Franz Kafka was a Bohemian short-story writer and novelist. He was German-speaking and widely regarded as one of the influential figures of the literature of the 20th-century. His works are a blend of elements of fantasy and realism. His short stories and novels feature the protagonists that are completely isolated, encountering surrealistic or bizarre predicaments and inconceivable socio-bureaucratic powers. It explores themes of guilt, absurdity, existential anxiety, and alienation.
Kafka’s best works include “The Metamorphosis” (“Die Verwandlung”), The Trail (Der Process), and The Castle (Das Schloss). His unique writing style and the situations he depicted his works are described by the term Kafkaesque.
During the life of Franz Kafka, very few of his works got published. These works include collection Contemplation (Betrachtung) and A Country Doctor (Ein Landarzt), some individual stories which were published in a literary magazine. However, his stories did not receive any public attention.
Even though Kafka had told his lawyer to destroy his unfinished works that include his novels Der Process, Das Schloss, and Der Verschollene (this novel was translated as The Man who disappeared and Amerika both), however, the lawyer overlooked his instructions, when published; the works have a great influence on critics, writers, philosophers, and writer of the 20th and 21st century.
A Short Biography of Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, Bohemia. He was the eldest son of the family. He belongs to an upper-middle-class family.
When Kafka was six years old, his two brothers George and Heinrich, died in infancy. After the death of his younger brothers, he became the only son of the family with three sisters. His sisters also die later in the death camps of Nazi.
Kafka has very complicated and difficult relations with his parents. The personality of Kafka’s father Hermann was very forceful and often stunned the home. His father was a successful businessman who retailed men and women’s clothes. Kafka’s mother, Julie, was a devoted house-woman and lacked the intellectual depth to understand the dream and desire of her son to become a writer.
On Kafka’s life and writings, his father has a strong and profound impact. Kafka’s father had the nature of a tyrant that was accompanied by a wicked temper. He never appreciates the creative side of his son. Kafka believed that his personal struggle in relationships and romance is because of his complicated relationship with his father.
Kafka demonstrated this complexity of relationships in his literary works. The characters in short stories and plays are often seen as struggling against a domineering power of any kind. These powers could easily destroy the men’s will and his sense of self-worth.
Education
Kafka’s first language was German. Even though Kafka had Jewish roots and Czech background, the German culture favored his identity.
Kafka attended Altstädter Staatsgymnasium. This school was a challenging high school for the academic elite. Kafka, being a smart child, did very well at his school. Even though Kafka was respected by teachers for his brilliance, he was still annoyed by their control and their control over his life.
After graduating from high school, Kafka attended the Charles Ferdinand University of Prague. There he initially started studying chemistry; however, after two weeks switched to law. Due to this change in his subject, Kafka’s father was happy. This also provided Kafka an opportunity to take extra classes in literature and arts.
Kafka completed his degree in law in 1906. He started working as an unpaid law clerk for a year.
Work-Life
After completing his unpaid internship, Kafka started working with an Italian insurance agency in 1907. This job proved to be terrible from the start. This job forced Kafka to work in a tiring schedule that provides him no time for writing.
He worked with an agency for less than a year. He resigned and immediately started working with Worker’s Accident Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia.
The nature of job and employers suited to the nature of Kafka. He worked very hard in the company and became the right-hand man of his boss. In 1917, Kafka took sick leave from the company due to tuberculosis, and then ultimately retired in 1922.
Body of Work
When Franz Kafka was struggling to earn his livings, he also focused on writing literary works. He was significantly supported by his friend Max Brod in his literary works during his lifetime and even after his death.
Kafka emerged as a prolific and profound writer after his death. Kafka only published very little of his works during his lifetime.
In 1912, Kafka completed writing his best short story, “The Metamorphosis.” He published it in 1915.
A collection of short stories Meditation was followed up by “The Metamorphosis,” written in 1913. Between 1914 and 1915, he also wrote: “Before the Law.” It is a short story within his novel The Trial.
In 1915, he completed “The Judgment.” the later works of Kafka included “A Country Doctor” and “In the Penal Colony.”
In 1924, Franz Kafka was working with his collection, A Hunger Artist, and finished it. This collection marks his writing style at the end of his life.
His majority of the works were published by Max Brod after his death.
Love and Health
Kafka was a popular employee at work and could easily socialize with people. He had a good sense of humor. However, his personal life was filled with complications. His relationships were plagued with his insecurities and inhibitions. Kafka was engaged to marry his girlfriend, Felice Bauer, twice. However, the two separated permanently in 1917.
Afterward, Kafka started loving Dora Dymant. They both shared their Jewish roots and a fondness for socialism. They both fell in love with each other in Berlin in the middle of Kafka’s increasingly terrible health. The relationship between these two was mostly centered on the illness of Kafka. Kafka was not well. He consistently faced strain and stress. He also suffered from depression, migraine, boils, anxiety, and insomnia.
Kafka and Dora returned to Prague. To cure his tuberculosis, Kafka went to Vienna for treatment. On 3rd June 1924, Franz Kafka died in Kierling, Austria.
Franz Kafka’s Writing Style
Kafkaesque Style of Writing
Franz Kafka is considered one of the most persuasive and important literary figures of the twentieth century. The writing style of Franz Kafka created such an impact that it got a special adjective “Kafkaesque.” The terms “Kafkaesque” refers to the style that has bizarre elements in it. It is also considered as a synonym for the term “Surreal.”
The stories of Kafka are extraordinarily strange. It symbolizes the absurdity and weirdness of life. He created characters that are psychologically deep and features the surreal and bizarre side of thinking and imagination. Kafka splendidly revels in playing with metaphors. His expression was also essentially metaphorical in enunciation. In short, Kafka was weaving a web of complexity in his works that were characteristically critical to interpreting.
Franz Kafka is one of the widely studied writers. His works are among the forefront of thesis and dissection. His stories “In the Penal Colony,” “The Metamorphosis,” and “The Judgment” are categorized among the most widely read stories. His short story “The Trail” is one of the best long fictions of Kafka. The short story is based on the trappings based on misinformation that has attained the status of mythic imagery symbolizes the world gone crazy.
The unique writing style of Franz Kafka is largely based on his thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and his relationship with people and family. The following are the unique characteristics of Franz Kaka’s writing style.
Diversity in Kafka’s Works
The prose style of Kafka permits readers and critics to examine and interpret it at various levels. His writings have been placed into a large number of literary schools of thought. Some critics claim his writing to be misinterpreting reality, whereas other critics claim that he has been critiquing capitalism in his work.
His works have common elements of hopelessness and absurdity. These elements can be seen as his illustration of existentialist beliefs. Some works of Kafka are also appeared to be influenced by the movement of expressionism. However, the majority of his literary works are linked with the experimental modernist genre. The versatility and diversity in the writing stories and novels of Franz Kafka epitomize his writing style.
Magic Realism in Kafka’s Works
Kafka presents impossible situations in his works very naturally. For example, in his short story “The Metamorphosis,” Kafka presents the transformation of a man into an insect. He developed a story from magic realism and gives extreme attention to each and every detail of the story. The style of the story appears to base the story in reality and thereby ceasing any possibility of having it as a dream, even though the story is impossible to occur.
The concept and idea of writing about an insect appeared in the writing of Kafka in 1907. During this time, Kafka held on idealism regarding his writing process. He fantasizes about his body moving around the world, and his writing self, in the form of a beautiful insect, remains behind. In 1912, this image changed radically when Kafka wrote the short story “The Judgment.” The story is autobiographical, written in a single setting.
Complexity in Kafka’s Works
In his works, Franz Kafka created a strange fictional space. In this space, he employed characters that try to make sense of a terrifying world. The writing style of Kafka appears to be straightforward; however, it demonstrates and explains the complexity of irrationality and complexity of life. It is impossible to understand his stories with one reading. In order to better under and extract the deeper meaning which is hidden in the extraordinary choice of word and unique combination of sentences, it needs to be re-read. His stories were highly impersonal and complex in nature.
Franz Kafka as a Modernist
Franz Kafka has been widely influenced by the modernist movement in Prague. The movement was started in 1897. It was initiated by the “Vienna Secession.” The modernists take a radical break from the conventional writing style, subject matter, and form in art, literature, and architecture. This movement spread quickly in the whole of Europe.
The mode of thought of his science teacher, Her Gottwald, at high school greatly influenced Kafka at a young age. His teacher was a Positivist, Darwinist, and an Atheist. Indeed, he planted revolutionary thoughts in the growing mind of Kafka.
The literary movement of modernism started in an attempt to realist movement in literature and art. It was a radical break from realism. Realism mainly focused on the depiction of reality, lack of spiritual side, or subconscious. The pioneers of modernism were experimentalists and great intellectuals, philosophers, artists, and scientists.
The main aim of modernism was to let the personalization of art in order to reform and reshape everything according to the mindset and vintage point of each individual. The modernist movement is also linked with one’s egocentric sense of the self. This preoccupation with self is shared by almost all characters of Franz Kafka. Moreover, the important elements of modernist works include strong oedipal conflict and the theme of suicide and death. These factors played a motivating factor behind the modernist works.
The tormenting relation of Franz Kafka has been shown in his works. These relations can be interpreted as an oedipal complex.
One of the best examples of Modernist works of Kafka is “The Metamorphosis.” In its exposition and resolution, the story follows many modernistic ideas. These elements are highly obvious just by reading the story.
The description of which Kafka gives of Gregor in the short story highlighting his transformation as disconnection and alienation from the world shows modernist characteristics. In the form of content and form, the new life of modern man, for Kafka, has changed just like “Gregor’s new body has little legs and his bug back.” And it transformed into “a new body with little legs and a bug back.”
Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” highlights how a person is encountering devastating social forces in his life, and instead of facing them, he changed himself to something that makes him not face these challenges. Such feelings of alienation in the modern world are depicted in Kafka’s works.
Conclusion
To conclude, the works of Kafka are highly modernistic in style and themes. It is complicated and shows the importance of the modern world to Kafka. The term “Kafkaesque” is used to describe the writings that include the elements prominent in the writing style of Kafka.
“Kafkaesque” style of writing is defined as the treatment of grotesque and anxiety-producing social conditions in literature. Kafka also employed a critique of the totalitarian state of his works. His style is impersonal, inhumane, and bureaucratic. He writes about the conditions of humans in its playfulness and perverseness.
