Franz Kafka's Resolution in Resolutions

Franz Kafka was a Czech-born German writer. He was born in 1883 and died just shy of his 41st birthday from complcations of TB. He wrote three novels and numerous short stories, some very short. He lost two older brothers making him the the eldest son. His father was ill-tempered and disrespectful toward Kafka’s writing which served to influence much of the conflict and despair not only in his life but his writing.

He would write nightmarishly complex and absurd plots in a very impersonal manner. Often his stories carried an under appreciated humour in them.

One of the possible definitions of the word “resolution” is: the point in a literary work at which the chief dramatic complication is worked out. The complication is usually a situation or detail of a character which attempts to thwart the main thread of the plot.

In his very short piece “Resolutions” Kafka deals with a problem that many of those who experience depression yet try to function within their lives can relate to. That is the problem of making life seem normal and all being well, while inside, really wanting to scream in outrage at the universe.

The story is in the public domain so let’s have a look.

“To LIFT YOURSELF out of a miserable mood, even if you have to do it by strength of will, should be easy. I force myself out of my chair, stride around the table, exercise my head and neck, make my eyes sparkle, tighten the muscles around them. Defy my own feelings, welcome A. enthusiastically supposing he comes to see me, amiably tolerate B. in my room, swallow all that is said at C.'s, whatever pain and trouble it may cost me, in long draughts.”

In modern terms, Kafka is suggesting the ‘fake it until you make it approach’. In the next sentence is the resolution or the chief complication. The very thought of letting slip the mask and revealing what is going on behind it can be horrifying.

“Yet even if I manage that, one single slip, and a slip cannot be avoided, will stop the whole process, easy and painful alike, and I will have to shrink back into my own circle again.”

Having realized how easily the mask could slip he then resolves to avoid the mask. He will just endure life as passively and unemotionally as he feels. Let the feeling of death inside be seen without explanation.

“So perhaps the best resource is to meet everything passively, to make yourself an inert mass, and, if you feel that you are being carried away, not to let yourself be lured into taking a single unnecessary step, to stare at others with the eyes of an animal, to feel no compunction, in short, with your own hand to throttle down whatever ghostly life remains in you, that is, to enlarge the final peace of the graveyard and let nothing survive save that.”

Finally he slips in a touch of the humour as if it would be the most normal thing in the world to be so deathlike and still make this odd movement. Can’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it.