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David Auerbach on literature, tech, film, etc.

The Part of Kafka People Forget

It seemed to K. as if at last those people had broken off all relations with him, and as if now in reality he were freer than he had ever been, and at liberty to wait here in this place, usually forbidden to him, as long as he desired, and had won a freedom such as hardly anybody else had ever succeeded in winning, and as if nobody could dare to touch him or drive him away, or even speak to him; but –this conviction was at least equally strong—as if at the same time there was nothing more senseless, nothing more hopeless, than this freedom, this waiting, this inviolability.

The Castle

It’s not all “Before the Law” and “The Judgment.” Especially in The Castle, K. has his moments of self-determination and freedom beyond anything typically associated with Kafka. It’s still problematic–and then some!–but it’s not the man waiting for the law, and it’s not the country doctor in bed with the patient. It’s as if Josef K. had not been killed at the end of The Trial but was allowed to stay in the open air (I believe the only time in the whole novel in which he is definitively outdoors).

[A scene from the odd but effective Japanese animation of “A Country Doctor.”]

1 Comment

  1. And the protagonist in Flann O’Brien’s Third Policeman has his idyllic moments and a similar sense of freedom, despite being in Hell.

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