ME KAFKA'S JOSEPH- K. A PAINTED RELIEF BY MASOOD HUSSAIN

  THE ARTIST CALLS HIMSELF JOSEPH K.    A CHARACTER OF FRANZ KAFKA'S NOVEL" THE TRIAL "

Those who have read FRANZ KAFKA ( 3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) who worked as Insurance officer, factory manager, novelist and short story writer , are well versed with some strange characters he created. Say for example GREGOR SAMSA in (his widely read book )METOMORPHOASIS . Pity SAMSA who awakes one morning to find himself transformed to monstrous insect. Gregor is marketing man Who works as a traveling sales man for a company. He is the sole bread earner for his family .The story goes on further and the change in the Attitude and Behaviour of his family , employer and society at large towards him is pathetically presented by Kafka when every one finds that he is no more a human being.

KAFKA also wrote THE TRIAL.. This novel is actually the trial of JOSEPH K.. a character created by Kafka . Joseph K is arrested one fine morning for no reasons or without having done anything wrong .He submits to this arrest with a mixture of docility and outrage. When he is called for interrogation , he goes readily . Surprisingly Joseph K accepts the case against him in court and gets absorbed in the machinery of system he can never hope to understand or manipulate .Then Joseph K decides to confront the system . He refuses to accept the nature of the system. His lawyers put him on a track of forgetting the world and living only on a hope of toiling along a false path until the end comes in sight. The trial ends with Joseph K ‘s confusing and sad demise .Like SAMSA , Joseph K is also more than willing to fight back for the control of his life .Kafka intends to convey possibly that there is a human tendency to submit to the authority even when the authority is dubious . Surprisingly at no Point does Joseph K or for that matter the reader learn what he is accused of . Many have written poems on SAMSA and Joseph K . I read a commnetry on Joseph K ‘s failed case . SAMSA and Joseph K , Heroes created by Kafka are close to Albert camus’s hero Meursault . Disturbing but close to life . Truthful like the sun that leaves no shadows.

Great Masood sahib for Joseph K.
 

For characters like Samsa , joseph K or meursault i add these lines of Bulgarian poet Nikola Vaptsarov.

History, will you mention us
In your faded scroll?
We worked in factories, offices –
Our names were not well known.
We worked in fields, smelled strongly
Of onion and sour bread.
Through thick moustaches angrily
We cursed the life we led.
For the hardship and affliction
We do not seek rewards,
Nor do we want our pictures
In the calendar of years.
Just tell our story simply
To those we shall not see,
Tell those who will replace us –We fought courageously.                                                                        



CHINAR SHADE by Autarmota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.
Based on a work at http:\\autarmota.blogspot.com\.