Franz Kafka

Research papers on Franz Kafka reveal the complexity of his works and a reflection of his own life in each of his works. Paper Masters will custom write a research paper on Kafka and any aspect of his works or his life.

Kafka is perhaps one of the major examples of late-modernism in the twentieth century. Kafka works with diligence in his works to remain vague--failing to provide descriptions for allegory or double-meanings. Kafka seeks to bring out the mundane--pointing to the obvious, often over-looked pieces of everyday life. It is these small things that make Kafka the "literary giant" that he is within the modernist culture of literature.

One research author writes, "Kafka's fictional world has long fascinated contemporary writers, who find in it an extraordinary blend of prosaic realism and nightmarish, infinitely interpretable symbolism." Metamorphosis is full of these "nightmarish" realities, as it deals with the morphing of a man into a worm. However, the symbolism is difficult to interpret, again leading critics to hail Kafka as a fictional literary master.

Kafka's Early Life

Kafka certainly had a unique and different childhood--having been born into "cultural alienation," as the author categorizes it. (1638) He was Jewish, born in Czechoslovakia as the son of a German speaking shopkeeper. He father encouraged him and pressured him into a business career, forcing Kafka to succeed in business. His father was never happy with his work or with his personal life (Kafka's) and therefore, alienated Kafka even from his family. The author writes that Kafka resented his father's influence and difficulty in handling business education and writing, and because he felt deprived of maternal love, failed to become part of a meaningful love-relationship during his life. Kafka became an insurance salesman, and was never in the best of health. Stress surrounding his job led to sickness and finally to tuberculosis, which caused his death.

Franz Kafka's Early Work

Franz Kafka remains inexplicable. Some of his more famous works are as follows:

• The Judgment
• The Metamorphosis
• A Common Confusion
• The Bridge
• The Trial

Like many other famous writers, his work can be read on many levels."Metamorphosis" is not really about waking up a cockroach, but the dehumanization of modern society. Kafka writes about universal themes, profound in their impact on modern man. Kafka is, in some respects, the Freud of fiction. He took all the anxieties of the 20th century and encapsulated them into short stories: our fears, phobias, and essential loss of our humanity at the hands of the Machine Age.

Kafka forces his readers to think beyond the ordinary.His stories are so bizarre, that he is pushing you into seeing the world as he does: a frightening, nightmarish place where nothing is as it seems.Two decades after his death, other writers, such as Camus, would turn this Kafkaesque world-view into existentialism, resignation at the world's absurdity.

Kafka tried to communicate to the world his vision, and the enigmatic quality of his work demands that one look at it, much like a Picasso. Each person brings different life experience to the work, but walking away with the profoundness of its beauty. Kafka ties together the whole of modern human existence, by making us see the world as he did, warning us of our fragility therein.