Franz Kafka’s “Description of a Struggle” and the Narrative of Ontological Shift

Abstract

“Description of a Struggle” (“Beschreibung eines Kampfes”) by Franz Kafka has a murky and opaque narrative. Such a fragmentary and reality-bending storytelling style is actually instrumental in juxtaposing social rationality against individual desires, expressing individual’s difficulties in conforming to social norms. The storytelling itself contrasts the rational with the irrational, order with imagination, as well as the organization of a city with the delusional perspective of a traveler. As the seemingly physical promenade in the city of Prague transforms into an inner journey led by the desires of the narrator, we come to understand that the murky narrative of “Description of a Struggle” displays how social consensus excludes, classifies and/or ignores individual desires. Such an exclusion is depicted through the ontological shift of the narrator, as well as the delusional narrative. In the first part, the study defines the delusional narrative and the ontological shift of the protagonist. Following that, the article shows how the narrator starts blurring the boundaries not only between the outer world and the inner world of the protagonist, but also between the reality and the narration. Once the narration starts reshaping the world, this study argues, Kafka’s story turns into an example of delusional/schizophrenic narrative that functions as a critique of social norms that define, isolate and exclude the self.