One such day, the man sat beside the window. Evening had fallen. Outside, a certain melancholic wind was blowing. Suddenly, something came to his mind. He picked up paper and pen. He began writing a letter. The letter that begins like this:

Dear Father, a few days ago you asked me why I am so afraid of you. I could not answer that question on the spot — partly out of fear of you, and partly because the roots of this fear are so vast that I cannot explain it with a simple answer. In this letter, I am trying to answer your question. But I must also say that the answer will not be entirely right. Because even as I sit down to write, the fear I have lived with is slowing the movement of my pen. And the extent of that fear is so great that writing it all out is quite a difficult task for me.

As he wrote, the man noticed the letter was growing long. So be it — he kept writing, as if this were his last chance to stand before his father and defend himself. Eventually, the words of the letter to his father ran out. The letter was finished. But he did not have the courage to send it directly to his father. 

 He made two copies of the letter and sent one to his mother, instructing her to pass it on to his father. But due to various circumstances, his mother was never able to deliver the letter to his father. The other copy, along with many of his other writings, he sent to his only friend. He requested that his friend burn all the writings and letters.

Franz Kafka: The Man Behind the Letters

But his friend began reading everything. In a kind of trance, instead of burning the writings, he made arrangements to publish them. And that publication changed everything. The man who had always doubted his own writing became, after his death, an overnight sensation — celebrated, discussed, and critiqued. 

 By now you have perhaps figured out who this person is — his name is Franz Kafka. The writer who left the world at just 40 years of age, who is called the pioneer of modernism in literature. And yet, did he write all that much? Three incomplete novels, some short stories, some letters, and diaries. That is all he wrote. And yet Kafka has become the parameter of modern literature.

Kafka's Influence on World Literature

Up to this point, one-third of all the people who have received the Nobel Prize in Literature have directly acknowledged Kafka's influence in their writing. After Shakespeare, no other writer has been written about as extensively as Kafka. Such is his dominance that even before the mid-1990s, more than 100,000 research books had been written about him. 

In his writing, he repeatedly brought in themes like alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. To understand the complexity of his writing, even the word "Kafkaesque" came into existence. We will get to all of that in a moment. The question arises — why was this man, who turned the world upside down, in an existential crisis? Why did he want to burn all his writing before his death? Is all of Kafka's writing really surreal? Why does Kafka remain relevant even 100 years after his death? 

 Much like Jibanananda Das, Kafka spent his entire life torn between his writing. Just as Jibanananda Das never published a single story or novel during his lifetime — hiding them in a black trunk — we see the same with Kafka. He kept most of his writings hidden in an old chest of drawers. He had doubts about his own work. He never completed many of his writings. He left them unfinished.

The Trial: An Incomplete Masterpiece

One such unfinished work is The Trial. When talking about Kafka, this is one of the first books that automatically comes up. The novel's protagonist is Josef K. — an innocent bank clerk who wakes up one morning to find two police officers standing by his bed, saying: "You are under arrest." Josef does not know what his crime is. He only knows he has been arrested. Interestingly, even after being arrested, he is not taken anywhere. He is told he can continue living his life normally. But he is also told that his trial will begin very soon.

The Trial and Existential Crisis

A trial for what? When it will begin — he is told nothing. He moves through a murky, uncertain situation. Gradually, the word "trial" begins to press down on him like a massive stone. The situation deteriorates to such an extent that eventually only one road remains open to him — madness. Josef was doing quite well at the job he had. But under the strange mental pressure of the trial, he was on the verge of losing that job too. 

 Kafka's The Trial deals with quite a few things. Before getting into those, let me first ask you a question. Can you deny it? Are we not also like Josef, the protagonist of this novel? This life of ours — its threads stretch on and on, and then suddenly something snaps. Just as two police officers came to arrest Josef — and it is precisely this that connects to what we call existential crisis, or in plain terms, an "existential crisis." 

 As the ancient Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca once said: "We suffer more in imagination than in reality." That is exactly what happens to Josef — by thinking about the trial, he tortures himself and falls into an existential crisis. In this context, French writer Albert Camus wrote in The Myth of Sisyphus that rather than searching for the meaning of life, it is better to move forward without questioning — what is happening around us has no meaning, no reason, and so the only important thing is to accept what is happening and move forward.

The Gaze of Others and Helplessness

Which Josef could not do. If he had taken the trial a little more lightly, not overthought it so much, perhaps his life could have been a little different. But at the end of the day, that did not happen. French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once spoke of "the gaze of others" — a situation where a person feels that the people around them are watching and judging them. French historian Michel Foucault elaborated further, saying that the way our social structure keeps us under surveillance is essentially "the gaze of others." 

This is also a concept with which the novel's protagonist Josef must deal. Within the confines of the trial, he constantly faces people's ridicule, attention, and judgment. All his personal matters suddenly become the subject of public discussion. They are transformed into mockery. From here another question is born — from the very moment of birth, this uncomfortable situation of dealing with everyone's strange judgments — has any of us been able to escape it? "What will people say?" — by thinking about this, haven't we also fallen into a kind of trial? As Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones says: "I have been on trial for my entire life." 

 The trial also brings forward another concept — helplessness. Helplessness is the feeling that arises from the realization that nothing in this world is in our control. In this novel, we see Josef preoccupied with the trial. Whether and when the trial will begin is entirely out of Josef's hands. He can only lament his life, feel desperate. And yet, even doing all of this, nothing around him will change — is this not also true for our lives? 

 This life of ours — how much of what happens in it is actually within our control? On this very subject, Sartre wrote that since nothing is in our control, the only duty is to accept what is happening and move forward. That is, like the proverb: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. But is accepting life as it is really that easy for everyone? If it were, why did Franz Kafka spend his entire life caught in the no man's land between what he wanted to be and what he became?

The Metamorphosis: Kafka's Own Life on Paper

Here we can bring up Kafka's famous The Metamorphosis. It is better not to call this book a novel but rather a part of Kafka's own life. How? Let us see. Kafka saw his relationship with his father as a kind of trial. Where emotion was minimal. Where the imposition of rules dominated. He did not see his father as a father but as a ruler. That is why Kafka never had a face-to-face conversation with his father. 

The boy, suffering from a lack of self-confidence before his authoritarian father, never once stood with his head held high. Kafka's father, Hermann Kafka, had risen from a very small place through hard labor to become a man of influence and power. He wanted his son to do the same. But the son's desire was different. The thin, soft-spoken boy only wanted to write. The father was showing his anger at the son. The son was protesting by writing. To drive the ghost of writing out of his son's head, the father sent him to study law.

Rebellion Through Writing

Like other obedient sons, the son studied law and got a job, and then in the gaps of that job secretly wrote novels like The Castle, The Trial, The Metamorphosis, and Amerika. What are you thinking? Are these just novels? No. These are sharp statements against the father, against society, and about his own existential crisis — and it is here that The Metamorphosis becomes relevant. At the very beginning of the novel, we learn that after waking up from a very strange dream, the innocent salesman Gregor Samsa discovers that he is no longer human. 

He has transformed into a giant insect. In reaction to this transformation into an insect, everyone in his family begins to treat him rudely. His father, mother, and even his younger sister — everyone changes overnight. Samsa realizes that no one can accept his transformation. This change is so unbearable that he even begins to suspect that someone in the family might kill him at any moment. And in this way the novel advances toward its end.

The Danger of Fear and the Concept of Shame

The Metamorphosis first deals with an issue called "the danger of fear." This term was coined by Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. He said that when humans are confronted with things they are not familiar with, they are afraid. That fear later transforms into anger. In Samsa's case, for example, before this unfortunate event in his life, everyone loved him quite a lot. 

He had a good job. He was the breadwinner of the household. But the moment Samsa's physical appearance changed, everyone's love in the household transformed into hatred. This transformation occurred primarily out of fear. The more Samsa tried to connect with his family, the more his family attacked him — mentally and physically — which gradually led toward a terrifying conclusion. As Gus Fring from the famous TV series Breaking Bad says: "A man provides. And he is not respected, or even loved. He simply is." 

When Samsa realizes that no one in the family appreciates him, loves him, even as they hate him, he still tries to do something for the family. In trying to do this, one day he comes face to face with his father. Samsa's father, out of fear, throws an apple at this monstrous-looking insect. And it is from the wound of this apple that Samsa dies. One thing is clear here. If Kafka had wanted, he could have had someone else carry out this act of killing. But here he brought in Samsa's father. Why? Was it partly because he was thinking of his own father when he wrote this part — the father who wanted to mold his son in his own image, and when he could not, attacked the son harshly? 

 It is precisely from here that we now come to another concept — "the concept of shame." But before talking about that, it is necessary to mention utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham, one of the most important philosophers of the eighteenth century, was the creator of this doctrine of utilitarianism. The central idea of this doctrine is that an action is right as long as it is benefiting many people, keeping them happy. It is under this concept that we see "the concept of shame." The main job of this concept is to maintain social order and norms. Suppose a society where wearing colorful clothing is the norm. If you wear white clothes there, you will be publicly shamed. 

In plain terms, whatever you do outside of orthodox thought, an attempt will be made to stop you through the concept of shame. In this context, Nietzsche once said that because of social obligation, great persons cannot become great. They have to lead a typical life. We see the same thing in the case of Samsa in The Metamorphosis. When, having transformed into a giant insect, he became an outcast in mainstream society, an attempt was made to crush him through the concept of shame. The same happened with Kafka. He wanted to be a writer but received ridicule. This has happened to you and me as well. Many times, time and again.

Kafka's Legacy: A Literary Universe

The Metamorphosis, The Trial, Amerika, or A Country Doctor — the way Franz Kafka brought forward the complexities of life through characters and situations, this pattern was later followed by many writers. A very fine example in this context is Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. The central character of Kafka on the Shore is Kafka Tamura. He dealt with the absoluteness of life. He also dealt with the concept of shame or social complexity. 

The clash of fate versus free will — this novel dealt with that too. The relational distance between Tamura and his father is something we have seen in many of Kafka's novels. Again, Albert Camus's existential themes and world view, Jorge Luis Borges's surrealism — much of it was inspired by Kafka. Gabriel García Márquez openly admitted the contribution of The Metamorphosis as the inspiration behind his magic realism. In other words, it is clear — whether literature, philosophy, or life's complexities — no one had the ability to ignore Kafka's orbit.

Why Kafka Still Matters

Kafka once wrote: "I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books." Kafka's books are essentially like that. 

He had such a clear understanding of his time, the world, and people that his writing style itself came to be called "Kafkaesque." And "Kafkaesque" became a definition — wherever there is surreality, nightmare, catastrophe, persecution, ambiguity, complexity, helplessness, and existential crisis, that special word is uttered again and again, over and over. Kafka once wrote in his diary: "I carry a terrible world in my head. How to save myself and it from mutual destruction is a thousand times better to smash it to pieces. 

Actually, it is for this that I have come into the world." Kafka did exactly that work in his short time on earth. Many called his writing incomprehensible. Some called it meaningless. But as time passed, it became clearer and clearer — what Kafka said was not meaningless or unrealistic, but rather profoundly real. Let me give one example. The year is 1956. The Soviets have crushed Hungary's resistance movement. In Budapest, the famous philosopher György Lukács has been arrested. He is then taken prisoner to a Romanian fortress. But he is not told what his crime is. Yet he is told: "You have all your legal rights." 

The meaning becomes clear — the entire arrangement is to keep the man in an endless wait without informing him of anything. Which of Kafka's books is coming to your mind? If it comes to you, then you will understand the significance of what Lukács said in response to this: "This means Kafka was actually a realist." This world — a world where nothing has justification, where everyone does as they please — the diary of this world, living as a citizen of this planet without any defined boundaries — is it for this reason that Kafka, in a hushed voice, keeps saying again and again: "I have forcefully absorbed the negative aspects of my time. 

I am living in a time against which I have no legal right to fight. But I do have the right to represent this time." Is Kafka's era still going on? If not, then why does Kafka remain relevant and keep returning to us again and again — and quietly lament: "I am a cage in search of a bird."