Kafka's Use of Lightness
How does Kafka lighten each of these stories?What animates these stories (pushes them forward, provides conflict and finally resolution?) How does the title impact our reading of the story?In "Unhappiness," what does one make of the girl/ghost? In defining how Kafka treats reality in his story "Unhappiness," it is important to remember the complementary relationship that exists between lightness and weight, one cannot exist with out the other. Therefore reality-which is usually considered a very weighty concept-must be accompanied by some lightness and described with some abstractions. Without abstraction and general lightness, a story can easily become unreadable. To study how each element of the pair is presented in a story, is the most truthful path leading to a description of the author's/narrator's way of dealing with reality. As a title and as a frequently used word, "Unhappiness"-one of the heavier weights under the umbrella of reality-is widely recognized as something purely negative that might set the tone for a similar kind of story to follow. Unhappiness is a very real word that drags along some very weighted equities: sorrow, misery, pain, loss, des
" The story continues and many other facts of the relationship between this ghost/girl and narrator are surmised, then blurred, maintaining the necessary combination of lightness and weight, however also maintaining a certain ambiguity which trivializes the study of these elements of the story. However, in order to become palatable, the reality of the emotion/concept of unhappiness must also be described with lightness. This narrator can handle his own reality because he treats it so lightly, subsequently allowing the reader to treat it just as lightly. olation, depression, loneliness, fear and general melancholy. Kafka's aim with this story was to present on paper, a way that lightness can be applied in more ways than the third-person description of reality. The weight of his description of unhappiness, which, like death, universal expansion, and many other tenets of reality, is something the human mind does not frequently enjoy dealing with, is accompanied by the lightness of it. However, Kafka's genius seems to have reminded him that this is all much too simple. This abstraction of the narrator's situation lessens the severity of his finding things in life to be unbearable. Lightness is a concept that can be applied to the weight of all things in life. The narrator's truth of the characters and situations surrounding him therefore cannot be the significance of the story at all. She is introduced by a description of her entrance, "like a small ghost a child blew in from the pitch-dark corridor. " provides a childish presentation of the same melancholy narrator.
Common topics in this essay:
Kafka Kafka,
lightness weight,
own mind,
narrator's reality,
description reality,
story unhappiness,
accompanied lightness,
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