The Critical Perspective of Animals in Some of Franz Kafka’s Works

Abstract

This paper examines some of Franz Kafka’s works about animals through the lens of ecocriticism and postcolonial criticism. The paper focuses particularly on the critical perspective of animals in “A Report to an Academy” (1917), “Investigations of a Dog” (1922), “A Crossbreed” (1917), and The Metamorphosis (1912). As one of the few writers of the early twentieth century who cared about the critical perspective of animals, Kafka (1883–1924) seems to have possessed special abilities of communication with animals. Reading his works invites the impression that Kafka’s worldview is close to that of animals, which thus allows him to manifest such creative animal characters in his works. Though ceaselessly judging animals, humans do not seem to take the slightest notice of the animals judging them. The shift in point of view from “human character” to “animal character” in the four works casts an authentic human image. That is, through the critical eyes of animals, the confidently “superior” and “hegemonic” position of humans in the natural world is suddenly flipped into a ridiculous illusion. Such a critique also holds for the supposedly superior civilization of the imperialist nations and the half-baked modernization of the colonized peoples.