A Little Fable

Small fable is a short fable -like story about a desperate move by Franz Kafka, which was built in 1920. It was published posthumously by Max Brod, who also gave her the title.

The complete text

"Oh," said the mouse, "the world is closer with each passing day. At first she was so wide that I was afraid, I kept running and was happy that I finally saw the right and left walls in the distance, but these long walls rush so quickly to one another that I 'm in the last room, and there angle is the trap into which I run. " - " You only need to change the direction, "said the cat, and ate it.

Content analysis

The mouse is a really pitiful, unfree, frightened creature. Almost never is the world the way they want them. Between too far and always becoming closer, there is only a small status window of comfort for them, significantly, the sight of the looming in the distance bounding walls.

It runs like hypnotized against the case, as there was no other way. The Council of the Cat, but to change the direction, could be on the advice of a friend who wants to show a way out of hard packed thinking. Only at this time and put forward by the cat he is cynical and meaningless. One therefore speaks of a " Kafkaesque situation." For it is not the case, the danger, but the unnoticed sneaking cat itself The trap just stood there; the mouse would not have had the opportunity to decide not to get close to her? But the question is pointless anyway. The cat than the actual danger of death coming closer, the mouse ( and the reader ) did not notice, so they also had no occasion to fear it. Otherwise, the mouse is all wrapped up in their fears and compulsions. Is it not almost a relief when the cat stopped this existence?

Shape analysis

This is not a fable in the traditional sense, but a tale that leads the reader the illusion character of all interpretations in mind. The title contains a generic name that represents the text in the series of didactic animal stories. However, it lacks the edifying or at least enlightening message, it only shows hopelessness. This fable proposes that the Enlightenment optimism, from which this genus actually seen, almost sneering face. This shows indeed concealed a mythical sense, namely the warning of a misguided life, which in turn corresponds much more to the nature of a parabola. " The small anti - fable is Kafka's smallest parable " ( Sudau ).

The narrative is limited to the final dramatic moments in the life of the mouse, but leaves the outline of the whole life to appear. The mouse tells only in the present tense ( is close ... ), then switches to the past tense ( it was ... ), a final movement in the same time delay is inserted ( hatte. .. fear ) before the story changes back into the present and in will be completed this time form ( eilen. .. I am ..., ... is, I run ... ). The life of the mouse is seemingly predestined. First, she frightens the width, the resulting total freedom, so that it runs fast on it. Happily, she is short, as it recognizes the bounding walls, because apparently without that time has passed, she is already at the end, in the " last room", arrived. There is the trap into which they must walk into it. The cynical saying the cat, which refers to changing the direction of travel, is one of the best closing lines in German literature, precisely because of its cynicism and its absurdity. Although the mouse apparently has all the freedom of choice, her life is predetermined without their own influence. You can not do otherwise than in the last room to walk into the trap, where it is eaten. The cat must not even take the trouble to hunt them, the mouse is the cat quasi served by their own way of life " on a silver platter ." This motif is found very often in Kafka. Examples include the novels The Trial and The Castle are mentioned, but also in the country doctor, in the judgment or the parable Before the Law, the protagonist is trapped in a deterministic doom scenario from which can not extricate whatever kind of action it. This is all done without this protagonist has more guilty. It is simply the "natural course of things ."

Interpretive approaches

The path between the narrowing walls of the trap could also generally represent the life with the inevitable end in death. Here stages of human life are signaled in a few words. The difficult determination in youth. The stifling responsibilities of adults. Since the cat seems almost like a lure of diverse deadlocked in his normal life people in a departure towards a fundamentally new situation which leads, however, to the extermination of the sentence. The concern about the case presented the general existence of concern, including the fear of death; they do but go through a very unexpected premature death entirely into the void. The mouse is hopeless between different variants of death, not only by external danger, but by their own inner state.

But it is also conceivable to undermine the provocation of Mythical avoiding its statement. Maybe it's not about the people themselves, but rather to the " gray mouse ", which is subject to these constraints, but that does not necessarily apply. So the little fable could indeed be a prompt, early confidently tackle life and not necessarily just to walk between walls into the trap.

As in many of Kafka stories the misjudgment of reality and the failure is the theme. In contrast to these other accounts such as Construction, Investigations of a Dog, The village schoolmaster, where finally it leaves a certain unsatisfactory state of suspense, this story leads abruptly into a deadly end. And the fear of the mouse gets so - but without causal relationship - in retrospect fully justified.

Reception

• Sudau (p. 112): "Overall, Kafka accomplishes the feat to accelerate a lifting as melancholy, contemplative life review process in the shortest possible time at a jerky Bewegungssog and terminate abruptly in a dramatic Zuschnapp movement. But this reading and presentation dynamics is amazingly staged. If you take the mental shock added by the cruel punch line, is Kafka's Little Fable ' a masterpiece striking design. "

Text output

• Franz Kafka: All narratives. Edited by Paul Raabe, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg 1970, ISBN 3- 596-21078 -X.
• Franz Kafka: Posthumous writings and fragments 2 Edited by Jost Schillemeit. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-10-038145-9, p 343
• Franz Kafka The narratives. Original Version, Edited by Roger Hermes, Fischer Verlag 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3.

Secondary literature

• Peter- André Alt: Franz Kafka. The eternal Son. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4.
• Manfred Engel: Small posthumous writings and fragments 3 Add: Manfred Engel, Bernd aurochs (ed.): Kafka manual. Life - Work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar, 2010, pp. 359 f, ISBN 978-3-476-02167-0.