After Kafka published his novella “Metamorphosis”, it became a classical piece and continues to be relevant nowadays. “Kafkaesque” is applied as a term describing an experience in which the person does not have control over and loses the connection with the existing reality (Edwards, 1991). Frederick R. Karl highlights that the term is misused and applied when something nightmarish is described (Edwards, 1991). Most of the time, a Kafkaesque experience has negative consequences or causes feelings of distress, sadness, and sanger. However, as many literature experts and philosophers believe, with those experiences, people perceive the world and actual reality (Edwards, 1991). Kafkaesque perceptions and the events people associate with the notion are an essential part of people’s development.
The experience I consider to be the most Kafkaesque of my life is when my health started declining. At those times, I thought that money and good timing were enough for my life plans to work out well. However, as time shows, many things in life happen for no apparent reason. Despite the excellent time and resource management, my plans were canceled, which was not anyone’s fault. Nonetheless, I felt miserable, sad, and angry, similar to the main character of “Metamorphosis,” who turned into a “monstrous vermin” (Kafka, 2019). The worst part of that experience was the fact that I could not change the situation, no matter what I did, as health problems are often unable to be addressed and create circumstances in which one’s world collapses.
Nowadays, I understand that these events and struggles are essential parts of people’s lives, something natural that must be accepted. The world is full of unexpected situations that one cannot control. Therefore, we, as humankind, must learn to cope with the challenges. The things that define us as people are not the struggles or challenges but the way we respond and react to them and what we learn in the end. As Frederick R. Karl argued, not many experiences can be considered Kafkaesque and cannot be used to describe any negative experiences. I believe the idea of that term involves a description state of mind rather than the event. The feelings, reaction to the event, and surrealism of it form the “Kafkaesque experience”.
References
Edwards, I. (1991). The Essence of “Kafkaesque.” The New York Times. Web.
Kafka, F. (2019). Metamorphosis. Grapevine.