Comparing Kafka's Poseidon And Prometheus

The bizarre is endlessly fascinating, and Franz Kafka’s work is no exception. It pulls you in, glances dismissively at you, and spits you out, leaving you wondering what it knows that you do not. There is something at once familiar and deeply unsettling about his work, leading to the creation of a new word: Kafka-esque, meaning that something has a twisted, complex, nightmarish quality. Kafka’s longer works are invariably more bizarre, as there is more space and time for the work to develop. When a work is only 76 words like “Kleine Fabel”, however, each word has far more impact and significance. As such, Kafka deliberately chose each word, and each word in turn holds significance and meaning beyond a simple translation. In analyzing translations

One such premise Kafka takes advantage of is Greek myths, featured in short stories “Poseidon” and “Prometheus.” When dealing with the familiar, the Greek gods and their stories, Kafka turns it on its head, turning Poseidon into a commonplace businessman amid a swirling sea of paperwork. Prometheus’ story has four different iterations, each with a different ending, rather than the generally accepted end to the myth. Kafka does not only write about Greek myths, though. He also chooses to subvert the classic tropes and themes of a fable. Most cultures have some form of fables, but in the vast majority of them, the central characters do not die or get eaten. Typically, the protagonists live to provide an important life lesson or a moral. Kafka’s characters live to exemplify a much darker story – it doesn’t matter which way you run, there will always be someone more powerful or more dangerous than you. In changing that which is familiar, Kafka begins to introduce an element of the

When reading Kafka, the first few lines are often deceptively ordinary with nothing there to indicate the gradual shift to the bizarre and macabre. This happens even in the tamest of Kafka’s work – “Poseidon,” for example, despite centering on an exhausted, godly businessman, still manages to tie in the idea of the end of the world. The bizarre is increasingly apparent in works like “Kleine Fabel” or “Der Geier,” wherein an animal kills the one of the central characters. “Der Geier” fails to have the mitigating factor of “Kleine Fabel,” where the reader receione hves input from the murderous animal. Instead, “Der Geier” features a quiet power, one that slaughters mercilessly, conscious of the actions it takes and electing to kill