Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Biography:

        Birth: July 3, 1883

                Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary

                (now Czech Republic)

        Death: June 3, 1924 (aged 40, due to tuberculosis)

                Kierling (near Vienna, Austria)

        Nationality: German

        Religion: Jewish

        Best Known Works:

• The Trial (Der Prozess; 1925)
• The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung; 1915)

• The Judgment (Das Urteil; 1912)
• The Castle (Das Schloss; 1926)

• Expresses anxieties and alienation felt by many in 20th century Europe and North America

• Was widely known for stories that often present a grotesque view of the world

• Individuals burdened with guilt, isolation, and anxiety make a futile search for personal salvation

• His views present the self as a part of interacting forces lacking a stable core
• “Approximation of Objectivity” is achieved through describing the world in symbolic language and from various vantage points
• He proposed that one can never truly know another human being, so there is no use in striving for interpersonal relationships.
• Man, alone, must determine what constitutes a moral action although he can never foresee the consequences of his actions.
• Man, as a result, comes to regard his total freedom of choice as a curse.
• Existentialists, such as Kafka, is guilty in their failure to choose and to commit themselves in the face of too many possibilities
• The discrepancy between the ideal world and the human world results in the estrangement of individuals from their society or their selves
• Absurdity: a search for meaning in a meaningless world

: exigent desire is for solitude and peace rather than finding objective truths about the world

• Alienation: estrangement of individual from the society or from his purpose

of self

        : “You are nothing more than your role…what you contribute to the whole.”

• Philosophical basis: open system

• human experiences about the world and not so much of the human perception of the world

• Bachelor Archetype: inability to resign oneself to the everyday and to become blind to the absurdity of the human condition

: “the Bachelor is resigned to his fate of an ever-dwindling world and has no choices before him to change his fate”