AN ENIGMA CALLED "KAFKA"

Among all the novelists, Kafka, perhaps was the most difficult writer to understand.  Kafka was an enigma.  His novels (The Trail, The Castle) too were as difficult as the author to understand.  His novels were an experiment to explore human understandings.  The Trail, his unfinished novel pushes its readers to think.  The Trail gathered highest critical interpretations.  His description of faceless organisations make a suffocating reading and utterly difficult to digest.

Kafka (1883-1924) comes from a Jewish family.  Kafka had a difficult relationship with his parents.  Kafka’s father was a forceful personality, a tyrant of sorts had a profound impact on Kafka’s life and writings.  His characters were simple men and women, who often come up against the ruthless rulers who breaks the will of man and makes them spineless.

The storyline of The Trail is very simple.  Hero (for name sake) “K” was arrested by the authority on his 30^th birthday although he had done nothing wrong.  One year later “K” was arrested again on his 31^st birthday and was driven  outside the town and was killed  in the name of law.  The Trial is a satirical plot during Hungarian tyrant rule of Kafka’s day,  a mirror for any tyrant ruler of that time. 

K’s struggle with Invisible law is ultimately ends with self’s destruction.  Meaning is far from clear.  Author uses this psychological weapon to make readers to think in which “Kafta” certainly succeeds.  This was the author’s way of fighting injustice in the society and the Government.  Strangely Kafka also succeeds in making his readers feel as if they were too on “The Trial”.