Explain to me what is so special about this book. Why is it considered good...

Explain to me what is so special about this book. Why is it considered good? The story's only mildly interesting and the prose is monolithic. It's short but it feels like it goes on and on. The whole thing could have been told in half the wordcount and nothing of value would have been lost. Die Verwandlung was so much better in every way.

anyone else find it hilarious how ever cover of the metamorphosis shows a cockroach or a beetle when a) Samsa doesn't turn into either of those b) Kafka clearly stated that he didn't want bugs on the cover of the book, ever, in any edition

I think it's hilarious

Ah yes, the prose. The prooooooose. the PROOOOOOOSE. There's a reason why the pseuds on this website are always so willing to talk about "the prose" of a book when discussing its merits or flaws. Why attempt to analyze the merits and effects of the literary devices used to add to the development of characters, why attempt to understand the interplay of the perspectives of different characters and the emphasis this places on different themes, the spectrum of ironies used throughout the novel, the historical significance of the novel and the influence it has spawned in literary tradition or the influences seen throughout the work, the specific structure and literary underpinnings of the novel and the way it influences the tone, the author's relationship to the characters and the theme, the presentation of the novel itself to the audience and thus the relationship between reader and text --- why do any of this, when you could talk about "the prose?" You know that you have such a deep understanding of the book, don't you, when you talk about "the prose," the "musicality of it," the "sparseness." What a great artistic touch you have, don't you! Such a highly refined poetic sense! And you feel like such a true reader of literature when you are able to compare these styles: "I am partial to the lyricism of Joyce's prose, as well as the clean and scientific prose of Borges," you might say. What a deep understanding you show! Because the "prose" of a work is such an accessible topic, something that is felt immediately in the body and senses, a nice little sensation and flutter of the heart. Art obviously has nothing else to it, nothing other than the little sensations that I experience, because why should i attempt to understand it on a deeper level than this, when I have such a "refined" sense of the "prose?" Why even attempt to analyze the prose and the poetic and rhythmical underpinnings of it, when I could use a pretty little metaphor for it? It matters little that virtually every reader of literature has access to the music of the words and so my understanding is not quite so advanced as I would think, that form is something that goes hand in hand with theme, that I missed all the deep relationships between characters and between text and reader that existed in the work and that comprise a large part of the literary merit of the text, for my understanding of "the prose" shows such a mastery of language, a fine-tuned sense of the magical flow of the words! Having understood this work, I may as well move onto the next, the next bundle of pretty sensations to experience, the next bagful of fun linguistic treats!

Bump because I'm actually looking for answers

Is that a pasta?

of course it is

Kafka's prose is so dry and dull. He wasn't a skilled writer. That, and the book wasn't finished

Don't you ever feel that other people, be it the society or your family, judge you with no particular reason or because of some misunderstanding? That you would do anything to have them accept you but that you can never find any concrete help either from persons or institutions?

Really, The Trial is more like a poem than a traditional novel. You can mold the theme of judgment for your own experience any way you see fit. And the fact that it is unfinished makes it even better imo. Kafka probably abandoned it after realizing that he had written his raw feelings there without the contour of a normal novel.

I see you've read Kafka in German, can you expand on why his writing is so bad? I've only read translations myself so I honestly can't tell.

Yes!!!
It is actually stated that he has turned into a Dungbeetle but everyone ignores that for some reason.

Actually I was wondering about the ending of the book.
If I remember correctly (I don't have a copy eith me anymore) he is taken to a recluse spot and killed by teo men. But Kafka says something about being judged there and that even with his death it was still up for K. to be judged. Did he emean God by this? Kafka was a jew and not very religious so I find my understanding too simplistic.
Anyone have an interesting or good understand to the conclusion of the book?

>Don't you ever feel that other people, be it the society or your family, judge you with no particular reason or because of some misunderstanding? That you would do anything to have them accept you but that you can never find any concrete help either from persons or institutions?
Yes, but that point is established very early on and the rest is pointless meandering. It would have worked better as a short novel, perhaps even shorter than the metamorphosis

The description in the story makes it look nothing like a dungbeetle and no specific insect is mentioned. All we know is that it has plenty more than six legs and that it's black and rounded. It most likely doesn't look like any real insect.

I always imagined a woodlouse, personally.

Makes sense ecept the way he injures his "back" tends to believe it was one continuous exoskeleton instead being parted into separate plates. It's a purely imaginary insect, clearly.

So, after all of this, is it worth reading further? Is The Casle worth it or am I in for disappointment yet again?

The castle is his worse. Read penal colony, hunger artist, the trial...

>Read penal colony, hunger artist, the trial...
>the trial
Are you fucking retarded

Why, babe?

First of all, the Process was allegedly prematurely finished; that is to say that he wanted more stuff to come but he ended the book there and the ending may have been different if he had done it the way he intended.

Now, as far as Kafka's judaism goes, in the letter to his father he mentions that he was never Jewish, yes, however, the importance of his religion cannot be understated, and there are several proofs for this, namely:

1. The nature of The Process and Castle...The endless search for something just outside of human reach is the real subject of the work, in the Process the Law (note the parabola about the guard and the door) and the Castle, the Castle are the ideals (God) that K. tries to grasp but never does (village - man & castle-god)also note the name of K.'s messenger - Barnabas). Also his work features ''''archetypal''' characters and situations which seem embedded deep in the unconscious, which by definition makes his stories seem more mythical, old, biblical, etc. You can find much much more about his relations to Judaism by simply googling, I am not so good at writing these things, but even without going too deep into research you will see the connections of his works to Jewish mysticism.

2. Kafka's own sayings:

"All such writing is an assault on all frontiers...it might easily have developed into a new secret doctrine, a Kabbalah. There are intimations of this. Though of course it would require genius of an unimaginable kind to strike root again in old centuries, or create the old centuries anew and not spend itself withal, but only then begin to flower forth." keyword here is Kabbalah.

People say that he was also clairvoyant about the Holocaust, as I understand because of his works as well as stuff like this from his diaries:

"Yesterday it occurred to me that I did not always love my mother as she deserved and as I could, only because the German language prevented it."

I find that the Castle is his best work, although I have not yet Amerika yet. I didn't like the Metamorphosis too much when I read it the first time, too.

What's wrong with the Trial, honey?

The thread's about how disappointing the Trial was

I see, thought it was about metamorphosis

My main gripe with the Trial is that, as I mentioned early in the thread (OP here by the way), all these big themes, which are rich and interesting on their own, are rather prematurely put forth in the book. That is to say, though a fuckton of exposition, the themes are laid bare and accessible very early on, and everything else seems redundant and pointless. It doesn't really evoke the feeling of this monolithic, inhumane and circular bureaucracy to which K is being subjected, gradually stripping humanity from him as well as all things that go with it (hope, love, will, etc). It just reads like a handufl of meaningful moments joined together by big threads of meandering and needless specification. We can't even see this victim, K., as this helpless tiny soul, this human that's being subject to a merciless and tortuous process that's so hermetic and mysterious it very much seems to lack any point other than a slow method of torture applied to random, innocent citizens because he, K., seems to be the only character in the whole book not to give two shits about what's happening. Not even in a stoic, somewhat heroic way, like some sort of hemlock-drinking Socrates. He just plain don't give a shit. How are we supposed to sympathise with him?

I read the whole thing, including the unfinished chapters, along with explanations by Max Brod on Kafka's intentions and vision. That, along with what you and say, does add some dimension, some depth to the book, but at the end of the day I fail to understand why this book is held up to such esteem and reverence in the literary world. After the thoroughly enjoyable Metamorphosis, I was expecting it to be even more... Well, more of everything the Metamorphosis was. I hoped that that novella was to be a preamble, not a zenith.

I insist that it would have worked wonders as a short novel or long story. And maybe it would have had a higher emotional impact had the protagonist not been the least likable character in the story.

After all this, is there any wonder people use a word like "Kafkaesque" when they can't even agree on what it means?

Well first of all I'd urge you to read the Castle still, as they are different books and I see this interests you greatly. First of all you are right in saying that Trials' Jozef K. is too ''indifferent''. He is much more emotionally stable and rational in the Trial than K. in the Castle (notice that "Jozef" vanished in Castle, leaving only K.), as well as the huge fact that in the Trial Jozef K. stil lives in the normal world, but with the Process being acted onto him, as an external pressure. He still pursues the Process in the Trial, but in the Castle he is way more masochistic. It starts with K. entering the village, not knowing anyone, and he calls himself a land surveyor. He goes head first into this pursuit, with no way of turning back.

I agree with this user, but if you thought The Trial was long winded you will hate The Castle. It's longer then The Trial, less densely plotted (lol) and doesn't have as many (or any) "intermissions" such as the BDSM closet scene or the parable in the cathedral. It has incredibly inane but meticulous dialogue stretching over pages and pages. It is less fractured then The Trial though, and K. is more interesting than Josef K. in my opinion.

Oh I'm still going to read The Castle (aswell as the short story collection, The Great Wall of China), because I still want to see what the fuzz is all about, especially since I really enjoyed the Metamorphosis, as I mentioned a few times now.
>but if you thought The Trial was long winded you will hate The Castle
>It's longer than The Trial
Well it's not wordcount itself that bothered me with the Trial, but how needless they seemed, especially after finishing the book (I kept waiting for the turning point when all the excess blocks of text were to be redeemed, as it has happened to me before with, for example, Dostoievsky, but the point never came).
>It has incredibly inane but meticulous dialogue stretching over pages and pages.
That actually is perfectly fine. Most of the "excess" text in the Trial aren't even detailed or meticulous, and it's basically devoid of dialogue. It's not even exposition, it's... Like, there's a 20 page passage dedicated to explaining (to no one in particular) the nature and role of a lawyer in general, not just in this specific process. It goes on and on and I really wanted to enjoy it. I wanted to enjoy the book, to see in it what critics and writers that I admire have seen in it. I wanted to come out of this experience understanding and agreeing with the praise and the hype I guess.

lol kafka was a talentless jew

Wie ein Hund.

>not finishing with an exclamation mark

Wie ein Hund.!

>sagte er, es war, als sollte die scham ihn uberleben

drumpf

>drumpf
fpmurd

dolan

bump for the fruitful discussion and not the random shitposting

Explain why his writing is bad? The predicaments he subjects his characters to are made even more horrible by how distant and cold his writing is

Basically, if you like Lynch you'll like Kafka. It is a pleb filter in the way that really the style mood swings from coldness to warmth pretty regularly and there is nothing 'explained' because the draw of the piece is to interpret it in whatever way you want to. Both ignore most of the established storytelling rules and both are essentially surrealists.

Lynch is gimmicky shit, though

Please don't compare Meemch to Kafka.

>Have a Facebook chat for my college course.
>Be Irish in a time when a referendum for liberalisation of Abortion is coming in the next year.
>Some girl posts about how we should all be going to a pro (((choice))) march in Dublin.
>Be against abortion as it's a violent, ignorant act that can made obsolete by a coordinated effort by society or at least communities to give support to pregnant woman of all kinds I.e. Financial, emotional, philisophical centring around making child rearing a less taxing enterprise even if that slightly screws up classical feminist orthodoxy.
> Make this point along with economic reasons for the need for as many children we can get in the modern west, along with emotional, ethical reasoning around the right to life and more importantly a future for all human beings.
>Make allusions to these students who should be well read,to Benedict the donkey (Animal farm) in relation to criticising their naïveté on the issue and perceived 'revolution' against legislation that may not go far enough. Some ostracised the reference and clearly had not read bloody animal farm.
>A handful of student made counter arguments that were all fallacious, ad homenum (men or people who don't have a friend who had an abortion don't get a say), sociopathic( A fly has more cells than a featus, and you kill flies all the time XD), dude are you StOnEd?, hasty generalisation(alternative facts), all the fucking dumb shit arguments that the stereotype modern feminists, "nun males" et al into making. Very much a sense of appeal to validation, tribalism, rand level selfishness and college nihilism.
>Make rebuttles to any halfway worthwhile post.
>Utter shock and disgust once the one sided ((debate))ends with the handful of students samefag liking each other's posts and switching the topic to clubbing, only one person makes a half hearted post in my favour. Someone Said I wasn't rhetorical enough.
Although I thought the trap that is ideology and leftist tribalism had limited themselves to the US, the rot has spread to Ireland, god help us all.
Since I now plan to take a more assertive approach to the issue in public and do what I can to keep the minds of the people uncorrupted by "have to's" i.e spooks, I want Veeky Forums to post it's finest anti or pro abortion arguments here for the benefit of me and any of my country men present.

Sorry, fucked up somehow on making a new post on the board, ignore.

the question is why didn't you delete this you madman

If I have a baby in me i don't want it's going into the trash bro

Every western country since world war II has just been diet coastal America

can we get back on topic

Yes.

Kafka is alright, The Process is a pleb filter. Muh straight narrative fags should be shot. Hermann Ungar is the thinking man's Kafka and severely underappreciated.

That will be all.

>The Process is a pleb filter. Muh straight narrative fags should be shot
Why do you even read?

for that sweet sweet prose

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