Illogical in Kafkaesque

Logic goes out the window in Kafka's writing. Or rather, the logic seems to be governed by some kind of snake-eats-tail, circular thinking.

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MORE IDEAS ON THIS

Keeping Itself

"Kafkaesque" means a system that has no vested interest in doing anything but keeping itself going, alienating everyone in the process.

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Kafka's "due process" is always serpentine. Legal systems do not exist to serve justice, but to perpetuate themselves. In every circumstance, though, Kafka points out that we, the cogs in those machines, can be just as absurd and illogical as the machines...

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What is "Kafkaesque"

Kafka's stories aren't just about annoying bureaucracy, they're about bureaucracy that is so soul-crushing and illogical that is goes well past tragedy and comes back around as comedy.

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"What’s Kafkaesque... is when you enter a surreal world in which all your control patterns, all your plans, the whole way in which you have configured your own behavior, begins to fall to pieces."

FREDERICK KARL ON KAFKA'S BIOGRAOPHY

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Laugh to Absurd Life

Kafka laments and lambastes absurd bureaucracy in all his work. But he also invites us to notice the absurd part of everyday life and to laugh at it—lest we keep perpetuating the absurdity ourselves

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"You don't give up, you don't lie down and die. What you do is struggle against this with all of your equipment, with whatever you have. But of course you don’t stand a chance. That’s Kafkaesque."