Why is it that the characters in Kafka's stories never seem to actually question the situations they're in...

Your frustration with their inaction is what he's trying to get across to you.

I think it's a big part of how Kafka tends to portray alienation. I'm not a huge reader of his (only Metamorphosis), but Gregor seemed so pliant to other people's wills and desires that when a completely random, horrible thing happens to him, he's just completely, unquestioningly accepting of his lot. I mean, if I remember correctly, even after be transformed into a giant cockroach, he was still trying to go to work. Dude was a cog, and cogs don't question shit.

Kafka doesn't want his characters to question their world. Kafka wants *you* to question their world.

They are dreams.

cuz dey all pussy azz white bois

because all of his stories are metaphors and shouldn't be read as Kafka asking you to take them literally

In the same way that Kafka's characters march meekly through the absurdity of his stories, he believes YOU are marching meekly though the absurdity of your own life.

Kafka's worlds are different from ours due to such deep level abstractions that they are impossible to coherently elaborate. Why are the courts in the attics such an integral part of the society portrayed in The Trial, requiring thousands of workers and occupying a large portion of every building, yet any character outside the court system is unaware of its existence? Who pays for all the castle officials in The Castle when the bureaucrats vastly outnumber the citizens of the town? Why is the Officer still allowed to use the torture apparatus when he doesn't have the support of the Commandant and the governing body in "In the Penal Colony"? You can ask these questions, but to satisfactorily answer them you'd to tortuously explain every facet of the universe in which the stories take place: "Well, in the universe of the Metamorphosis the concept of a person is not tied to a biological category but instead by the relation to those around them and how this fits into larger..." and so on ad inifinitum constantly playing catch-up just to understand the most basic facets of life in these fictional universes.

This is the crux of Kafka's alienation: everything is perfectly reasonable, it all adds up if you believe in it, but as an outsider you lack the first principles from which the entire system is derived and no one can ever tell you what they are because those who believe in them do so without ever knowing explicitly what they are.

If an alien looked into your existence, all the same problems would arise. They might ask, "Why are you angry about symbols on a lighted screen when you could just turn it off and not see it anymore?" and now you have to explain that the internet connects you to other computers allowing you to communicate with other people via the linguistic inputs they send to you and that on a website called Veeky Forums somebody just called you a retard (a word you'd have to define for them) and that since your pride has been hurt you have to prove now that this label does not apply to you and and and and...you would explain forever even to illustrate the a scenario that is the most basic thing in the world for us. Kafka's works were an attempt to induce this uncanny feeling about our own culture and place in the world by highlighting that there are certain base level beliefs that are arbitrary and invisible, and, lacking them, we have no hope of ever being understanding or feeling connection with anything.

>lacking them, we have no hope of ever being understanding or feeling connection with anything

So if we don't identify with the daily absurdities we can't being understanding? You're saying Kafka's advocating for identifying with the absurd?

Kafka doesn't really advocate for anything considering his concept of hopelessness is rooted at the ontological level: if you lack the identification with the absurdity, you can't hope to ever enter back into it. You can understand the reasons people are doing things, but if you have to ask then this already shows that you don't understand it from inside like they do.

>his concept of hopelessness is rooted at the ontological level

So you see his novels as an explication of hopelessness, a commiseration of the misery therein?

They are more than just that, but yes, they are rooted in the paradox of wanting to connect to you by identifying the fact that connection is impossible. On the universe, "plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope—but not for us." On human connection, "We are as forlorn as children lost in the woods. When you stand in front of me and look at me, what do you know of the griefs that are in me and what do I know of yours. And if I were to cast myself down before you and weep and tell you, what more would you know about me than you know about Hell when someone tells you it is hot and dreadful? For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to Hell." We can gesture toward each other to show that we are trying to understand one another, and the other person can understand this gesture as an attempt, but the true meaning that animated the gesture in the first place can never be explicated in a way that the other would recognize.

>For that reason alone we human beings ought to stand before one another as reverently, as reflectively, as lovingly, as we would before the entrance to hell
A well put piece of irony, but doesn't that amount to advocation? The experiences of life aren't that diverse at 7b people. Empathy is the understanding Kafka seems to deny. I'd say Kafka is misguided on that point like Schopenhauer and the hedgehogs. Do you agree with kafkas point as true to life?

Good post, this guy gets Kafka.

Have you read his journals? It helps to put his fiction in context.

Nice discourse, well done chaps. Its refreshing to see a discussion that is actually critically engaging.

What the fuck are you talking about? In both the Trial and the Castle the protagonists start out as angry, trying to find out why they are in the situation they are in, and trying to get what they want.