Kafka's Identity Crisis Reflected In His Works

Identity is a permanent issue in literary creation. It concerns not only the basic existence of human but also the most important questions that an author should deal with: Who am I and for whom (or what) I am writing. The answers to these questions actually determine the writer's standing point, depicting object and target reader. Because of the rapid development of Capitalism, the traditional ideology and value system of Western society are shaken from the root. In the times of turbulence and confusion, man's quest for his own identity and value is facing severer challenge and various identity crises emerge as a symptom of the disordered modern society.Kafka's identity crisis mainly originates from his Jewish ancestry and loss of identity caused by alienation. As a writer who focuses on his subjective world, he transplants his own experience of identity crisis into his literary creation and represents it in lots of works. Since Kafka's writing bears a distinctive autobiographical feature, the researches on writer's life play an important role in interpretation of Kafka's works. Starting with investigation into Kafka's life experience, this thesis intends to analyze how Kafka's identity crisis is manifested in his works. The whole thesis is composed of five parts:Introduction will first concentrate on writer's life, work and contribution to world literature, and then the objective of the thesis.Based on the identity theories, this chapter is going to analyze the issue of writer's Jewish identity, including writer's ambivalence and changes of attitude toward his Jewishness and also analyze the reason for these with taking family and social background into consideration.The second chapter will first introduce the theoretical background of alienation, and mainly apply Marx's alienation theory to analyze the alienation in Kafka's life and the loss of identity as its consequence.The third chapter will focus on how crisis of Jewish identity is manifested in Kafka's works. On the one hand, Kafka is very concerning about the fate and situation of the Jews; he uses symbols and allegories to describe the plight of the Jews. On the other hand, he also expresses his estrangement with the Jewry because of the identity crisis, and also his loneliness that caused by this estrangement.The forth chapter classifies alienation into two aspects in literature: alienation between man and external world as well as alienation between man and self, and elucidates how alienation and loss of identity are represented in Kafka's works.The last part will make a conclusion on the thesis and point out the modern significance of this study.