Kafka, Mann and Camus
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The three writers saw their era as one in which alienation, isolation, lack of recognition, and the meaningless of existence were prevailing ideas and attitudes, and they were correct that these concepts were coloring much of the life of Europe in the first half of this century. This was the era of the two World Wars, the Great Depression that affected most of the world, and the tensions that affected Europe between the two wars. Perceptive writers such as Franz kafka, Thomas Mann, and Albert Camus understood the sense of malaise affecting the intellectual and social life of their time and wrote convincingly of the effects of these forces as well as about some of the causes.Franz Kafka has become identified with a certain view of the nameless and faceless bureaucracy that stands over us all, caring not for our feelings, unconcerned with our pain, and operating as a vast machine with its own rules, crushing anything or anyone in its path with compete indifference. This operates at both the human level, with the bureaucracy of the state, and at a higher level, with the "bureaucracy" of the universe, equally indifferent and carrying out its mandate without compassion. The story of Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis operates at the universal level. Kafka uses a fantastic situation to create an allegory about the meaning of humanness and about the relationship of the individual to the world in which he lives. For Gregor, all ties to the old world are broken when he awakes t
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epend, man can live as if he can depend on his fellow man, even though he and they will all die.
The Stranger is a novel that involves a character faced with an ethical dilemma in the face of his realization that life is absurd and that it has no purpose. The issue of moral responsibility is a difficult one in the universe of the Absurd, since there is no God, no caring or concerned universe, and ultimately no meaning beyond death. For Camus, though, there is a responsibility placed on every individual for making this world more livable, and this is the moral responsibility that man should respond to in life. Camus's characters do not always follow this precept, however, for the absurdity of life overwhelms their moral sense.
Works Cited
Camus, Albert. The Stranger. New York: Vintage, 1988.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. New York: Bantam, 1972.
Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories. New York: Vintage, 1989.
Kurt Vonnegut's condemnation of our civilization in Slaughterhouse-Five centers on our propensity to solve our problems through war, and war is a terrible evil that affected Vonnegut personally, since he lived through the real firebombing of Dresden that he presents here through his charact
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Approximate Word count = 1642
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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