The neighbor (Kafka)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The neighbor is a story from the estate of Franz Kafka . It was written in 1917 and published in Berlin in 1931 by Max Brod and Hans-Joachim Schoeps .

The story The neighbor , which has the characteristics of a short story , is about a young owner of a small company, who at first appears self-assured, who feels threatened by his new neighbor Harras.

Content analysis

The first-person narrator seems to be successful and does not seem to have a hard time running his business. Assertions ("I am not complaining, I am not complaining.") Indicate at the beginning of the story that there could be cause for complaint. In retrospect, the narrator seems to regret not renting the neighboring apartment because he believed he couldn't do anything with the kitchen that belonged to it. Another young businessman has now rented this neighboring apartment.

The narrator would like to find out more about the life and activities of his neighbor, who has since moved into the apartment. He assumes that his neighbor Harras is doing his business harm, possibly wanting to ruin him. However, he does not confront Harras, but makes inquiries with others in order to find out information about Harras. It turns out that this is just as "a young and ambitious man" as himself. The first-person narrator increasingly feels reinforced in his suspicion that Harras is up to something against him, as he is always in a hurry and evidently evades a conversation with the first-person narrator.

The narrator feels increasingly, into grotesque growing fears that suggest that he paranoia suffers. Because there is no evidence that Harras is eavesdropping on him, his neighbor, through the noisy wall, making his way to the customer the narrator is on the phone with and thus poaching customers from him. The semblance of self-assurance has completely vanished at the end of the story.

shape

The story The Neighbor is a short story insofar as the action begins suddenly and ends abruptly; As is typical of this type of text, it is left to the reader to find a conclusion. Here an increasingly delusional monologue develops of a person who is overwhelmed by his work and competitive thinking and has a fundamental life insecurity.

With his narrative technique, Kafka gives the reader no chance of finding out more than the first-person narrator tells him. The need to empathize with a paranoid person - if it really is paranoia - is felt to be uncomfortable. This also applies to the whole surrealist alienated world into which one is introduced. It is typical of Surrealism that this world seems familiar at first, but gradually takes on strange features. This world also seems familiar because of the language used (high-level language with common terms and simply constructed sentences). With this, the reader can easily understand the action, but not completely “understand” it. The reader gets the uneasy feeling that this book tour is like the inside view of a madness. The fearful overflowing fantasy of the narrator is expressed in that the initially short-breathed sentences change into far-reaching sentence structures. Contributing to the grotesque impression is that the narrator even linguistically dehumanizes his rival (e.g. "It slipped into it like the tail of a rat ..."). The narrator dancing around the phone as a tragic-comic, wretched figure is a downright Chaplinesque appearance with slapstick elements of the silent film.

References to other works by Kafka

The central vehicle of the protagonist's uncertainty is the telephone. At the beginning of the 20th century, this was a new form of communication that Kafka was uneasy about. A false, only technical presence is suggested. The eerie between people is not eliminated, rather it is intensified. The disturbing tones that rustle in the telephone remain strange and threatening to those who hear them. The telephone also plays a confusing role in the novel Das Schloss .

The subject of the present story should not be seen in isolation. Kafka repeatedly addresses the hardship of being a merchant, probably also due to the numerous complaints his father had. Already in his early work viewing enters the merchant to the diverse struggles with his existence. In Das Ehepaar , the unfavorable competitive situation between two businesspeople is discussed. Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis is - before he becomes a Beetle - an unhappy salesman. Detached from the merchant's fate, however, the protagonist's obsession leading to paranoid can be seen. It recalls the obsession with the burrowing animal from Der Bau . There it is the noise that the animal hears and which makes it more and more insecure. In this story, what is disturbing is what the competitor is supposed to hear.

reception

Sudau (p. 82): “But competition is only the obvious problem of the text; a deeper insecurity and fear of existence can be seen as the real thing. Hesitation, pettiness, mistrust, fearfulness, self-reproach and obsessions are his dictum of existence .... The text shows the genesis of prejudice and paranoia . "

expenditure

  • All the stories. Published by Paul Raabe , Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, ISBN 3-596-21078-X .
  • Retained writings and fragments 1. Edited by Malcolm Pasley, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-10-038148-3 , pp. 370–372.

Secondary literature

  • Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories. Klett Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7 .
  • Peter-André Alt : Franz Kafka: The Eternal Son. A biography. Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4 .
  • Franz Kafka, Johannes Diekhans, Elisabeth Becker: Text editions: The Metamorphosis / Letter to the Father and other works. Schöningh im Westermann, (January 1999), ISBN 978-3-14-022290-7 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sudau p. 81
  2. ↑ Sudau pp. 83/85
  3. ↑ Alt p. 281