Scan barcode
A review by aegagrus
Amerika: The Missing Person by Franz Kafka
3.25
[re-read for class, not a full review]
Amerika is far from Kafka's best; its style is somewhat rough and he hadn't yet fully developed the incisive depiction of bureaucracy which animates his later novels, especially The Trial. What stands out most prominently in Amerika is the naivite and passivity of our protagonist, Karl Rossman. In Rossman's naivite, which is particularly appropriate to a young writer, Kafka finds an interesting angle into his theme: America. Precisely because Rossman is credulous and not particularly thoughtful, through close third-person we get a fitting account of the idea of America as it appeared to Europeans of the time, especially immigrants; a conceptual gauze shrouding America as an ideology and as a set of institutions.
Amerika is far from Kafka's best; its style is somewhat rough and he hadn't yet fully developed the incisive depiction of bureaucracy which animates his later novels, especially The Trial. What stands out most prominently in Amerika is the naivite and passivity of our protagonist, Karl Rossman. In Rossman's naivite, which is particularly appropriate to a young writer, Kafka finds an interesting angle into his theme: America. Precisely because Rossman is credulous and not particularly thoughtful, through close third-person we get a fitting account of the idea of America as it appeared to Europeans of the time, especially immigrants; a conceptual gauze shrouding America as an ideology and as a set of institutions.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Confinement