The Vulture (Kafka)

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The vulture is a small parable-like prose piece by Franz Kafka from the year 1920. A vulture tears apart a person's feet without being helped. Eventually it culminates in a blood slaughter.

Emergence

In the fall of 1920, Kafka broke away from his lover Milena Jesenská . A series of short prose pieces were created in a productive burst. Mention should be made here of the city arms , the helmsman , at night , community , our little town lies ... (also known as "the rejection"), on the question of the law , the raising of troops , the test , the spinning top , little fable , Poseidon and also the Vulture .

Kafka himself did not publish these small works with their inner connections; the titles are largely by Max Brod .

content

A first-person narrator describes how a vulture , who has already torn off his boots and stockings, picks his feet. A gentleman comes by and asks why he tolerates the vulture. The narrator describes himself as defenseless. He sacrificed his feet to prevent the animal from jumping in his face. The gentleman wonders about this torture and says that the vulture would be finished with one shot. The narrator asks the Lord to do this for him. However, the rifle must first be fetched. The vulture was listening to the conversation and obviously understood. With great swing he thrusts his beak through the mouth of the narrator. In the resulting vast amounts of blood, the vulture drowns “irretrievably”, while the narrator feels liberated.

shape

The prose piece, which often contains direct speech, is not structured in itself. The content is divided into three parts.

  • Introductory presentation of the situation with the vulture
  • Conversation with the Lord as the longest part of the piece
  • Reaction and death of the vulture

The narrative perspective is multilayered. There is a first-person narrator who speaks of the vulture's death at the end. In view of the bloodstream, it seems at first to be imposed that he himself also dies, but that is not explicitly stated. Besides, how could he then present the story to us? Is he speaking from the realm of the dead or did he overcome death in a kind of catharsis at the moment of greatest danger ?

Text analysis

The narrator is attacked by a large scavenger . The narrator calls this the work of the vulture, something almost legitimized and inevitable. How the exchange of the face for the offered feet came about is not explained in detail. Obviously there was an understanding, at least in gestures. The conversation with the gentleman seems strange. Based on the situation, immediate intervention or the request to intervene would have been appropriate and not this cumbersome speech, which is more of a justification for why the narrator does not consistently defend himself. The animal, on the other hand, is powerful in its calm physical strength and purposeful manner in contrast to the hesitant narrator who almost seems to admire the vulture. The vulture quietly listened to the conversation between the two men, actually like a third, silent participant in the conversation, only to do his work of destruction in a furious manner.

The little story builds up almost awkwardly at first - mainly through the direct speeches in the middle section. The last two movements, however, appear like a tightly packed sequence up to the climax, in which everything is bundled:

  • the vulture's intention
  • the terrible beak
  • the feeling of liberation of the relapsing narrator
  • the rivers of blood in which the vulture drowns

Relation to other Kafka works

A basic pattern of Kafka appears here, namely the representation of a tormenting state that is ended by destruction, annihilation, death, whereby this end is felt as liberation. "Death is the place of the liberating erasure of the last memory," says Peter-André Alt. This pattern can also be seen in the small prose pieces Das Stadtwappen or Poseidon . The bridge is similar in that, at the end, a drastically touching physical force and injury is portrayed.

A completely parallel sequence appears in the story The Judgment . A young man is scolded and ridiculed (tortured) by his father and sentenced to death by drowning. The son executes the judgment, although death is not explicitly shown. Finally, the picture of vital traffic appears. Similar moments are also present in The Metamorphosis . These last two pieces in particular are interpreted as Kafka's confrontation with his rumbling, uncomprehending father. So it seems reasonable to conclude that the vulture symbolizes the constellation of a hesitant inferior son and a vital, ruthless father.

Quote

  • "Now I saw that he understood everything, he flew up, he leaned back far to get enough momentum and then thrust like a javelin through my mouth deep into me. Falling back, I felt liberated as he drowned irredeemably in my blood that filled all the depths and overflowed all banks. "

Text output

  • Vulture. Originated in 1920. First published: Description of a fight. Edited by Max Brod. Prague 1936, p. 100 f. (Title by Max Brod).
  • Vulture. In: Franz Kafka: Complete stories. Edited by Paul Raabe . Frankfurt a. M. 1977. p. 405, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • Franz Kafka: The stories. Original version. Edited by Roger Hermes. Frankfurt a. M. 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3 .
  • Franz Kafka: Legacy writings and fragments II. Ed. By Jost Schillemeit, Fischer, Frankfurt a. M. 1992, pp. 329-330.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter-André Alt: Franz Kafka. The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 . P. 548
  2. ↑ Joachim Unseld: Franz Kafka. A writer's life. Carl Hanser Verlag, 1982, ISBN 3-446-13568-5 Ln, p. 194.
  3. ↑ Alt. P. 569
  4. ↑ Alt p. 577
  5. ↑ [1]

Web links