Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor

Blum field, an elderly bachelor is a story by Franz Kafka. It was written in 1915 and published posthumously. It deals with the difficulties of a quirky bachelor in his private and professional life. With irony, the collision of a Nerd with reality is portrayed.

Kafka's " elderly bachelor " was in 1990 named after the band from Hamburg " Blum field ".

Summary

Blum field, an elderly bachelor, one evening, rises up to his room on the sixth floor. Here, the idea he goes to a dog as a companion through the head. Due to the expected inconvenience he rejects this idea.

When he enters his room, waiting for him there two small celluloid balls (table tennis balls), jumping up and down on its own, even while Blum field pursues his other activities. He does not succeed to catch the balls. After a restless night for Blum box comes in the morning the cleaning woman, to do him the budget. After they left, the balls are especially active again. As Blum field must go to work, he locks the balls in his room. Since he no longer want to find on his return, he causes children out of the house, the balls to get there.

Now you can experience Blum field in his career as a clerk in a clothes factory, the dispatches home-based workers and pays. After a long struggle Blum field has assigned him to support two interns. But he is dissatisfied and unhappy with the still very childish helpers. There will be various bizarre scenes at the work site, the Blum field is difficult to keep under control.

Cinematic form element

Here Kafka offers a grotesque reflex cinema typical chase scenes. The comic effect of the scene of Blum field on the hunt for the balls arises from the transfer of a cinematic dramaturgy persecution on the struggle between man and object. With the slapstick body language Blum field Kafka sequence sets free their particular quirky effect.

Interpretation

The often appearing in Franz Kafka bachelors topic - see also The misfortune of the bachelors from viewing or Wedding Preparations in the Country - reflects his own situation with the fear of commitment and family. At the same time used in the present narrative of self-hatred over this life to express. Blum field do not want the female counterpart - be equated - the old maid.

His reflections on the subject of dog, his handling of the children are complicated and subtle in its awkwardness almost agonizingly for the reader. The two mysterious balls that come to him in peculiar interaction, are like an embarrassing stain that can be difficult to shake off. If the bouncing objects associate female breasts? It is significant that two small, smart girls promise to free him from the balls. The wayward balls also recall the strange creature from Odradek The concern of the householder. Rounding out the picture of the ugly, unpleasant charwoman that regulates the private things of the Blum field, distinguished him from a life that is somewhere between poor, desolate and ridiculous.

His professional existence is no less painful and unsuccessful. It comes with the growth of his work can not cope, but not with his two interns that have been assigned to him for help. Here one encounters as in the novel The Castle the pair of two useless helpers who make there the surveyor life difficult. Blum field attributes the inability of trainees to their childishness and wonders if they are not even still in compulsory education because. The interns and the balls seem to mock Blum field in its uncontrollable nature.

As Blum field but already in his private area failed to deal appropriately with children, he can not do it also in his professional life. It comes to grotesque scenes in the fight for a broom, the interns seem to be afraid of the alleged beatings Blum field, which leads to considerable slapstick elements. He is not able to bring them over his understanding of their childlike expression and at the same time lead as superior, as it would be appropriate. From Blum field Pictured behavior in both the private and professional life, his bachelorhood justified without a troubled relationship with women needs to be addressed at all.

Reception

• Monika Schmitz- Emans ( v. Jagow / Year in ) S. 281 provides for the close connection Kafka with Gustave Flaubert, which he feels himself to be related by blood, and the suggestion by his bachelors stories ( Bouvard and Pe'cuchet ) and whose letters.
• Dagmar C. Lorenz ( v. Jagow / Year in ) p 375: "The text drives Kafka's own dilemma of desiring intimacy and fend for fear of the same potential partners, to the extreme. Even a dog is too much of a bond of commitment to community. The longed-for freedom but freedom to nothing. "