Approaches to Personal Identity in Kafka's Short Fiction: Freud, Darwin, Kierkegaard

This study examines the relationship between, on the one hand, Kafka's presentation of problems of human identity in selected works of his short fiction and, on the other, three important theoretical discourses of the time: Freudian psychoanalysis, Social Darwinism, and Kierkegaard's religious-existential philosophy. It is suggested that at various stages in Kafka's writing career these discourses were influential in shaping his developing attempts in his short fiction to cope with the problem of identity. Readings of selected works from Kafka's short fiction are incorporated into a framework of evidence which expands our knowledge about the intellectual contexts in which these works were composed and attests to the extent and nature of Kafka's knowledge of these discourses through his reading of literary and cultural journals.