Reading:
Kafka - The Judgement
These study questions were conceived as a formal structure for a lesson to undergraduates and I think it is essential to explain the assumptions on which the whole discourse is based. While I was thinking of the possible questions, I realized that I was addressing an ideal class, that is where students (not the instructor, who is there to assist them) conduct the analysis, because this would imply not only their complete involvement, which is in my view the prerequisite to a good lesson, but also the possibility for them to express their thoughts freely. [So my idea works best with this kind of class, and maybe with a different, less motivated one, it would be necessary to find something more challenging and playful].
According to this ideal, to avoid the structure of the study questions being a constraint to the free externation of the learners, I structured them to be a guide, a way to let the students focus on certain aspects and contemporarily express their opinion. The intervention of the teacher follows in my view the close reading, which means after the dynamics in the text were uncovered and the students have become receptive to a further step (i.e. the confrontation with the critical interpretation). The logical follow-up to this assumption would be to have them write down their own study questions and additionally provide some critical support.
I also believe that interaction between students should be promoted in as many ways as possible, and in this sense pair-work and group-activities are a lively way of collaborating, while expressing one's own thoughts at the same time. It is surely productive and interesting to have students work in pairs and then have a given pair compare results with other pairs or report the results on the blackboard to discuss them, or to have pairs working on different passages/parts and then having the data pooled and discussed. I think that it is very important to let students take control of their acquired knowledge and let them express what they think is to be identifyed or highlighted in the text.
I am also convinced that drawing a graphic is a powerful tool that helps considerably, in as much as it summarizes and visualizes the results of the analysis, and for these reasons it should be executed whenever it is possible.
Teaching Kafka is a very intriguing commitment for those who are appassionate in the subject and have to select what is to be read and from which angle. In this case The Judgement was chosen, because it has a sort of pivotal position in Kafka' s production. Besides, the interpretative perspective on which I rely is a psychoanalytical one. I agree basically with Sokel's point of view, as I also see in the conflict between Kafka and his father - that is already prefigured in the early works, to which The Judgement belongs - the prototype for all Kafka's texts (even for the late work, where a gradual shift in the treatment of this theme is to be pointed out).
In order to shed light to the dynamics in the events, a very good start seems to begin with a close reading and than move on to the interpretation. A first question could be: "Which are the main characters in The Judgement"? It is to expect that they say: George, the father and the friend. (The fiancee and the mother are unlikely to be mentioned, because the former never appears and the latter is dead; if they still say they are important, it would then be very interesting to discuss why!)
Let us now focus on the friend, than on Georg and eventually on the father:
The aim of this question is to let the peculiar features of this character emerge from the reading and I think it would be useful to have them collecting the information spread all over the story and listing them.
Expected answers:
- he has been living in the last three years in Russia, his business is
not going well
- he seems to have no connection either with the colony of compatriots
there, or with the natives;
- he tries to convince G. to go to Russia!;
- he begins to find interest in some "Verlobungen" about which G. reports
in his letters;
- he never comes back, and the reasons he gives for his not coming back
is the "Unsicherheit der politischen Verhältnisse" in Russia, which
G. unmasks as pretexts, because in the following line he says:
"hundertausend von Russen ruhig in der Welt herumfuhren"
- the correspondence to his friend seems to be the only connection to the
world.
* It would be interesting to define the nature of this relationship now, but something more can be said about it later, when it is clear that he is symbolically opposed to the friend who is going to be married.
- Georg says to this regard that, saying the truth about his engagement
and his own success on business, would indicate implicitly to the friend
that his own life is not successful (mißlungen), that only his
friends had understood something, and "daß er ein altes Kind sei"
- Georg also says that, even if he would come back, he could not feel
comfortable any more there and feel envy for him.
*** Are these reasons true or unfounded? Could they be pretexts? If yes, for what?
*** The aim of this question is to emphasize the contradictions in
Georg's behavior and then find a possible explanation for it.
- he takes over his father's business
- from the father we hear that some things in the office are hidden to
him and it is very likely to assume that G. - who is the new chief of the
office - did so.
- for months G. has never gone into his father's room, justifying this
with the fact that there is no need, although we now discover that his
father's underwear is dirty and that his father looks ailing
(kränklich), so he would have surely needed his son.
- on that Sunday morning G. seems to be worried about his health, but -
strangely enough - only when his father puts an unpleasant question! (in
fact, when he wants to speak about the friend), so that it seems that he
only wants to shift his father's attention on something else. ***-->
Georg behaves similarly when he tries to distract Frieda by kissing her.
- he wants to bring him in his room to take care of him
- then he kneels before him
- he decides to take him with him after his marriage
- puts him in bed
- when the father reacts, he desires his death!
- At the end he declares to have always loved his parents.
- G. thinks that the father seems a giant
- the father instead says he is no longer strong enough, his memory is
declining and he does not have the capacity to manage everything
** It is interesting to compare the two perceptions, even if they are both filtered by the author
- the father knows him very well, he has even been writing to him all the
time
- the friend is even his ideal son
- the engagement is a "Schändung der Mutter" and at the same time
a "Verrat an den Freund"
*** Question: why should his engagement be a "Schändung der Mutter"? According to the interpretative key we chose, this is understandable if we assume that G. strives for his father's role. This part is the crucial part of the short story, because of its revelatory character: indeed the intimacy between the father and the friend means not only a strong connection between the two, but rather that, as the friend in his reclusiveness and unsuccessfulness represents his ideal son, the father likes him in his reclusiveness! (This is also the thesis of Corngold). If we now think of Kafka's biography and of his feelings towards the father, from whom he always felt excluded, we can then assume that Kafka's feelings of isolation have a counterpart in his father's satisfaction with his condition. Kafka is here accusing his father to be guilty!, but the father shows his strength by rebelling to this accusation and by keeping his position as head of the family, condemning his son to his end.
(See consequences in question 7)
6. "Wie du jetzt geglaubt hast, du hättest ihn untergekriegt, so untergekriegt, daß du dich mit deinem Hintern auf ihn setzen kannst und er rührt sich nicht, da hat sich mein Herr Sohn zum Heiraten entschlossen!" "[...] damit hast du unserer Mutter Andenken geschändet, den Freund verraten und deinem Vater ins Bett gesteckt, damit er sich nicht rühren kann"
- the removal of the friend seems to be the precondition of any attempt
at getting a "normal" life, so we have a succession of events:
1. removal of friend as that part that is hostile to a successful
relationship to life/love, which is always associated with the father
2. enthusiam for the business
3. engagement (and future marriage)= emancipation, possible only after
the rejection of his friend, that explains very clearly why earlier it
was said: "Verrat an den Freund".
*** The second and the third point are presented like the utmost
achievement a human being can succeed in. In his Letter to the father ,
Kafka stresses several times the importance of marrige and of women: for
example he writes: "Marrying, founding a family, [...], is I am
convinced, the utmost a human being can succeed in doing at all"; and
still:
"Die Heirat ist gewiss die Bürgschaft für die schärfste
Selbstbefreiung und Unabhängigkeit. Ich hätte eine Familie, das
Höchste, was man meiner Meinung nach erreichen kann, auch das
Höchste, das Du erreicht hast, ich wäre Dir ebenbürtig".
And again:
"So wie wir aber sind, ist mir das Heiraten dadurch verschlossen, dass es
gerade Dein eigenstes Gebiet ist".
According to these passages, it becomes clear that the engagement equals entering the father's domain, an attempt at depriving him of his peculiar power and taking his role, which could be extended to explain further the "Schändung der Mutter".
- Kafka was not only accusing his father of being guilty, he is now attacking the authority by entering his domain, but this attack, that has as consequence "Verrat" and "Schändung" is unbearable without the self-punition for having dared to do so.
*** In the Letter to the father Kafka also writes some lines that can
support our thesis:
"Das Heiraten ist zwar das Größte und gibt die ehrenvollste
Selbständigkeit, aber es ist auch gleichzeitig in engster Beziehung
zu Dir. Hier hinauskommen zu wollen, hat deshalb etwas von Wahnsinn, und
jeder Versuch wird fast damit gestraft."
What at first sight seemed strange, i.e. the fact that Georg accepts his father's condemnation without rebelling, becomes clear and can be explained now in terms of feeling of guilt for having dared to enter an inviolable domain.
*** We can assume that the friend matches the author Kafka, who projects himself and his desire of emancipation in Georg, but cannot bear the weight of self-liberation without punishing himself. The elimination of the father leads to the establishment of a more powerful father, to an ineliminable last resort.
We can try to draw a graphic, that in its ultimate aspect takes the form of a vicious circle, that best express Georg's/Kafka's condition: if we assume that Kafka splits in the friend and Georg, so at one point there is the friend in his loneliness, from which Kafka wants to escape and to emancipate. This is hindered by the father, who is not willing to give up his position and subsequently would like Georg as in the reclusiveness of the friend.
There is only one escape from this circle, and is the suicide, which in fact occurs.
We can also see the friend as the double of Georg, who tried to get rid of him, or in Kafkian terms, Kafka is getting rid of a part of himself, which - strangely enough - is linked to the father. There is also the further possibility to apply here the psychoanalitical theory of the "double" by Otto Rank, who in 1914, very well explained mechanisms and dynamics of the formation of the double in literary representations. We know from him that the double stands for the separate/repressed part of the personality of a hero, and besides that this part becomes his inseparable fate, as soon as the latter tries to get rid of it. The double motif develops also on the basis of a paranoid pursuit, that takes form of rivalry in love and generates symptoms of guilt, which creates strong tendencies toward self-punishment. According to Rank's analysis, guilt and self-punishment, that constitute the psychological reality of Georg, always imply suicide like in The Judgement, where the friend has an ally in the father. The friend stands for the part Georg/Kafka removes and represses, and, as Freud wrote in Das Unheimliche, the repressed content always returns in an aggressive way: also in The Judgement is this dynamic to be seen. The friend takes revenge in the most powerful way, in the mutual alliance with the father, who is supposed to be the farest antagonist.
*** This could be another opportunity to let the students discover similarities among Kafka's works, by assigning two readings and by having make comparisons. For example, given that the readings are The Judgement and The Metamorphosis, there are some parallels in the curves of Gregor and of Georg: as for the former, we read that his rise in business and in the family as authority really starts with the bankrupcy of the father. From that point on his curve goes upwards till the metamorphosis and then displays a gradual decline (represented in the scene with the sister and most of all in the scene with the apples: from this point the curve goes less gradually down to his death. On the contrary, the curve of the father and of the family goes down from the bankrupcy until the metamorphosis and then gradually up after it, ending in the idyllic final walk of the whole family. [Transferring the plot on a mathematic curve, was the idea that came out during a discussion in a german high school classroom, and I think that something similar or even more can occur in any relatively normal class at any time and it would be a real pity to waste all the stimuli that result in a classroom discourse. The authors R. Scholz and H. P. Herrmann of the book Literatur und Phantasie (Stuttgart 1990) indeed emphasize that interest, initiative, emotionality, comprehension and exploration of texts can be canalized and articulated towards a complex and positive attitude. What I am trying to do know is to extend this kind of analysis to The Judgement].
In The Judgement there is for Georg a similar movement upwards (from the death of his mother up to that sunday morning), followed by a sudden drop of his curve ending in the suicide. Again, like in The Metamorphosis, there is a symmetrically downwards line for the father since his wife's death and a sudden recovery of his strength on that Sunday morning.
The Metamorphosis The Judgement
It is evident that in both stories, every attempt of a successful and
indipendent life is bound to failure and that after a climax there
follows a decline, gradual or sudden it does not matter. We can also
draw a parallel and take the father throwing the apples in The
Metamorphosis as the equivalent of the father's attack in The Judgement
(see also H. Sussmann, The Text that was never a story, in: R. Gray,
Approaches to Teaching Kafka's Short Fiction, 1995 New York)
*** Another creative way of approaching a text, could be to have the students read a story to which the end was cut out and have them complete the story (this was also the way the mother of Goethe gave her son fairy tales every night...). The reason is well explained in Scholz-Hermann, who claim that the contribute of the subjectivity of the learners is something precious that should not be neglected - as indeed happens in the schools, and that it involves the students in production of meaning. I think that it would be very interesting having them then read the real ending of the story and discuss differencies, by tracing different paths of reasoning in the author and in themselves as authors.
Corngold, Stanley, Franz Kafka, The necessity of form, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1988
Freud, Sigmund, Das Unheimliche, in: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 12, London 1941
Gray, Richard, Approaches to Teaching Kafka's Short Fiction, New York 1955
Müller, Hartmut, Franz Kafka, Düsseldorf 1985
Petr, Pavel, Kafkas Spiele, Heidelberg 1992
Rank, Otto, The Double, Chapel Hill 1971
Scholz, R. and Hermann, H. P., Literatur und Phantasie, Stuttgart 1990
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last updated: 04/27/96