Slides on Franz Kafka, the Kafkaesque, and Kafka's parables "Before the Law" and "An Imperial Message"

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7. The Enigma
of
Franz Kafka
The Enigma
of
Parables

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11. The Unfinished Novels

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15. Various Sites of
Conflict and Struggle
• Personal & psychological
• Baring his soul in writing
• The Father - both real and
symbolic
• God and his Jewishness
• Law and Bureaucracy
• His body and private life

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18. The Law of the Father

19. Kafka’s Father
“Letter to his Father”
“Dearest Father,
You asked me recently why I
maintain that I am afraid of you.
As usual, I was unable to think
of any answer to your question,
partly for the very reason that I
am afraid of you, and partly
because an explanation of the
grounds for this fear would
mean going into far more details
than I could even approximately
keep in mind while talking. And
if I now try to give you an
answer in writing, it will still be
very incomplete…”

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23. • Never married, but had
several girlfriends
• Anxiety about his body
and sex life
• Plagued by guilt, shame,
and anxiety
• Medical problems related
to tuberculosis
• Died of starvation due to
tuberculosis
Private Life

24. – W.H. Auden on Kafka
“…the Dante of the
twentieth century.”
Expressionism
Surrealism
Existentialism

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29. Why write or speak in parables?

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31. “Before the Law”

32. • Man from the country
• The Law
• The Doorkeeper
• The Door/Gate
“Before the Law”
Franz Kafka

33. 1. What is the law?
2. Why can’t the man access it?
Two basic questions

34. Is the man denied access to the Law?
“But the doorkeeper says that he cannot grant
admittance at the moment. The man thinks it over and
then asks if he will be allowed in later. "It is possible,"
says the doorkeeper, "but not at the moment." Since
the gate stands open, as usual…”

35. The Doorkeeper’s Power
“But take note: I am powerful. And I am only
the least of the doorkeepers. From hall to
hall there is one doorkeeper after another,
each more powerful than the last. The third
doorkeeper is already so terrible that even I
cannot bear to look at him."

36. “There he sits for days and years. He makes many
attempts to be admitted, and wearies the doorkeeper
by his importunity…During these many years the man
fixes his attention almost continuously on the
doorkeeper. He forgets the other doorkeepers, and this
first one seems to him the sole obstacle preventing
access to the Law…He becomes childish, and since in
his yearlong contemplation of the doorkeeper he has
come to know even the fleas in his fur collar, he begs
the fleas as well to help him and to change the
doorkeeper's mind. At length his eyesight begins to fail,
and he does not know whether the world is really
darker or whether his eyes are only deceiving him.”
The Man’s Persistence

37. What is shut at the end of the parable?
"Everyone strives to reach the Law," says the man, "so how does it
happen that for all these many years no one but myself has ever
begged for admittance?" The doorkeeper recognizes that the man
has reached his end, and to let his failing senses catch the words,
roars in his ear: "No one else could ever be admitted here, since
this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."

38. What is the Law?
The elusive enigma of meaning.

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Reading the Law, Reading the Text

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44. The Emperor - The Message - The Messenger
“An Imperial Message”
Franz Kafka
The Emperor’s Subject
(The Reader - “You”)

45. Where do we look for meaning?
The Message’s Content
The Message’s Delivery

46. What is a message?
How many messages
do you send and
receive per day?
A Culture of
Messages

47. U.S. smartphone owners aged 18 to 24
Send 2,022
texts
per month
67 texts
per day
Receive
another
1,831
per month

48. A Message about Messages
“The Emperor, so a parable runs, has sent a message to you, the
humble subject, the insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest
distance before the imperial sun; the Emperor from his deathbed
has sent a message to you alone.”

49. When and why do messages fail to deliver?
“But instead how vainly does he wear out his strength; still
he is only making his way through the chambers of the
innermost palace; never will he get to the end of them; and
if he succeeded in that nothing would be gained; he must
next fight his way down the stair; and if he succeeded in
that nothing would be gained; the courts would still have to
be crossed; and after the courts the second outer palace;
and once more stairs and courts; and once more another
palace; and so on for thousands of years; and if at last he
should burst through the outermost gate—but never, never
can that happen.”

50. The Final Lines
“Nobody could fight
his way through here
even with a message
from a dead man. But
you sit at your window
when evening falls
and dream it to
yourself.”
What’s the Dream?

51. Connect.
Communicate.
Share.

52. The Failures
of
Communication

53. Kafka’s
“Letter to his Father”
His mother never
delivered the message

54. The Enigma
of Meaning

55. After reading the three parables by Kafka, I realized there
was a theme in all of them. They all describe something
that is either unattainable, or essentially will never be
reached…Was Kafka trying to bring to light the simple truth
that some things in life will never be attained, and even if
they are, they might not be as glorious as one had
originally hoped? Here are three different instances where
one guys waits patiently hoping to get what he desires,
another is constantly moving and working really hard to get
where he wants to be, and the last makes it and is hit will
hard emotion. Each parable alone, sorta touches on this
truth. Did Kafka intend for these three parables to be used
together? Since they flow and build off of each other?
Discussion Question
Theresa Raymond asks:

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The Enigma of Texts

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