The Animal Imagery In Kafka's Fiction

The modern writers in the alienated world often use animal images in their works to play various roles of human life. They try to observe and consider human civilization by the view of animals, and arouse the lost memory on the process of civilization development. There is a distinctive "animal kingdom" in the art world of Kafka. The animal images created by him are much various and meaningful. He had a preference for the small animals, who are common, weak or humble, since the absurdity of the world and the dilemma of human beings are reflected by their eyes, and their fear, humble images demonstrated the inside unstableness of the author when he was facing to the alienated world. The animals in Kafka's are creatures with human-like, which raised issues of human being by one kind of animals daily life. We may intensively identify those animal images in Kafka's into 4 types: escaping due to high pressure, anxiety of identifying identity, incarnation of the opponent and thinking through the different position. From the idea of images, the animal images in earlier stage of Kafka's are alienated transference between human and animals, that is to say, the human want to escape from fear by means of animal images. As the fright grew up, it became the incarnation of enormous mole, monster of crow; therefore, the human became completely an alienated tiny creature who was hiding under the ground, or immersing in seeking a way for liberating himself and his race. By the view of small animals and children who haven't infected by civilization, Kafka distinguished the "abnormality" from "normality", "unreasonable world" from reasonableness. Kafka's life was full of contradiction of treachery but failed in struggling again his own destiny. He spent his whole life taking the struggle between "the heaven" and "the earth", and attempted to find a way out between them. His works may not attain the holy height realm as he wished to, but guide a hopefulcampfire for human beings-----the solo possible way-out was back to civilization andtranscended in ordinary daily life.