Franz Kafka Research Paper

Franz Kafka (referred to as Kafka throughout text) was born on July 3rd 1883 into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague which at that time was the capital of Bohemia and part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kafka’s mother Julie Kafka (1856-1934) was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a successful brewer in Poděbrady. Julie was well educated and therefore helped with her husband’s business. According to Max Brod “[Kafka’s] mother herself was untiringly busy helping his father in the business”(p. 8) and was not around very often for her children. On the other hand we have Kafka’s father, Hermann Kafka (1852-1931) who was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a butcher that came to Prague from Osek. Hermann first worked as a traveling sales

6). In contrast “on the father’s side the predominant hereditary characteristic would seem to be a fighting capacity for living and getting the better of life, even physical strength, too” (Brod, p. 6). Here we can assess the root cause of Kafka’s non-existent relationship with his father. In Kafka’s letter to his father he compares himself to his father, in which he describes himself as “a Löwy with a certain basis of Kafka, which however, is not set in motion by the Kafka will to life, business, and conquest but by a Löwyish spur that urges more secretly, more diffidently, and in another direction, and which often fails to work entirely” (p. 140). He then describes his father as “a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain way of doing things on a grand scale … and into which your temperament and sometimes your hot temper drive you” (p. 140-141). According to J. Stephens Kafka’s father viewed him “as a failure and disapproved of his writing because he wanted Franz to become a business man like him” (paragraph 2). This paper will focus on Kafka’s stories The Metamorphosis and A Hunger Artist to describe how Kafka reflected his life and

The mother means well and enters the room to help her daughter move the furniture (Kafka p. 101) however it becomes too much for her when she sees Gregor in with bug form clutching onto a picture, she is scared and repulsed by the sight of him and has a panic attack and faints (Kafka p. 106). This is a reflection of Kafka’s mother because she is constantly busy with work at her husband’s business which is parallel to Gregor’s mother avoiding him. She also lacks the “depth to understand he son’s dreams to become a writer” (Bio,paragraph 4). Grete, Gregor’s sister in the story is the only one who wants to understand and help her brother. Therefore she is a reflection of Kafka’s youngest sister Ottla, whom Kafka was the closest to and had the best relationship