On Death, Injustice, Insanity, and Love: Viewing the Modern Man through the Eyes of Mann, Kafka, Le Clézio, and Murakami (Part 1)

The psychological and intellectual preoccupations of the modern man have never been more confounding since the arrival of Kierkegaardian Existentialism in the first half of the nineteenth century. Today, there is the global village which brings all of us together but ensures that our differences keep us apart; there is the Internet that has transformed the world into a giant family, making us believe in the idealism of “six degrees of separation,” and yet we can feel desolate among 7 billion people and hunger for intimacy; there is the freedom of being an individual, of making your decisions based on your wants and needs, but you cannot seem to work out what it is you want or need. Modern living is mined with these frustrating challenges. The purpose of this piece is to look briefly at four landmark literary works – Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Franz Kafka’s The Trial, J.M.G. Le Clézio’s The Interrogation, Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood – and convince the reader that the trials and tribulations befalling the modern man have all been identified and discussed by their authors.

As far back as 1912, German author Thomas Mann had dissected some of the universal problems of the human condition – old age, spiritual dilapidation, sexual desire – in the novella Death in Venice (Der Tod in Venedig). As its protagonist Aschenbach manoeuvres himself through the labyrinth of Venetian streets in pursuit of the youthful Tadzio, consumed by the flames of Beauty, the reader, too, experiences some sort of heavenly hell, torn between the sublime and the corrupt. Aschenbach fears (the indignity of) old age and its accompanying ugliness. To an earnest writer like him, ugliness means the death of artistic creativity. (The reason why he has chosen to travel to Venice from Munich is to seek literary inspiration.) When Aschenbach lays eyes on Tadzio, he is thoroughly engrossed by the boy’s beauty: 

His countenance … recalled Greek sculpture of the noblest period; yet despite the purest formal perfection, it had such unique personal charm that he who now contemplated it felt he had never beheld, in nature or in art, anything so consummately successful (219). 

His appreciation of the boy’s “Grecian beauty” turns into an obsession. As the plot deepens, Aschenbach, too, descends degree by degree into a private hell. He is aware of the impropriety of his behaviour, of the absurdity of a grown man obsessing over a young boy who knows not of his presence. He attempts to flee from the nightmare, but finds himself returning to it all too willingly.

When Aschenbach is eventually undone by Beauty, the reader must confront a similar dilemma in himself: Must the acquisition of Beauty always come with such an impossibly high price? Hyacinthus paid for his when he dallied with the God of Gods, Zeus. The blood spilling from his forehead, in turn, blossomed into one of the most beautiful flowers in the floral kingdom. Perhaps Beauty is inseparable from Death? If that is the case, are we not all damned in our pursuit of Beauty: “For we are not capable of self-exaltation, we are merely capable of self-debauchery” (265).

From Aschenbach’s tragedy, the reader also learns that physical degeneration does not always mean the death of desire. In fact, it often leads to the opposite: the more incapacitated the body, the more desperate the will – a notion that W.B. Yeats also expertly dealt with in “The Tower.” The body may die a slow and agonising death, but desire will for ever remain young and nubile, taunting the dreamer with visions of divine Beauty, or “Form as a thought of God” (237). Man, trapped in a gradually degenerating shell, is condemned to pursue perfection until he draws his last breath.

Franz Kafka never allows K., the protagonist of The Trial (Der Prozess, 1925), to hide; he pursues him relentlessly and exposes him, frailties and all, to all who care to look. The predicament of K. under an oppressive, bureaucratic regime is the predicament of every man. We do not have to share K.'s cultural background to comprehend the humiliation of being robbed of one's identity and freedom. K. is on trial for a crime whose nature is never revealed (is it metaphysical?); his only resort is to put himself through a legal system which has been designed to condemn him no matter what. “If I were to paint all the Judges in a row on one canvas and you were to plead your case before it,” says the Court Painter to K., “you would have more hope of success than before the actual Court” (166). K.’s Uncle Karl, who seems to be his only family relation, is short on sympathy and can only recommend legal help. Legal help points to a certain lawyer named Dr Huld, a supercilious character more interested in talk than action. Throughout K.’s outlandish legal process, the reader is introduced to several characters who shed light on the corrupt judicial system. Titorelli the Court Painter has this to say about the Judges:

In the code of the Law, which I may say I have not read, it is of course laid down on the one hand that the innocent shall be acquitted, but it is not stated on the other hand that the Judges are open to influence. Now, my experience is diametrically opposed to that. I have not met one case of definite acquittal, and I have met many cases of influential intervention (170).

The Painter then proceeds to describe the bureaucracy that helps turn the wheels of justice, concluding that upon acquittal, “it is just as possible for the acquitted man to go straight home from the Court and find officers already waiting to arrest him again” (176). The arrest will then lead to another court case, which will then result in another acquittal, if the accused applies all his energies to the case and never gives in. The Painter’s point is that the judicial system is a circle of pointlessness that knows no end. 

Another noteworthy character is the prison chaplain K. encounters in a church in the penultimate chapter. K. is treated to a confusing fable about the Doorkeeper which is supposed to mirror his fate, but which he struggles to interpret. The chaplain offers little help. When K. is ready to leave, he says he “can’t find his way out alone in this darkness,” and asks for directions. The chaplain gives a curt response and is already preparing to leave him. K. asks him why he is deserting him, as if he suddenly no longer cared about him. The chaplain’s answer is: “You must first see that I can’t help being who I am.” K. protests by reminding him that he is the prison chaplain, to which he says: “That means I belong to the Court” (244). Organised religion’s failure to offer K. clarity and redemption is the final nail in his coffin.

As K. stumbles towards a finale as inescapable as death, the reader is forced to accept the vision of the alienated modern man who has to fend for himself in a restrictive, faithless, and vacuous world. The battle against injustice and civic bureaucracy is the thorny path every man must tread. It is a battle one only wins to lose just so it can start all over again the next day.

Link to Part 2: http://ed-is-a-stranger-on-earth.blogspot.nl/2012/03/on-death-injustice-insanity-and-love.html

Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice & Other Stories. London: Vintage, 1998 ed.

Kafka, Franz. The Trial. London: Vintage, 1999 ed.