Exploring Isolation through Absurdist Fiction
Sofia Arriaga, University of Florida
When I heard of the Undergraduate English Conference’s topic of coming of age, I immediately thought of the Kafkaesque. This term comes from Franz Kakfa, an Austrian Jewish author, regarded as one of the greatest authors of the 20th century. He wrote novels exploring themes of isolation, existentialism and the absence of God in everyday life. In my opinion, this mirrors the teenage experience.
The complexities of coming-of-age and young adulthood typically include hard themes of isolation, existentialism and whiplashing confusion on what life and adulthood are supposed to mean. When I was a teenager, I ate Franz Kafka’s work up because his were the first pieces of literature I felt explained these existential feelings perfectly.
In a diary entry Kafka once wrote: “I have hardly anything in common with myself and should stand very quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe” (Franz Kafka’s Diaries, Kafka, 252). Depressing stuff, right? But sometimes reading depressing, absurdist, existential fiction is cathartic to our existential crisis, which is inevitable during coming-of-age years. The ultimate point I want to get across with this paper and presentation is that coming-of-age years are lonely. Everyone experiences loneliness. And I think loneliness and existential crises are perfectly depicted in the Kafkaesque.
I’ll be using the term “Kafkaesque” throughout this paper. The term “Kafkaesque” is a play on Franz Kafka’s last name, and is a phrase used for bizarre situations in which the individual has absolutely no control.
I. The Metamorphosis
For example, in Kafka’s most famous work, his novella “The Metamorphosis,” Gregor Samsa wakes up one day and is suddenly a giant bug. That’s just his life now. This physical transformation into something unrecognizable mirrors our transformation into our adult selves in which we sometimes don’t even recognize who we’ve become. And his response after discovering that his life has changed overnight? He says, “How about I sleep a little bit longer and forget all this nonsense.” He accepts the absurdity of the situation and encourages us to accept the absurdity of everyday life.
Despite the tempestuous situation of waking up as a vermin, Samsa isn’t too riddled with why and how this situation came upon him. Instead, Samsa’s biggest concern is that he’ll miss the train to get to work. He has temporal worries and can only see what’s right in front of him. Moreover, Samsa hates his job. But the fact of the matter is that he doesn’t have an identity behind it. His dogged devotion to arriving at work on time would be a healthy dynamic, even respectable, if Samsa were passionate, but he admits that he cannot stand his work.
“The first thing he wanted to do was get up in peace without being disturbed, to get dressed, and most of all to have his breakfast. Only then would he consider what to do next, as he was well aware that he would not bring his thoughts to any sensible conclusions by lying in his bed” (The Metamorphosis, Kafka, 7).
Before his family sees his transformation, he just tells them that he isn’t feeling well. His boss, the Chief Clerk, visits the home to investigate why Samsa didn’t arrive at work. Samsa’s father, Samsa’s mother, Samsa’s sister and the Chief Clerk surround his room and talk about him, while not allowing Samsa to disclose the full truth of the situation. Symbolically, this references social pressure we face from those around us while not being able to speak for ourselves. While either showing concern or giving diatribes for his indolent behavior, none of them truly understand what’s happened to him.
The family begs and urges Samsa to emerge from his room so they can understand what’s happened. But once he reveals his true form, they see him as a tragedy. Upon hearing his “Vermin” voice for the first time the Chief Clerk says: “Did you hear the way Gregor spoke just now? That was the voice of an animal.” (The Metamorphosis, Kafka, 12).
Nevertheless, Samsa persists. “You’re well aware that I’m seriously in debt to our employer as well as having to look after my parents and my sister, so that I’m trapped in a difficult situation, but I will work my way out of it again. Please don’t make things harder for me than they are already, and don’t take sides against me at the office” (The Metamorphosis, Kafka, 14).
This is until, transformed into a giant vermin, Samsa begins accepting his fate. He can only breathe once he uses his cockroach abilities to climb onto the ceiling, stick to it and breathe upside down. He does so, and adapts. He’s realizing that he can only breathe when everything is upside-down. Eventually, Samsa and his family accept the absurdity of this situation.
Once his family discovers the transformation he’s gone through, they ultimately find him to be a repugnant monster. They feel a sense of relief once they find his dry shell of a bug’s corpse. Sama eventually loses hope that his life will transform back to “normal.” This relinquishing of hope makes him an absurdist protagonist. Analogous to this character losing hope and accepting what he’s become is the scary transformation from childhood to adolescence.
We can’t control that transformation and must agree to it’s terms, even if we don’t fully understand it. Just as Samsa can’t change his physical form back to his “human” form, we can’t revert back to children once we’ve crossed that bridge. Similarly, his Parables Before The Law, An Imperial Message and The Cares of A Family Man define these themes for the reader through Kafkaesque situations.
We can’t control that transformation and must agree to its terms, even if we don’t fully understand it. Just as Samsa can’t change his physical form back to his “human” form, we can’t revert back to children once we’ve crossed that bridge. Similarly, his Parables Before The Law, An Imperial Message and The Cares of A Family Man define these themes for the reader through Kafkaesque situations.
II. Before The Law
In “On Parables,” Kafka presents the argument that parables force you to cross into the “fabulous yonder” or Druben. The yonder is another plane of thinking; another dimension; the unknown; a spiritual elevation that supersedes the everyday. Only in this yonder can we truly understand the “day to day” life.
Kafka argues that this yonder accessed beyond real life is mainly delivered by sages to the “day-to-day people” through the medium of writing. This “On Parables” serves as a parable itself: it tells us that Kafka’s parables will carry us into the yonder if we focus on their meaning. However, finding meaning and visiting the “yonder” allows us to understand real life and the “everyday” as mentioned before. This model can be observed in “Before the Law.” This entire parable speaks to the restrictions we put on ourselves to serve the larger idea of society or the government or “Law.”
The man begins to grow increasingly weaker, and as time goes by he begins to focus on the smaller and more insignificant details attempting to find larger meaning. This is represented in his fixation on the fleas. The man forgets his ultimate goal with the Law and instead becomes fixated on this single door instead of devising a plan to conquer the numerous doors he must pass. The idea of “repetition compulsion” could be partly used to explain this behavior. The man repeats his mistakes of waiting for the doorkeeper to make a move to allow him in. As a result, the man just remains stagnant.
In the end the door keeper informs the man that the door was made specifically for him. Every person has their own door to face with restrictions they have created themselves. Every man and woman can become paralyzed with the fear of authority. The story asks the questions, “do we have a hand in our fate with authority? Can we challenge it successfully to eventually get to ‘The Law’? Is there justice in The Law? Do we have free will to approach the law or are we prisoners of it whether we encounter it or not? All these questions created by the story represent modernity at its finest: the abandonment of order and truth from God.
Kafka does not add extensive descriptions in “Before the Law.” Instead, he keeps the story as bare as possible. This not only represents the monotony of the Law, but it also allows each reader to decorate the doorkeeper, door and other aspects with their own imagination to make the situation unique to them. We can see the shadow of this theme in Kafka’s parable An Imperial Message.
III. An Imperial Message
In Kafka’s parable “An Imperial Message” he prompts a hypothetical essentially saying: what would happen if the Emperor of your land whispered his last words before dying in a messenger's ear, specifically meant for you? And the Emperor was so scrupulous that the message delivered must be correct, so he had the messenger repeat it back to him. But, the messenger's efforts are in vain as you are never able to receive it.
This is due to the fact that you live so far away from the castle that the messenger will never be able to reach you. No matter how fast he runs, no matter how far he gets, he will never make contact. So, you spend your days staring out the window and you dream of what that message could be. But simply, you will never know. And more importantly, you will never know the emperor had a specific message for you.
This parable teaches us that life is absurd and we will never receive the message we crave from our superiors: such as our elders, our employers and our Gods. We can dream of what they have to say specifically for us, but we will never understand their message. Even if a messenger has etched the message into their memory and runs at full speed, there are too many obstacles between the icons and ourselves for us to recieve it.
This parable harps on existential themes and reveals Kafka’s predilection for absurdity. It mirrors the argument in his short stories that encourage us to accept the ridiculousness of life and not search for answers from our icons. Rather, we can dream of their messages, but we must understand that we will never know what they have to say to us or for us. We must understand that essentially we are alone in our questioning, and must surrender this power from figures of authority.
Once we do this, we can abdicate our need for authority and gather answers from ourselves. The relinquishing of God is a major theme in absurdist literature. These Kafkaesque, absurdist themes can be seen in coming-of-age literature as well as another Kafka parable The Cares of a Family Man.
IV. The Cares of The Family Man
In the parable The Cares of The Family Man, a strange pool of thread named “The Odradek” becomes somewhat of a living object. It haunts the family man to know that this creature watches the entire family as they live their lives and will potentially outlive the patriarch, himself.
Odradek is an enigma. The narrator attempts to describe the “creature” in terms of the origin of its name. But the inability to pinpoint the origin of its name to a single place symbolizes the creatures’ nature: inscrutable and not symbolizing originating from one single aspect. In fact, it could be said that the Odradek is being described by what it is not in this introduction paragraph; thus, using anti hermeneutics. One must forgo a leap of faith to believe that the Odradek qualifies as a creature. It only lurks in the “in between” spaces such as the doorways and entrances.
It doesn’t staunchly occupy a single space to live in. Rather, the Odradek exists in the thresholds of the home. The “family man” is haunted by the thought of the Odradek outliving him. Perhaps the Family Man’s fear of the vague nothingness of the Odradek is analogous to the innate apprehension we have of voids and the unknown. The Father fears the Odradek roaming around the home after he dies even though the Odradek doesn’t cause harm. His presence alone unsettles him.
Therefore the Odradek is a reminder of the malice of voids and nothingness. Because the Odradek is seemingly immortal it also eerily reminds the Family Man of his own mortality, and reminds him of the “voids” and nothingness he may encounter after death. It forces the Family Man to consider the fact that voids and other unimportant things will outlive him and haunt his family.
Odradek exists in an in-between space. The creature is arguably alive, but doesn’t have a purpose or reason to be. The narrator says “One is tempted to believe the creature once had some sort of intelligible shape,” (Complete Stories, Kafka, 1). This use of the phrase “tempted to believe'' supports the idea that factual conclusions on the Odradek cannot be ultimately made. The creature can speak but doesn’t have lungs. The creature represents a state of static between living and surviving.
The entire idea that the Odradek doesn’t pose an imminent threat, but it’s unknown nature is ominous, mirrors our relationship to surreal art and surreality. While it doesn’t directly attempt to haunt us, its mystery worries and concerns us. The narrator in The Cares of a Family Man simply feels that the Odradek doesn’t belong in his home. He can’t explain why, but it unsettles him that something without a purpose could outlive him. It reminds him too strongly of his own mortality and ephemeral existence. If a creature with no purpose or factual origins can exist seemingly forever, why can’t the narrator, with a purpose and sealed family origins, occupy the same “yonder” and watch over his family forever too?
Kafka incarnates this metaphor with Odradek's physical presence. The creature only dwells in the “in-between” spaces of the home such as the stairwell. The entire metaphor for the creature can be elevated to serve as surreal language: the juxtaposition of reality and surreality, and their cohabitation. Within Franz Kafka’s The Cares of a Family Man the idea of the “surreal” is perpetuated further with the inability to root the creature in reality. The narrator attempts to define it by its etymology, then its nature and abilities. The origins and intentions of the creature cannot be defined. This absence of answers leaves the story with an unsettling feeling that the narrative exists outside of present reality.
V. Conclusion
Kafka’s work forces us to accept the fact that we are alone. Kafka’s work challenges the idea of what it means to exist, and what it means to inhibit the “in-between” of existentialism and absurdism. The creature exists in a space beyond our own reality, but they’ve come in contact with us in ours.It forces us to accept existentialism, and prompts us to challenge authority. It entertains the idea that perhaps our experiences don’t have a purpose, perhaps our lives are anticlimactic, our daily ventures are lonely, and every living person has felt the same exact way. Similarly, we see these themes in coming-of-age literature and can use Kafka as an example of classic literature’s use of these themes. Thank you for venturing into the “Kafkaesque” and exploring how it relates to themes of “Coming of age.”
Works Cited
Kafka, Franz, and Gabriel Josipovici. Collected Stories. Knopf, 1993.
Kafka, Franz, and Max Brod. The Diaries of Franz Kafka. Secker and Warburg, 1949.
Kafka, Franz, and David Wyllie. Metamorphosis. Wisehouse Classics, 2015.
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Sofia Ana Arriaga is a graduating senior at UF. She’s pursuing a dual-degree in Journalism and English with a concentration in film. She’s previously interned for HBO and The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and plans to have her own TV writers' room. Today she’s presenting on absurdism in Franz Kafka's literature in relation to coming of age narratives.
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