What makes something "Kafkaesque"? - Noah Tavlin

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The term Kafkaesque has entered the vernacular to describe unnecessarily complicated and frustrating experiences, especially with bureaucracy. But does standing in a long line to fill out confusing paperwork really capture the richness of Kafka’s vision? Beyond the word’s casual use, what makes something "Kafkaesque"? Noah Tavlin explains.

Lesson by Noah Tavlin, animation by TED-Ed.

"Someone must have been telling
lies about Josef K.

He knew he had done nothing wrong,
but one morning, he was arrested."

Thus begins "The Trial,"

one of author Franz Kafka's
most well-known novels.

K, the protagonist,
is arrested out of nowhere

and made to go through
a bewildering process

where neither the cause of his arrest,

nor the nature
of the judicial proceedings

are made clear to him.

This sort of scenario is considered
so characteristic of Kafka's work

that scholars came up
with a new word for it.

Kafkaesque has entered the vernacular
to describe unnecessarily complicated

and frustrating experiences,

like being forced to navigate labyrinths
of bureaucracy.

But does standing in a long line
to fill out confusing paperwork

really capture the richness
of Kafka's vision?

Beyond the word's casual use,
what makes something Kafkaesque?

Franz Kafka's stories do indeed deal
with many mundane and absurd aspects

of modern bureaucracy,

drawn in part from his experience
of working as an insurance clerk

in early 20th century Prague.

Many of his protagonists
are office workers

compelled to struggle through
a web of obstacles

in order to achieve their goals,

and often the whole ordeal turns out
to be so disorienting and illogical

that success becomes pointless
in the first place.

For example, in the short story,
"Poseidon,"

the Ancient Greek god is an executive
so swamped with paperwork

that he's never had time to explore
his underwater domain.

The joke here is that not even
a god can handle the amount of paperwork

demanded by the modern workplace.

But the reason why is telling.

He's unwilling to delegate any of the work

because he deems everyone else
unworthy of the task.

Kafka's Poseidon is a prisoner
of his own ego.

This simple story contains
all of the elements

that make for a truly Kafkaesque scenario.

It's not the absurdity
of bureaucracy alone,

but the irony of the character's
circular reasoning in reaction to it

that is emblematic of Kafka's writing.

His tragicomic stories act as a form of
mythology for the modern industrial age,

employing dream logic to explore
the relationships

between systems of arbitrary power
and the individuals caught up in them.

Take, for example, Kafka's
most famous story, "Metamorphosis."

When Gregor Samsa awaken's one morning
to find himself transformed

into a giant insect,

his greatest worry
is that he gets to work on time.

Of course, this proves impossible.

It was not only the authoritarian realm
of the workplace that inspired Kafka.

Some of his protagonists' struggles
come from within.

The short story, "A Hunger Artist,"

describes a circus performer whose act
consists of extended fasts.

He's upset that the circus master
limits these to 40 days,

believing this prevents him from achieving
greatness in his art.

But when his act loses popularity,

he is left free
to starve himself to death.

The twist comes when he lays dying
in anonymity,

regretfully admitting that his art
has always been a fraud.

He fasted not through strength of will,

but simply because he never found
a food he liked.

Even in "The Trial,"

which seems to focus
directly on bureaucracy,

the vague laws and bewildering procedures
point to something far more sinister:

the terrible momentum of the legal system
proves unstoppable,

even by supposedly powerful officials.

This is a system
that doesn't serve justice,

but whose sole function
is to perpetuate itself.

What political theorist Hannah Arendt,

writing years after Kafka's death,

would call "tyranny without a tyrant."

Yet accompanying
the bleakness of Kafka's stories,

there's a great deal of humor

rooted in the nonsensical logic
of the situations described.

So on the one hand, it's easy to recognize
the Kafkaesque in today's world.

We rely on increasingly convoluted systems
of administration

that have real consequences on
every aspect of our lives.

And we find our every word judged
by people we can't see

according to rules we don't know.

On the other hand, by fine-tuning
our attention to the absurd,

Kafka also reflects our shortcomings
back at ourselves.

In doing so, he reminds us that the world
we live in is one we create,

and have the power
to change for the better.