My Neighbor

The neighbor is a narrative from the estate of Franz Kafka. It was in 1917 written and published in Berlin in 1931 by Max Brod and Hans -Joachim Schoeps.

The story The neighbor who has the characteristics of a short story is about a young, initially confident giving a small business owner who feels threatened by his new neighbor Harras.

Content analysis

The narrator seems to be successful, and it seems not difficult to fall to conduct his business. Assertions ( " I do not complain, I do not complain. " ) But indicate at the beginning of the story suggests that it could still give cause for complaint. In retrospect, it seems the narrator to regret that he has not rented the apartment next door, because he believed he could do anything with the associated kitchen. These neighboring apartment has rented now another young businessman.

The narrator wants to find out about the life and the activities of his neighbor, who has since moved into the apartment details. His neighbors Harras he assumed that he wanted to harm him commercially, might ruin him. However, it notes Harras not to talk, but he prefers inquiries with other information in order to find out information about Harras. It turns out that this one just " young and aspiring man " as he himself is. Increasingly, the narrator feels confirmed in his suspicion that Harras anything against him in the lead shields, as this has always in a hurry and did not seem interested in a conversation with the first-person narrator.

The narrator feels increasingly, the grotesque growing fears that suggest that he is suffering from delusions of persecution. For evidence that Harras, his neighbors overheard by the soundproof wall, makes him on the way to the customer, with which the narrator just been on the phone, and he poaches so customers do not exist. The appearance of self-assurance has completely dissolved at the end of the story.

Form

It is in the story The neighbor is a short story so far as the action begins abruptly and breaks off abruptly at the end; the reader will, as is typical for this type of text, left to find a conclusion. Here is an increasingly delusional monologue an overmatched by his work and competitive thinking people developed with a basic life uncertainty.

Kafka is through his narrative technique ( the personal narrative situation ) the reader no chance to learn more, as the narrator tells him. The coercion, into a paranoid - so is it really paranoia - empathize, one feels as uncomfortable. This is also true for the whole surrealistic alienated world in which one is introduced. Typical of surrealism it that this world an initially familiar occurs, but assumes gradual strange trains. Trust is a this world because of the language used ( high-level language with common terms and simply constructed sentences ) before. Thus, the reader can indeed understand the plot easily, but they do not "understand" completely. It creeps over the reader the uneasy feeling that this book tour of the inside view of a mania is like. The anxiously rampant imagination of the narrator expresses itself by the initial short-winded sentences vary too far -reaching set of structures. For impression of the grotesque contributes that the narrator his rival even linguistically dehumanizing (eg, " As the tail of a rat he is slipped ..."). The phone umtanzende narrator as a tragicomic of misery is an almost Chaplinesque appearance with slapstick elements of silent film.

References to other works of Kafka

The central vehicle of the uncertainty of the protagonist is the phone. This was the beginning of the 20th century a new form of communication that Kafka was not safe. It suggests a false, only technically presence. The Spooky between people is not turned off, rather strengthened. The spurious tones, the noise in the phone, staying the one who hears strange and threatening. Also in the novel The Castle, the phone plays a confusing role.

The theme of this story is not isolated to see. The hardships of a merchant Daseines discussed Kafka again, probably also due to the numerous complaints of his father. Already in the early discussion of work occurs, the merchant, who quarrels with his manifold existence. The couple in the uneasy competition between two traders is discussed precisely. Gregor Samsa from The Metamorphosis is - before it is a beetle - an unfortunate trade representative. Detached from the merchant but fate is to see the Paranoid leading obsession of the protagonist. It recalls the obsession of the grave of the animal in Construction. There is the sound that hears the animal and making it ever more deeply unsettled. In the present story the disturbing is that which belongs to the competitor supposedly.

Reception

Sudau ( p.82): " But the competition is only the obvious problem of the text; a more sedentary existence uncertainty and anxiety can be regarded as the real. Hesitancy, pettiness, distrust, anxiety, self-blame and obsessions are his Daseinsdiktum .... The text shows the genesis of prejudice and paranoia. "

Expenditure

• All narratives. Edited by Paul Raabe, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, ISBN 3- 596-21078 -X.
• Posthumous writings and fragments 1 Edited by Malcolm Pasley, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1993, pp. 370-372.

Secondary literature

• Ralf Sudau: Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories. Klett Verlag, 2007, ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7.
• Peter- André Alt: Franz Kafka: The eternal Son. A Biography. Publisher C. H. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4.
• Franz Kafka, John Diekhans, Elisabeth Becker: Texts: The transformation / letter to his father and other works. Schöningh in Westermann, ( January 1999), ISBN 978-3-14-022290-7.