Heisenberg (Walter White) and Jesse Pinkman. Does it ring any bells? If you do not know who they are, here is a little hint- they were the heart and soul of the fantastic series ‘Breaking Bad’. Now, do you recall? Breaking Bad has been around for 5 amazing years and has managed to mesmerize it. It is a thriller crime series that is well known for its intense drama.
Although there are some episodes that stand out, like Kafkaesque (Season 3 Episode 9). Kafkaesque? Difficult to pronounce, ain’t it? But the bigger question is- what is KAFKAESQUE? Just a word? A captivating title or something born of the genius mind of Shashi Tharoor?
I reality Kafkaesque is much deeper than you can anticipate. Take a moment and think what Shakespearean mean? Or Joycean for instance? The use of these words as adjectives signifies that you are referring to something related to the great Shakespeare or the Irish writer James Joyce. The same applies to Kafkaesque.
Kafkaesque(Kaf-ka-Esque) is defined as- of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz Kafka or his writings especially having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.
Who was Franz Kafka?
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech-born German-language writer whose surreal fiction vividly expressed the anxiety, alienation, and powerlessness of the individual in the 20th century. Kafka’s work is characterized by dark scary settings in which characters are crushed by a nonsensical, blind authority. Thus, the word Kafkaesque is often applied to bizarre and unpleasant situations where the individual feels powerless. He is unable to understand and control the happenings.
Kafkaesque- True Meaning
Noah Tavlin suggests Kafkaesque as one of the few words which are often misunderstood. Tavlin, in a TEDx video published on 20th June 2016 explained the real meaning of “Kafkaesque”. Tavlin talks about The Trial (one of the impressive works of Franz Kafka), in which- K, the protagonist, is arrested for no apparent reason. He is made to go through a bewildering process during which neither the cause of his arrest nor the nature of the judicial proceedings is made clear to him. This scenario is considered so characteristic of Kafka’s work that scholars often use the term “Kafkaesque” to describe it. Kafkaesque has become evocative of all “unnecessarily complicated and frustrating experiences’- for instance being forced to navigate labyrinths of bureaucracy.
Tavlin continues with another short story of Kafka- ‘Poseidon’. In Poseidon- the Greek god of the sea- can neither explore nor enjoy his realm. Why? Because he is buried under mountains of paperwork. Kafka hints that he is “a prisoner of his own ego,” unwilling to delegate because he sees his underlings as unworthy of the task. Here Tavlin argues saying- “contains all of the elements that make for a truly Kafkaesque scenario.”
It’s not the absurdity of bureaucracy alone, but the irony of the character’s circular reasoning in reaction to it, that is emblematic of Kafka’s writing. His tragicomic stories act as a form of mythology for the modern industrial age, employing dream logic to explore the relationships between systems of arbitrary power and the individuals caught up in them.
Other work of Franz Kafka and Tavlin’s deduction
Tavlin refers to The Metamorphosis and A Hunger Artist as further examples of how Kafka’s characters overcomplicate their own lives through their fanatical, singular devotion to absurd conditions.
But later in the video Tavlin talks about the bewildering mechanisms of power in stories such as The Trial also “point to something much more sinister”—the idea that arcane bureaucracies become self-perpetuating and operate independently of the people supposedly in power, who are themselves reduced to functionaries of mysterious, unaccountable forces. Tavlin quotes Hannah Arendt, who studied the totalitarian nightmares Kafka presciently foresaw, and wrote of “tyranny without a tyrant.” Tesla’s Elon Musk suggests we ourselves are no more than operations in a complex system, simulated beings inside a computer program.
But the scenario described by Musk is not really Kafkaesque. For these theorists of modern technocracy lack a key feature of Kafka’s vision—his dark, tragicomic, absurdist sense of humor, which permeates even his bleakest visions. On the one hand, Tavlin says, we “rely on increasingly convoluted systems of administration” and find ourselves judged and ruled over “by people, we can’t see according to rules we don’t know”—a situation bound to provoke profound anxiety and psychological distress. On the other hand, Kafka’s attention to the absurd, “reflects our shortcomings back at ourselves,” reminding us that “the world we live in is one we created.” I’m not so sure, as Tavlin concludes, that Kafka believed we have the “power to change for the better” the over-complicated systems we barely understand.
Conclusion
So what could be understood is that Franz Kafka and his Kafkaesque literature deals with everyone’s mental state and how it battles misfortune. Kafka, his own life was devoid of any recognition and all he did was worked in an insurance company and penned down every realistic episode of people’s encounters with this bureaucracy. Not to mention the frustrating irrational experiences. Kafkaesque in the broader sense includes all kinds of struggles may it be rational/irrational and the people’s will to take on everything. In a simpler sense, Kafkaesque is an adjective used to describe something nightmarishly complex, illogical or bizarre And a Fun Fact!!! Even I wasn’t aware of this very term until last month.
“ The word is as misused as is used”- Friedrick R Karl
REFERENCES
1.THE NEWYORK TIMES(Column written by Ivana Edwards, Dated-Dec 29, 1991)- https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/29/nyregion/the-essence-of-kafkaesque.html
2.OPEN CULTURE–http://www.openculture.com/2016/06/what-does-kafkaesque-mean-a-short-animated-video-explains.html
3.MERRIAM WEBSTER DICTIONARY–https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque
Written By Amlan Das with editing and inputs from Kamellia D’Raciti