Franz Kafka was born in Prague on July 3, 1883 — 129 years ago today.

The first book from Kafka that I read was The Meta­mor­pho­sis and I loved it greatly, how­ever at the time I was not aware of the main theme behind most of his writings: “The Absurd.” Then I watch the movie The Trial based on the book by the same name of Kafka, and then it click. Te trial is a fright­en­ing exam­ple of the absur­dity of the human condition.

In “The Myth of Sisy­phus,”  Albert Camus dis­cusses the works of Kafka. Accord­ing to him, Kafka’s works are per­fect exam­ples of what he terms “The Absurd.”

Here are some pas­sages from Camus Essay “Hope and the absurd in the Work of Franz Kafka”

The whole art of Kafka con­sists in forc­ing the reader to reread. His end­ings, or his absence of end­ings, sug­gest expla­na­tions which, how­ever, are not revealed in clear lan­guage but, before they seem jus­ti­fied, require that the story be reread from another point of view. This is what the author wanted.

But it would be wrong to try to inter­pret every­thing in Kafka in detail. Noth­ing is harder to under­stand than a sym­bolic work. A sym­bol always tran­scend the one who makes use of it and makes him say in real­ity more than he is aware of expressing.

There is in the human con­di­tion a basic absur­dity as well as implaca­ble nobility.

In The Trial, Joseph K. is accused. But he doesn’t know of what. He is doubt­less eager to defend him­self, but he doesn’t know why. The lawyers find his case dif­fi­cult. Mean­while, he does not neglect to love, to eat, or to read his paper. Then hi is judged. But the court­room is very dark. He doesn’t under­stand much. He merely assumes that he is con­demned, but to what he barely won­ders. At times he sus­pects just the same, and he con­tin­ues liv­ing. Some time later two well-dressed and polite gen­tle­men come to get him and invite him to fol­low them. Most cour­te­ously they lead him into a wretched sub­urb, put his head on a stone, and slit his throat. Before dying the con­demned man says merely: “Like a dog.”

Camus is pri­mar­ily drawn to Kafka’s works because of the lucid­ity with which they present the fun­da­men­tal dilemma that for him defines absurd rea­son­ing. On the one hand, Camus says we hope to find some meaning—or God, or order, or explanation—in the uni­verse, and on the other hand, we are faced with a sense­less mul­ti­plic­ity of things that do not orga­nize them­selves in any way that promises an answer. (Q)

I’m going to leave you with a short ani­mated film by direc­tor Piotr Dumala enti­tled “Franz Kafka” that resem­bles very well the suf­fo­cat­ing worlds cre­ated by Kafka in his writings.