Short Story Club: The Judgement by Franz Kafka

[King Mob]

The club's been a little deserted lately. Still...


This first half of December we will be reading and discussing The Judgement by Franz Kafka.

[Jeremydav]

Kafka is always wonderful. I think I'll be participating.

[wat??]

My favourite Kafka.

[laymonite]

This post is premature at best, but I thought I'd get something out here to get the ball rolling because I'm interested in others' interpretations/responses.

Just finished the story, and this particular selection actually prompted me to delve further into the world of Franz Kafka. Prior to "The Judgement," I had only read "The Metamorphosis." I am now reading the biography by Kafka's friend, Max Brod, in conjunction with the complete short stories (a paperback edition with a foreword by John Updike). I am already beginning to refer to it, in my head, as the "complete incomplete stories of Franz Kafka!"

First off: I will need to read this one a few more times. I feel like there are subtleties that I took the sense of in the first read, but that will bloom on subsequent reads. There is also room for psychological inquiry (a passage in which the father's robe parts and the son says something like "my father is a big man" --I don't have the text with me to quote verbatim, here). But, if anything, I definitely picked up on the strained relationship between father and son that mirrors Kafka's real life.

There are other things going on in the story that caught me off guard. It seems almost as if the father is vicious for vicious's sake. But, again, as with watching a David Lynch film, I need to make a few more passes.

[stlukesguild]

I'm a sworn Kafka fanatic and yet somehow missed this post. I had to reread the story as it isn't one that I was overly familiar with and having done so I'll just throw out some random thoughts.

I'm intrigued with the specter of the "prodigal son" that the son, George Bendermann raises when speaking of his "friend" in Russia. Kafka frequently builds upon the Biblical narratives, and one cannot help but think of this in light of the estranged relationship between the son and the father.

I am also intrigued by Kafka's variation on the unreliable narrator. His narrator... the omnipotent third-party... begins the tale in Kafka's usual dead-pan manner. The reader is rapidly led to empathize with George and his concerns for his friend in Russia... and then suddenly he upends the entire narrative with the accusations by the father and George's remorse and suicide... that lead you to rethink what you initially thought of George... the unknown "friend"... the father... etc...

Like much of Kafka, there is no clear single interpretation or "meaning"... which in many ways seems to often be the point in Kafka.