Kafka Analysis

Before proceeding any further, I want to first acknowledge the sources I used during my research: Saul Friedlander’s Kafka: The Poet of Shame and Guilt, Paul Peters’ “Witness to the Execution: Kafka and Colonialism,” and Richard T. Gray’s “Disjunctive Signs: Semiotics, Aesthetics, and Failed Mediation in ‘In der Strafkolonie’.” Compared to other canonical authors, evaluating Kafka’s literature in the context of his life proves to be a more illuminating pursuit because of the tremendous amount of literature Kafka left behind in the form of letters, diary entries, editorial notes, etc. To understand Kafka’s peculiarities then is to understand the environment he was born into. The first child of Julie Lowy and Hermann Kafka, Franz Kafka was born in Prague on …show more content…
This confusion should come as no surprise when one considers the story’s tumultuous publication history. Originally written in 1914, “In der Strafkolonie” was not published until 1919, following a five-year hiatus Kafka took from the story. Kafka was famously displeased with the ending of the story, going as far as to call it “botched.” (Gray 216). It was not until 1917, after the repeated insistence of his publisher Kurt Wollf, that Kafka returned to the story. (Gray 216). However, during this period of time, Kafka found his life falling into disarray. In 1917, three years after the disintegration of their engagement, Kafka and his former fiancé Felice Bauer ended their relationship. To Kafka, the relationship’s failure stemmed from a polar incompatibility between the two of them. As Gray describes it, “the principal problem was one of mediation between two incommensurable positions.” (Gray 234). Following this separation, Kafka exhausted himself attempting to revise the ending of “In the Penal Colony.” Ultimately, the original ending