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Kafka wrote "The Judgment" in a single sitting on September 22, 1912. In later writings, he described the creative outburst of "The Judgment" as “the total opening of body and soul,” saying that “the story evolved as a true birth, covered with filth and slime.”
- Franz Kafka
- 1913
Kafka’s big themes are law, crime, guilt, punishment, and judgment: both the judgment that comes from state authorities and that from more personal qualities, including our own families, and even ourselves. ‘The Judgment’ is, like much of Kafka’s writing, highly autobiographical.
Read the short story of a man who receives a letter from his friend in Russia and faces a harsh judgement from his father. Learn about the themes, symbols, and literary devices in this classic work of existentialism and absurdism.
The autobiographical significance of old Bendemann emerging as his son's judge is obvious. In most of Kafka's stories, though to varying degrees, an overpowering father figure plays a decisive role.
In his discussion with Dr. Steiner Kafka lays out what he sees as the central conflict of his existence: the tension between his workaday life as a lawyer in a state-run workers compensation insurance agency, and his calling as a creative writer.
The Judgment. by Franz Kafka. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir. It was a Sunday morning in the very height of spring.
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Learn about the composition, themes, and paradoxes of Franz Kafka's short story "The Judgment", published in 1913. Explore the complex relationship between Georg Bendemann and his father, and the mysterious letter to his friend in Russia.
