A common theme in both is how other people–who are sometimes authority figures and sometimes not–conspire to take things or people away from the protagonists, while they themselves are powerless to stop it. Many of his short stories feature non-human animals who are endowed with a human-like intelligence. His novels, in particular, make references to petty bureaucracy and how frustrating it is to deal with. Kafka specialized in darkly-humorous short stories and novels that explore the absurdity and alienation of modern life. ADHD also makes one more likely to suffer depression and stress-related disorders, especially obsessive compulsive disorder. In both of these stories, the protagonists go on journeys that take wildly different amounts of time, even when the distance covered remains exactly the same. 16 People with ADHD also interpret time in unusual ways it’s often said that they recognize only two times: “now” and “not now.” 17 Indeed, at least two of Kafka’s stories, A Country Doctor and A Common Confusion, seem to distort the characters’ (and readers’) perception of time. This uneven attention, in which hyperfocus coexists with a lack of focus, is a hallmark of ADHD.
#FRANZ KAFKA TRIAL#
15 Notably, Kafka’s journal entries surrounding the writing of The Trial refer to periods of writing uninterrupted late into the night, followed by periods of no writing at all. This extremely common neurological condition causes problems with attention, impulsivity, emotional regulation, and often hyperactivity, which impede one’s ability to take productive action. The preponderance of evidence suggests that Kafka might have had a form of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD. Edward “Ned” Hallowell, a preeminent authority on ADHD. This indrawal of its breath, which must be an earth-shaking noise, not only because of the beast’s strength, but of its haste, its furious lust for work as well: this noise I hear then as a faint whistling. It probably bores its snout into the earth with one mighty push and tears out a great lump while it is doing that I hear nothing that is the pause but then it draws in the air for a new push. I can explain the whistling only in this way: that the beast’s chief means of burrowing is not its claws, which it probably employs merely as a secondary resource, but its snout or its muzzle, which, of course, apart from its enormous strength, must also be fairly sharp at the point. Even the fact that the whistling does not sound like a digging animal brings him no relief: When the animal discovers a whistling sound in his burrow that he cannot account for, he completely loses his mind with fear that he has been discovered by a predator. Of particular note is his short story The Burrow, in which an obsessive-compulsive animal of indeterminate species builds an enormous, labyrinthine burrow in which he can live sheltered from his enemies. In any event, it is clear that Kafka suffered from depression and anxiety for many years, and many of his stories dwell almost obsessively on alienation, suicide, self-harm, and murder.
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8 Diamant, meanwhile, who never found another partner after Kafka, died in London. Brod, a writer in his own right who introduced the world to many of Kafka’s most famous works, died in 1968 in Tel Aviv. Some of his nieces survived, as did his friend Max Brod and his then-girlfriend Dora Diamant. Most of Kafka’s remaining family would perish in the Holocaust. 7 He died in 1924 of laryngeal tuberculosis, not long before the Nazis came to power. Kafka himself never married or had children, though his three sisters did. This job provided him with a steady income, but he disliked the fact that it took time away from his writing. 5 He held jobs at various insurance agencies, where he helped reduce workplace accidents. 4Īlthough Kafka’s father wanted him to take over the family business, Kafka instead decided to go to university and study law. Moreover, since both of his parents worked long hours, Kafka and his sisters were largely brought up by the family servants. He also writes of going swimming, and particularly undressing, in front of his father with such horror as to suggest that his father might have sexually abused him in some way during those occasions.
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3 Kafka recalls, in his autobiographical Letter to His Father, that once when he cried for water as a young boy, his father responded by locking him outside of the apartment in the middle of the night.
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His father was intensely narcissistic and abusive, and his mother, though well-intentioned, was often emotionally distant and neglectful. Kafka’s three sisters (left to right: Valli, Elli, Ottla).