520 |
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|b The above discussion has shown that Kafka is considered among the most high-ranking world literary figures, and one of the best repre¬sentatives of the twentieth century era. His writings generally describe the absurdity of modern life and the mechanism by which the naive, helpless individual is trapped in the labyrinth of a void bureaucratic authority that mercilessly crushes him apparently for no other reason than that he is too fragile to fight his way through. Of interest in the present context is the fact that the same themes of Kafka are ex¬pressed in other cotemporary fields of art like the cubic movement art and the theatre of the absurd. In this respect, Kafka can be seen as just one example of a widespread phenomenon. \ Such dismal images in Kafka's writings might have been provoked by a number of factors. Kafka grew up in an atmosphere of family ten¬sions and social rejection which he experienced as a member of the Jewish community in Prague. He lived his whole life in Prague, yet he was never assimilated in Prague's society. Kafka was alienated from the Czechs because he wrote in German, and was estranged from the Germans because he was a Jew, and as a Czech national, he was at odds with both the Germans and the Jews. This vicious circle is ag¬gravated by unfavorable events in his personal life, namely the pro¬hibitive father who measured success according to material and social advancement and who totally underestimated his son’s artistic talent and literary inclinations. This situation was made even worse by the fact that he lived most of his life in seclusion and bachelorhood. All these events, and of course many others, caused Kafka to experience a problem of identity which colored his writings with bleak and unbear¬able gloomy absurdity
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