IOP #3

I want to touch on the connections between Camus and Kafka and the connection of Kafka's book, The Trial, with existentialism.

Background information on Kafka:

Born = July 3, 1883 in Prague, Austria

Dead = June 3, 1924

Had tuberculosis.

Sex in Kafka's writings is frequently connected with dirt or guilt and treated as an attractive abomination because he had an attraction to prostitutes.

Led an active social life.

He loved to hike, swim, and row, and during vacations he took carefully planned trips.

He wrote primarily at night, the days being preempted by his job. Does this show in his writing? Are there many occurrences of darkness?

Wrote books dealing with outsiders. CONNECTION TO THE STRANGER???

The Trial

Deals with a man persecuted and put to death by the inscrutable agencies of an unfathomable court of law.

Kafka's fiction elicits and defeats attempts at conclusive explanation.

-from http://www.levity.com/corduroy/kafka.htm