Breaks in Perspective in Franz Kafka's Der Prozess

Abstract

In Der ProzeB, as in Kafka's other novels and stories, one of the most striking and individual features of the author's technique is that he attempts to maintain a single, limited perspective.' If it were merely a question of the maintenance of a single perspective, there would be nothing particularly unusual about Kafka's technique: ever since Henry James wrote The Ambassadors and later discussed the question of perspective in his preface to the novel, third-person narratives in which everything is seen through the eyes of one character only have become quite common. The unique feature of Kafka's technique is not that he limits himself to telling what Josef K. alone of all the characters experiences, thinks and feels, but rather that he limits himself to telling what Josef K. experiences, thinks and feels while in action, in actual situations. Only very rarely is K. allowed to sit and brood and dream, and then his thoughts do not wander back to his childhood and adolescence or out into the world: instead they are concerned exclusively with the immediate problem of his lawsuit or with problems arising from it, such as the maintenance of his position in the bank. In short, Kafka tries to maintain not only the single perspective of Josef K. but also the limited perspective of Josef K.'s present, a present that is filled to the exclusion of all else with the problems of his lawsuit. Obviously it is extremely difficult to maintain throughout a long work a single and rigidly limited perspective of this kind. Even to maintain a single perspective is not easy: The Ambassadors contains sections that are authorial and not from the point of view of Strether.2 To maintain in addition the limited perspective would seem to be an almost impossible task. Kafka comes very close to achieving the seemingly impossible, but there are a number of passages in Der ProzeB--