Anguish and Nothingness in Kafka’s ‘A Country Doctor’ and ‘The Starvation- Artist’

Abstract

To gain the meaning of Kafka’s work one must become a mental acrobat, leaping from meaning to exclusive meaning—until, on the one hand one postulates that Kafka must have had serious mental difficulties in order to write like that, or, on the other hand, until one assumes that Kafka is concerned with the absurd; that the meaning of his work is the paradox that there is no meaning. This study decodes the two key elements (Anguish and Nothingness) of existential philosophy in Kafka’s selected stories. Kafka has been studied from many perspectives and existentialism is a most prevalent perspective in the whole narrative of Kafkaesque World. A Country Doctor is written in a surrealistic technique popping up many possible interpretations and A Starvation-Artist is depicting the miserable
plight of art in a realistic method. Sartre’s existential perspective is applied through close reading method to analyze the text of both stories. Nothingness always appears in relation to being and anguish is the pre-requisite for existence to start its journey towards formation of being. Kafka’s characters always wrestle with environmental factor to uphold good faith during existential traumas. This research is an attempt to explore this existential struggle.