Amerika Franz Kafka A Review

Amerika is a tale by Franz Kafka which follows the shifting fortunes of a Bohemian immigrant by the name of Karl Rossmann. He comes across people who abuse and exploit him and consequently show him the reality concerning his notions about the United States of America. “Only then did Karl come to understand the vastness of America.” These are the last words of Franz Kafka in his work, `Amerika’. These words may be interpreted as lastingly hopeful. This is the only Kafka work where the protagonist is a teenager. Some of the situations that Karl gets into, make the reader tense. They get a feeling of an impending doom, to the point where reading this book makes them uncomfortable, particularly the entire chapter about Pollunder’s and the interactions of Karl with Delamarche and Robinson. In comparison, it feels odd because both `The Process’ and `The Castle’ by Kafka feel rather comforting to me, but `Amerika’ is a long and sustained attack of panic. These passages have created an impact on me - ‘When Karl appeared before them and greeted them, they put away the ledgers quickly and picked up some other large books, which they opened. One of them, evidently only a clerk, said: “I should like to see your identity papers.” “Unfortunately, I don’t have them with me,” said Karl. . . . “You’re an engineer?” asked the other man, who seemed to be the chief office manager. “Not yet,” Karl said quickly, “but—” “That’s quite enough, [. . .] then you don’t belong here. I would ask that you heed the signs.” [. . .] “Take this gentleman to the office for people with technical skills.” [. . .] `In the office into which Karl was now taken, the procedure was, as Karl had foreseen, similar to that in the first office. However, on hearing that he had attended middle school, they sent him to the office for former middle school students; but once in that office, when Karl said that he had attended a European middle school, they declared that they were not responsible for such cases and requested that he be taken to the office for former European middle-school students.’ This is Franz Kafka’s first novel and a peculiar one that dabbles with a crime plot. When reading this book, we have to realise that not all crimes end up producing murderers or corpses. Some of them leave dead souls that are killed by relentless metaphysical complexity; a kind that reason cannot contend with; a kind that wipes out nations and people in a couple of generations. Stalin in Russia was the foremost example of being a gifted practitioner of such type of killing in the twentieth century. He was an expert at bringing about mass perplexity to represent unregulated power. His idolaters and followers have become somewhat of a legion, everywhere in the world. Franz Kafka brought out this kind of complex analysis from his life’s experiences. These perplexities of life were coarsely inferred after his death by interpreters and scholars who were determined to conjure a general stereotype theory of Kafka’s writings. This book is a great example of such dissection of perplexity as a criminal activity. The narrative takes place in the United States of America’s baron-robber age and is perhaps the strangest and the funniest among Kafka’s novels. From the outset, we sense a repetition of hand holding of an embarrassing nature and sweaty and intimate body contact among males, mostly involving Karl Rossmann, the sixteen-year old lad whose innocence and experiences in America are recorded in this book. Karl is actually exiled in a way to America by his domineering Bohemian father after an old housemaid tries to rape him and becomes pregnant, while young Karl has no recollection of whatever transpired to him, in her bed. The character of Rossmann not only has a complete name but he is also presented as being a transparent and a non-mysterious figure, in contrast to the antihero who is named K, of `Castle’. What Karl has in plenty is an immoderate sense of duty and order. He is an obedient child. Yet, if he is cornered, he can fight back for his life. As the narrative progresses, his survival skills develop. What is unchangeable is that despite his trials in America, Karl is convinced that if he behaves in an honourable way, the world will treat him well and would be kind to him. At the end of the book, Karl has not learnt his lessons and does not turn into a vengeful character. One of the joys of reading this book is to go through how nobody and nothing is anything but nominal under their set of larger than life rules and how all the layers get peeled off simultaneously but not in unity. Karl is mighty surprised that the citizens of USA, either by immigration or birth are not fazed by these rules and regulations such as in the case of his wealthy and obese uncle. All the natives accept those rules, both implicit and explicit and they go on with their mundane lives. Karl is tormented during the day and reflects during the night; he compares his situation in the new world with that of his life in the old world.