FRANZ KAFKA

PLAYS
July 3, 1883 - June 3, 1924
Franz Kafka was a German-language
writer of novels and short stories,
considered by critics as one of the
most influential authors of the 20th
All of Kafka's published
century. Kafka strongly influenced
works, except for some
genres such as existentialism. Most of
letters that he wrote in
his works, such as "Die Verwandlung",
Der Prozess and Das Schloss, are full
Czech to Milena
of themes and archetypes of Jesenská, were written in
alienation, physical and German. What little was
psychological brutality, conflict published during his
between parents and children, lifetime attracted little
characters on a terrifying quest, public attention.
labyrinths of bureaucracy and
Mystical transformations.

Kafka was born into a Kafka wrote hundreds of

letters to close friends and
German-speaking,
family, including his father,
middle-class Jewish
with whom he had a tense
family in Prague, then
and formal relationship. He
part of the Austro-
got engaged to several
Hungarian Empire women but never married

loneliness and existential
In Kafka's stories, in a literal
use of the term many absurd
situations of modern
bureaucracy are reflected, a
world that the writer knew
well since he was an intern at
an insurance company. Many
of his characters are office
workers and are caught in a
network full of obstacles, with
tasks so illogical that they are
doomed to fail almost from
the start.
This term is often used to
describe unnecessarily
complicated situations or
frustrating experiences,
Kafka's world, hand in hand
such as when forced to
navigate a maze of with his incomparable
bureaucracy narrative, generates an echo of
nonsense.
It is not too difficult to recognize the
Kafkaesque in today's world, governed
by increasingly complex management
systems. But by pointing out the absurd,
Kafka reminds us that the world is like
that because we have created it that way
and that it is we, each one of us, who
have the power to change it for the
better.
 SOME EXAMPLES
Kafka uses a type of dream
logic to analyze the The story "An Artist of
relationships between the Hunger", whose
arbitrary power systems of protagonist admits
modern societies and the
before dying of hunger
individuals who are trapped
that his art is a fraud
in them. This is what happens
because he did not fast
to Gregorio Samsa, the
as a result of great
protagonist of
Metamorphosis, who when willpower but because
he wakes up turned into a he simply did not find
giant insect he feels worried any food that he liked
because he will not arrive at
work on time.

Another example would be the

Or in The Process, which
short story "Poseidon," in which
describes an unstoppable
the Greek god appears as a
legal system even for
bureaucrat so saturated with
officials who supposedly
paperwork that he doesn't even
have power.
have time to visit his
underwater domain.