Franz Kafka
America

The third in the Kafkaesque trilogy of unfinished novels, published posthumously by his dear friend Max Brod, unfolds to the reader as a raw, bitter, dark, and reflective work. Although lacking the surreal-paradoxical aura that characterized, for example, the famous The Trial and one of the best stories, The Metamorphosis, America revisits the figure of the rejected protagonist, abandoned and constantly humiliated by the rest of society, the weak little man, annihilated by the weight of his congenital ineptitude and corroded by a strange, rampant, and unyielding pettiness. Now, the decadent individual torn by the cruelty of the real and the human will attempt—unsuccessfully—to find redemption in the cradle of liberalism, the land where even ineptitude and softness are supposed to be fully integrated into the mass of free workers subjected to the non-arbitrary control and discretion of Her Majesty the Law.

America is the story of a fifteen-year-old German immigrant forced by his parents to leave Europe and embark for New York because he is guilty of impregnating the thirty-five-year-old governess (in reality, it was the latter who seduced him). Upon reaching American soil, Karl Rossmann encounters a rich and satisfied magnate uncle who, after hosting him in his home for a few months, dismisses him for trivial and questionable reasons. Once again "on the road," the young man seeks in every way to settle professionally; however, the America of Justice and Rigor does not intend to welcome him. After also failing as a lift operator in a hotel and being deceived by a group of unscrupulous vagabonds, Karl finds work as a laborer at the Oklahoma Theater. The narration stops right at the young man's transfer to the Midwest and the hope of a less severe future.

Halfway between the denunciation of the unfair treatment of European immigrants in the States—subjected to sufferings, harassments, and injustices explainable only by the natives' poor prejudices—and the depiction of Man overwhelmed by ineptitude and inherent weakness, Darwinianly destined for suffering, America offers many points for reflection and critical exegesis. In the novel, Karl's character stands out: young, unfortunate but tenacious, who is naturally directed towards perennial wandering, disdain and deception by his companions, and a total inability to ascend to a higher social role. And in all the rejections, inequities, and violence he suffered, the connection to the "hero" of The Trial seems immediate: two individuals isolated without apparent reason, condemned for an unconscious and "natural" condition rather than for matters of class, descent, and aesthetics, unsuited to a miserable and decadent reality dominated by cunning and the laws of the "born" rulers. It's the Man who makes the difference, his primitive and intrinsic status, his own "nature." Karl, harassed by the governess, parents, uncle, business colleagues, vagabond companions, and the "staff" of the Western Hotel, is nonetheless an individual who perseveres in his quest for work and stability, and his resistance to evil is reflected in his acceptance of various events (being driven from his uncle’s mansion, the unjust dismissal from the elevator operator job, the mockery and violence of the two friends/enemies) in a commendable semi-ascepticism, in a constructive cynicism capable of getting him back on his feet.

Karl Rossman thus represents a Kafkaesque hero "sui generis," a mixture of ineptitude and reaction, of passivity and activity, and not a bland little man entirely pervaded by the malignancy of the system to which he is ascribed and defined. He is not a Josef K. killed by the impotence of an alienated ego, nor is he the Gregor Samsa paroxysmally degraded to an insect and disowned by those who were his family. The young man moves, defends himself, and sharpens his claws, responds to insults and offenses, and, if necessary, escapes the falsifiers of the Law in the name of the naturally powerful. We do not know if Karl, the hybrid between weakness and resistance, will one day be able to shift the balance in his favor; his future at the Oklahoma Theater as a laborer will remain a perpetual mystery. Still, the novel's "unintentional" conclusion already indicates the author's desire not to let his protagonist succumb so easily but to give him a sort of chance in a context (the USA) different from the void of impoverished and war-mongering Europe.

Unfinished narrative, which halted on the protagonist's probable (albeit possibly temporary) ascent, America is a work with nuanced tones, albeit imbued with darkness, a production in which the author seems to somewhat redeem the dignity of his characters, still in a phase of creative limbo that will never be altered.