Remarque and Kafka:Power and Powerlessness Literature & Language Essay

Student’s Name
Course
Course Code
Instructor
Submission date
Remarque and Kafka: Power and Powerlessness
Power and powerlessness are shown in different ways by authors Kafka and Ramarque in their different pieces of writing. While Kafka uses animalistic metaphors to show power and powerlessness, in Ramarque’s writings power is used to oppress the powerless in society. This piece shows the different perspectives and depictions of power in the works of the two authors.
Power is one of the leitmotifs of Kafka’s works and has been depicted in different ways; he shows power in an animalistic. Through the metaphor of animality three dimensions of power are shown; animals and human beings are used to show how human’s attitude of caring towards their pets is a significant ground of totalizing power. Also, animality turns to have a connection with divinity in the form of perfect or absolute power as brought from the biblical story of Abraham wanting to sacrifice his son Isaac to show God love instead of using animals. Biblically, later God gives him a lamb to sacrifice.
Kafka shows power and powerlessness using small animals to depict both. Using the metaphor of the mole found in Kafka’s diaries and stories depicts big moles with gigantism that depicts power and small moles to depict powerlessness (Kafka, pp 162-168). Also, Kafka’s depiction of power is seen in “The Hunter Gracchus” showing the dove as a big cock”, big whiskers from “A Crossbreed” (426-427), extra-large eggs in the sixth blue octavo notebook (pp 17), and in the second notebook we have a huge city. Kafka also shows power by the depiction of gigantic people. There is the gigantic narrator in the notebook depicted as a Chinese with half-closed eyes. From a” Letter to His Father” (ppp17-19) we have the huge man, my father,” whose presence was a threat to Kafka. Kafka says to him, “You were such a giant in every respect.” Another depiction of power depicted by gigantism is brought out by the “political careerist” depicted in “Fragments from Note-Books and Loose Pages” (a gigantic man with gigantic jaws, moving gigantically (pp 366-269).
In “Before the Law” (pp 4-5) there was the doorkeeper that the writer compared to the end of history. In Kafka’s piece the “The Village Schoolmaster,” he does not only depict giants, but his art involves explaining processes that result from something, to become overbearing, gigantic, and oppressive to depict the growth of power from being powerless to being powerful. It shows that some people treat others well when they are not in power but when they get power; they turn to be the worst of human creation.
On the other hand, Kafka also depicts powerlessness in his works. Like in “The Village Schoolmaster”, he still uses the metaphor of the proverbial blind moles. Powerlessness is depicted in the city dweller whose self-interest and short-sightedness shows him as a near-sighted and idiotic mole when the man from the country-side invokes in him a burst of hearty laughter. The passage is recognizable in analyzing the city dweller and country-man and illicit theme vari...