VEDA’S JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (JOELL)
An International Peer Reviewed (Refereed) Journal
Impact Factor (SJIF) 4.092 http://www.joell.in

Vol.6, Issue 1, 2019

KAFKAESQUE: AWE, MENACE AND POWER RELATIONS IN THE CASTLE, THE TRIAL AND THE METAMORPHOSIS

Dr Shuchi Agrawal¹, Jasmeen Kaur²

¹(Associate Professor,Amity Institute of English Studies & Research,Amity University, NOIDA)

²(Student, M.A., Amity Institute of English Studies & Research, Amity University, NOIDA.) 

doi: https://doi.org/10.33329/joell.61.166

ABSTRACT

             The term Kafkaesque inherits the confusion, distortion, surreal, absurdity and sense of foreboding. The elements of terror and awe are well developed and articulated through the characters and critical situations in which they are placed by Kafka. Fredrick Robert in his work Franz Kafka: Represented Man states that Kafkaesque is more about mysticism, unknown power and human fear. It constitutes the numerous characteristics such as distortion of time and space, unavoidable sense of menace and foreboding and also the mechanism of panopticon. Kafka’s approach to the novels is censorious: he artistically left his characters in implausible situation that bring out the inexplicable reality of the modern world. Kafkaesque also encompasses the sexual and political repression that lead to the acquisition of framework within which the notion of awe and menace is panopticized. The structure of power that framed the term Kafkaesque is critiqued through Foucault’s work Discipline and Punishment. Kafkaesque is symbolic of mundane world that seemed complex, irrational, unjust and oppressed. Kafka has created the world that consists of humans who endured the pain excreted from the labyrinth of terror and menace.  The repressed sexuality is an essential characteristic that structured the term Kafkaesque distortions, considering the historical representation of Kafka’s personal experiences it is anatomized through Foucault’s History of sexuality. Therefore surreal events that draft the Kafkaesque bring out the quirks of reality representing the modern world constantly proliferate the sense of awe and menace in contrast to the mysterious world of Kafka

Keywords:  Kafkaesque, Power, Sexuality, Mysticism, Foreboding, Panopticism, Terror.