FREE ESSAY ON KAFKA

KAFKA

Franz Kafka was born in Prague, Bohemia, July 3, 1883 and died June 3, 1924 of
tuberculosis at the age of 40. He came from a middle-class Jewish family. His father was
a shopkeeper and tried to climb up the social ladder by working hard at his shop and
sending Franz to a prestigious German high school. He went on to get a law degree and
worked for two insurance companies (not at the same time) When his .tuberculosis got bad
in 1917 he was put on temporary retirement with a pension. German was the language the
upper class spoke and by sending Franz to German schools his father tried to disassociate
from the lower class Jewish who lived in the ghetto. They were always moving from
apartment to apartment advancing as the business grew.
Franz had a very strained relationship with his father that traumatically affected his
whole life. This is apparent in a letter to his father he wrote, "What was always
incomprehensible to me was your total lack of feeling for the suffering and shame you
could inflict on me with your words and judgments. It was as though you had no notion of
your power" (Letter) .
Max Brod and Franz met in college and became life long friends. It was Max who persuaded
Franz to publish some of his work and it was Max who was responsible for most of the
Kafka writings that are available today. Franz had entrusted his manuscripts to Max and
in his last will and testament specified that all his work was to be destroyed. Instead
Max had them published after Franz' death.
Although he never married, he was engaged several times but always broke the engagement
as the wedding day would approach. Most of the biographies about him tell of his problem
with women and repulsion from sex and say that it was evident in his writings. In an
entry in his diary he wrote "Coitus as the punishment for the happiness of being
together" (Constructing). His romances and engagements are well documented and it is
interesting to note his selection of books that he gave to Felice Bauer: "Tolstoy's
diaries, the New and Old Testament, and Gerhart Hauptmann's 'Fool in Christ Emanuel
Quint' (Times ). 
Franz met Felice Bauer at Max' house and they had a five year courtship mainly through
letters. 
He wrote to her daily when at the sanatorium in Italy even while he was carrying on with
an 18 year old Swiss girl who was there also. Felice inspired him and he wrote several
pieces during this time; "The Judgment," which he dedicated to her, then "The
Metamorphosis" and he started Amerika (Kafka.)
According to Daniel Hornek "None of Kafka's novels was printed during his lifetime, and
it was only with reluctance that he published a fraction of his shorter fiction. This
fiction included Meditation (1913), a collection of short prose pieces; The Judgment
(1913), a long short story, written in 1912, which Kafka himself considered his decisive
breakthrough (it tells of a rebellious son condemned to suicide by his father); and The
Metamorphosis (1915), dealing again with the outsider, a son who suffers the literal and
symbolic transformation into a huge, repulsive, fatally wounded insect. In the Penal
Colony (1919) is a parable of a torture machine and its operators and victims---equally
applicable to a person's inner sense of law, guilt, and retribution and to the age of
World War I. The Country Doctor (1919) was another collection of short prose. At the time
of his death Kafka was also preparing A Hunger Artist (1924), four stories centering on
the artist's inability either to negate or come to terms with life in the human
community." 
Franz Kafka's writings can be best described as nightmarish or dreamlike. He has impacted
twentieth century literature greatly as evidenced by a word in the dictionary coined
after him: "Kafkaesque (adj): Characteristic of the novels of Franz Kafka; especially,
bizarre or absurd, and often marked by the ineffectuality of the individual" (Funk ).
Bibliography
Bibliography
The Castle. Hp. 1995 [copywright]. Online. Available: 
http://family.knick.net.thecastle/timeline. 2 Mar. 2000.
Constructing Franz Kafka. Hp. 1996 [last update]. Online. Available:
http://info.pitt.edu/~kafka/biblio.html. 1 Mar. 2000.
Contemporary Authors. Vol. 26. Detroit: Gale Research, 1989.
Funk & Wagnalls New and Comprehensive International Dictionary 
of the English Language. NY:Publishers Guild Press, 1978. 
Hornek, Daniel. Xoom. Hp. 1999 [last update]. Online. Available:
http://members.xoom.com/danielhornek/. 1 Mar. 2000.
Kafka, Leni. Biography. Hp. 2000 [last update]. Online. Available: 
http://victorian.fortunecity.com/vermeer/287/biography.htm. 2 Mar. 2000.
Letter to His Father. Hp. 2000 [last update]. Online. Available:
http://www.fortunecity.com/victorian/vermeer/287/lettertohisfather.htm
Magil, Frank N. ed. Franz Kafka. Vol. 4 of Critical Survey of Short Fiction . 
Pasadena: Salem Press, 1993.
Novels for Students Vol. 7 Farmington, MI: Gale Research, 1999. p281-297.
Pawel, Ernst. The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka. 
NY:Noonday Press, 1992.
Spann, Meno. Franz Kafka. George Prior Publishers, 1976.
Times Literary Supplement, Aug. 22, 1997 n4925 p15(2).
World Literature Criticism 1500 to Present. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992.