The Married Couple

The couple is a story by Franz Kafka, which was created in 1922 and was published posthumously. She describes processes in a merchant household and the close ties of an old married couple.

Content

The narrator, a businessman in business in a worse situation, visited a former client, of which he has heard nothing long. ( Depending on the version called N. or K. ) The customer is old and sick and no longer to be found in its premises. Therefore, the narrator goes - however unwillingly - in the private residence of K.

The old couple has just returned home and is located in the sick son, who is already in middle age room. There is also a competitor of the narrator, another businessman, gathered. The narrator is very unhappy about this whole constellation, but he tried but to bring his business with K. gear. Suddenly the audience identify a major weakness of the old K. and experience his death.

You try to teach this to the wife, who has previously cared devotedly for her husband and served him. She rushes to him, thinks he is asleep, kisses him - and he wakes up. With hingebettet on the bearing of the sick boy, is dedicated to the old man now with perspicacity the business negotiations. To a conclusion with the narrator or the competitors, it does not. Woven into the story is also the representation of coercive acts from the storyteller and his competitors. The first one must always go up and down, the second is constantly up and down his hat.

By transcending the narrator even says to Mrs. K., she reminded him with her healing powers to his mother. She goes on not one, but asks how to judge the appearance of her husband. The story ends with the words: " Oh, what failed business ways are there and you have to bear the burden further ."

Text analysis and physical description

The narrator

He is a middle-aged businessman in a unloved profession, the very burdened him. At the same time, human contact with insight into the strange family it is uncomfortable. One recognizes in him a " Gregor Samsa " from The Metamorphosis. But he has to carry the burden, for him there is no - although fatal but also " redeeming " - transformation. To Mrs. K. he is looking at the end of a human connection that she but does not enter from the total fixation on her husband. She rejects him unwisely and rounds additionally negatively the failed visit.

The merchant K.

Although old and frail he is still a broad-shouldered, so a handsome man. He is the only one of the men present, which is the care of a woman available. And this care is totally in an almost embarrassing degree. The narrator, the competitor and especially the sick son appear against him almost eunuchenhaft cut of female attention (and also of self-determination ). The old merchant, however, still determines the business and family processes, strengthened by the life force of his wife.

Mrs. K., the mother

Your self-sacrificing devotion belongs exclusively to the husband. He brings the warmed nightgown, while they do not even find for yourself the time to take off the street dress. This demonstrates an example of the thoughtless self-abandonment in which they obviously but is fully satisfied. For them, nothing exists beside her husband, neither the guests nor the Son. Significantly above all the utter ignorance is the sick son over.

The son

His living with his parents and his sickness make him the underdog; there's no woman who could give him strength. The ease with which his room, even his bed is used for general stay, expresses the contempt of his privacy and his whole person. Or is it an attempt to involve the son in the family? The father is always on the area of the son with his business concerns and urges even symbolically in bed the son aside. The son expressed no displeasure. He is the father's apparent death was first discovered (perhaps as wishful thinking ) breaks out and in " endless sobbing ."

Interpretation approach

The symbiotic marriage constellation gives the father a tremendous strength, almost a second life. For the mother, it seems unworthy, but it is probably their determination. The narrator and the Son are in a comparable situation. The resemblance is already produced by the same age. Both are ignored by the mother because she only sees the Father. The narrator and his competitor are indicated with their compulsions; they act in a senseless impeller their professional existence

Overall, a scene is presented, which seems to be a temporal extension of the family situation of the Letter to the Father. Also echoes of the people from the judgment, particularly in the description of the father are to feel.

The picture of the couple, the latent bachelors problem is faced. But one must not look for a seamless link between Kafka's own life in his family and of this story. Even in the " letter ", there are large differences between these literary life analysis and reality.

Reception

• Dagmar C. Lorenz: " There are missing the female figures in Kafka's novels and stories as alleged or actual source of male power and power rank insignia. The female power is revealed by the survival of the male character. The state it reached their performance. Your concern for him is ultimately the concern of an entrepreneur to his business. "