Investigations of a Dog

Investigations of a Dog is a 1922 resulting, broad narrative with fable character of Franz Kafka, published posthumously. As the title says ( by Max Brod), it comes to the search for knowledge of a dog. This is doomed to failure because they can not recognize basic facts, namely the existence of people.

Content

An old dog tells of his futile, lifelong research on the fundamental questions of the dog shaft. Have started the research, as the dog is experiencing a very young age seven dogs in a light glow dancing in no dogs according to the nature and emanate a musical. Although he repeatedly assailed the other dogs with questions about the little dog gets no explanation for the phenomenon. So he pulls back more and more of the other dogs.

The dog now turns to the question of food. He thinks it would be in connection with the Bodenbesprengung (ie urination ). But the food is coming from above, sometimes the food seems to float even next to the dog. To understand the nature of the food, the dog is hungry. But he finds no solution.

Another phenomenon drives the dog to, namely, the "Air Dogs ". They float and barely move on the ground. Most are small, well- coiffed beings who are well nourished. Although a propagation is hard to imagine, they seem to be more numerous.

As an old dog he had a similar experience as in childhood, namely a dog, starting from the music. The scene takes place in the forest. The dog calls himself a hunter. He is both self- specific sounds, but also goes out of its surroundings music.

The dog speaks at the end of the realities of the sciences, music, and food science. He admits its a scientific incompetence and refers to his instinct. It leads to freedom, limited, however. The last sentence reads: " It is true that liberty as it is possible today, a meager crop. But after all, freedom, after all, a possession. "

Interpretive approaches

The story initially less calls for a literary interpretation rather than an explanation. All knowledge of the dog problems arise from the fact that he is obviously not in a position to recognize the man and his impact on the dogs shaft. For the word of humans occurs not once.

The dog is an animal that is often the case with Kafka and refers to the abject, unworthy, or Low. By the way, Kafka has partially strongly oriented in the animal stories in the descriptions of Brehm's Animal Life.

Explanation

At the beginning tells the dog that he would live in the midst of the dog shaft and immediately negated by the statement " No creature lives of my knowledge so widely scattered ." But he does not realize that the dogs do not even determined so distracted life, but that they are assigned to man. These also provide the food that usually comes from above. This is followed is to realize that the dogs do not live in a free pack, since they do not procure the seizure itself.

The appearance of the seven dancing dogs, which were surrounded by music, is a scene from the vaudeville or circus. The dog is expressed there " in a tangle of woods "; So rows of chair legs. In the observation of the food theme of the dog could not come to the edge, because simply get no connection between food and urinating is. The air dogs are obviously lapdog. This is particularly evident that the Narrative the man who holds the lap dog, can not register. It however does not escape him that the lapdog increasingly becomes fashionable, so multiplying. At the last meeting dogs it is a hunting dog. He is both self- According to a particular way and is also the sound of hunting horns surrounded.

If the dog at the end refers to the present freedom as puny, he seems to sense the freedom of the former wild dogs. At the same time he is clueless as to how much his freedom is really limited.

Interpretation approach

This Animal story has reference to other Kafka stories. In the construction of or the village schoolmaster also occur on figures (or animals) who are undergoing a fact a close examination, but fail. Even a monkey Rotpeter from A Report to an Academy with its limited view of the human world there are parallels. It will be presented here each paranoid loner.

In the present story now the reason for the failure is explicitly included. The story says figuratively something about the human search for knowledge. Individuals missing so many real facts and certainly the parent knowledge. So he will always be able to register more than one segment and because of this completely distorted section of the world. He can not even see the whole broad restriction of his freedom.

The many misjudgments and false lessons of the past show that sufficiently. And so it was made but also the present and also the future for man in his search for truth. This reflects the hubris and delusion of the human urge for research.

Max Brod calls this animal history as melancholy travesty of atheism. Just as the dog man does not recognize (or patchy ), so also the man hardly knows God and only dimly.

Expenditure

  • Franz Kafka. All narratives. Edited by Paul Raabe, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, ISBN 3- 596-21078 -X.
  • Franz Kafka. The narratives. Original Version, Edited by Roger Herms, Fischer Verlag, 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3.
  • Franz Kafka. Posthumous writings and fragments 2 Edited by Jost Schillemeit, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main, 1992, pp. 423-482 and 485-491.

Secondary literature

  • Peter- André Alt: Franz Kafka: The eternal Son. C. H. Beck, Munich, 2005. ISBN 3-406-53441-4
  • Nicolas Berg: Investigations of a Dog. In: Manfred Engel, Bernd aurochs (ed.): Kafka manual. Life - Work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2010, pp. 330-336. ISBN 978-3-476-02167-0
  • Manfred Engel: To Kafka's art and literary theory. Art and artists in the literary work. In: Manfred Engel, Bernd aurochs (ed.): Kafka manual. Life - Work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2010, pp. 483-498, esp 489-493. ISBN 978-3-476-02167-0
  • Wendelin Schmidt- Dengler: The diversity in Kafka's life and work. Norbert Winkler Vitalis, ISBN 3-89919-066-1 p.86 -89.
  • Bettina von Jagow and Oliver Year in Kafka 's Guide. Life - work effect. Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 978-3-525-20852-6.
The Burrow (short story) The Aeroplanes At Brescia Richard and Samuel Contemplation (Kafka) The Judgment The Stoker The Metamorphosis A Fratricide In the Penal Colony A Country Doctor (short story) Description of a Struggle A Crossbreed The Knock at the Manor Gate The Great Wall of China (collection) My Neighbor Prometheus (Kafka) Letter to His Father The Problem of Our Laws The City Coat of Arms A Little Fable The Silence of the Sirens Poseidon (Kafka) The Married Couple Give It Up! (short story) The Departure (short story)
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