her and led to her to act that way that she did, she would have been let off the hook The forces at play in both the Scarlet Letter and the Trial are in many ways represented by the Law. The Law is all powerful and consuming. In the Scarlet Letter, the Law can be skirted and survived, even if it makes many efforts to destroy Hester; for Josef K. the Law cannot be escaped. His crime is perhaps larger than Hesters, though he knows not what it is. Even the identity of the protagonist in the section called Before the Law is hidden from us, as if in an effort to maintain some strange lack of bias. We learn from this situation that there is one way to survive: once you give up, you are accepted. Once you permit yourself to be trodden down, you will be accepted. If only it was so easy: these characters fight for their lives and for their dignity until the very end. The tension described above plagues many of Kafkas characters. They are being asked to do something which goes against every fibre in their being. This is also a situation and imminent threat for many characters in the novels of the South African writer, J.M. Coetzee. Coetzees novel The Life and Times of Michael K. and Kafkas The Trial have a number of similarities. They both feature men lost in worlds they do not understand but which they are resisting. Michael K. is a simple, hare-lipped gardener who wants to visit his mothers birthplace. But this involves a difficult journey across apartheid-era South Africa. Here Coetzee has somewhat reversed the figure of the self-aware Josef K. Michael K. is a simple man and does not understand the world around him. He simply passes through the unending trials he must go through, all without complaint. He does not know why the country is designed in a manner which oppresses him or why this militarism is necessary. The apartheid regime is incomprehensible to him. Its cruelty makes no sense, but even what it stands for seems pointless to him. Eventually, he finds himself living on a farm, trying to grow food for himself. Again the militarism and violence of the world surrounds him and again he refuses to be a part of it. The world appears to want to crush him. Like Josef K., Michael K. is an outsider. Like Kafkas characters, many of Coetzees fit that definition. They do not want to be part of a controlling system. But while Kafkas are more universal and apolitical, Coetzees are often more specific and are created to make a political point. This is important to note. Michael K. is capable of revolt, but it only of the most basic sort: in hospital he refuses to eat. He is a powerless man; indeed, the only, slight power he possess is over his own body. There is no real result to his actions; or at least none that he can understand. Like Josef K., in the end, he is forced to come face to face with the very real potential of his physical death. The world has taken everything away from him. And yet he is still present, still uncomplaining, still seeking. The power of humanity is perhaps more present in Coetzees work than in Kafkas bleaker novels. Coetzee is striving towards a world reformable by politics, while Kafkas is more universally destructive, beyond the reach of any political reform. Indeed, the system Kafka describes, while often taken as a shorthand for totalitarianism is more than any one system. It is a dark image of life itself, from which no one escapes and no plea to reason will be accepted. Kafka is a writer for all seasons. His remarkable body of work, when viewed through the prism of the horrors of the 20th century, is truly impressive. It warns of the dangers of institutions and system over which we have no control and over the persecutions that go on daily, from which there can be no appeal. His work is not part of any real tradition, but has similarities with earlier works—such as the Scarlet Letter—that attempted to reveal to the world the destructive power of human hypocrisy. Kafka has also been hugely influential, as seen in the work of J.M. Coetzee who borrowed some ideas from Kafkas work to make a narrow and powerful political allegory of South Africa in the Life and Times of Michael K. Overall, Kafkas work will truly stand the test of time. Work Consulted Coetzee, J.M. Life & Times of Michael K. Ravan Press, 1983. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Atlantic Books, 1851. Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Echo Library, 2006. Read More