Textual Afterlives in "The Judgment" by Franz Kafka
Communication breakdown is central to Franz Kafka’s “The Judgment.” The story itself is about the failure of communication between the protagonist, Georg, and his father and his friend. Tracking different types of communication and their frequency within the story exposes the influence of ideologies of isolation within the writing. The examination of communication through an energy lens elucidates how the importance of wealth, good health, and technology within society creates an ideology that emphasizes the isolation of those struggling due to poverty or health complications. Energy usage has economic, health, and technological impacts that contribute to social isolation due to one’s financial or health struggles. Furthermore, the advancement of certain forms of technology, like automation, leads to physical isolation. However, not all examples of communication are influenced by these ideologies informed by energy usage.
Within my visualization, the types of communication are divided between “Energy Afterlife Communication” and “Non-Energy Afterlife Communication.” “Energy Afterlife Communication” include failed communication, inauthentic communication, communication loss, and miscommunication. Examples of these types of communication within “The Judgment” emphasize an ideology of isolation humans are entangled with. Examples of failed communication include the drowning out of Georg’s voice by traffic (13). Automation of transportation leads to social isolation; if vehicles weren’t relied upon, someone would more likely have heard his plea and maybe Georg wouldn’t have drowned. Communication loss is described by Georg’s friend who lives isolated in Russia (1). The ability to move from one nation to another requires energy usage and creates a sense of placelessness and disconnection from place. Georg’s friend severely lacks social connection and lives an isolated life in Russia that has made him very ill (1). Inauthentic communication is primarily described through Georg’s unwillingness to share his business success with his friend because he feels bad for his friend’s lack of the same. “Georg confine[s] himself to giving his friend unimportant items of gossip” in his letters because of the pity he feels toward his friend (3). This further isolates Goerg from his friend, and the truth about their lives are separate from one another.
“Non-Energy Afterlife Communication” is experienced primarily through emotion and reaction. Civil communication and angry communication do not require energy to exist or be created. The anger seen in “The Judgment” is likely exacerbated because of ideological energy afterlives like isolation; anger does not require an ideology of isolation to be felt. Nonverbal communication is marked by reaction, movements, and gestures that indicate or elaborate on the altercation which this short story describes. This includes phrases like “rose in embarrassment,” “kicked his legs out” and “shrank” (7, 10, 10). Written communication is another example of Non-Energy Afterlife Communication; this is marked by references to writing letters. This is not related to energy because writing can exist without an ideology of isolation that has framed this analysis of communication breakdown in Kafka’s “Judgment.”
After reading the story multiple times I began to see themes of communication types that would contribute to the visualization. Communication such as inauthentic communication or angry communication were easy to pull out from Kafka’s writing. I differentiated communication loss with communication failure because I believe the loss of communication through social isolation is different from the failure of communication that was attempted but not answered. For each moment of communication I tallied examples of that type of communication within the story on each page. There are 13 pages in my version of this story, so each page has multiple tallies of different types of communication present. The duration of the graph is the duration of the story. Each reference to a specific kind of communication is expressed through the color appearing on the graph. I then transformed the tallies, or raw data, to a visual graph called a streamgraph. Energy Afterlife Communication is shown on the top side of the graph and Non-Energy Afterlife Communication is present on the bottom side of the graph. This visualization shows the moments in the story where different types of communication occur and what kinds of communication were most present. The graph explores how “The Judgment” was sustained by examples of Non-Energy Afterlife Communication through references to the written word and emotionally charged communication. However, spikes of communication loss or miscommunication expose the prevalence of ideologies which stem from energy usage. Moreover, this visualization shows that despite the lack of direct energy afterlives in the story, ideologies which are sustained by energy usage in society infiltrate our ability to connect and communicate with others.
Bibliography
Kafka, Franz. "The Judgment." Translation by Ian Johnston, 2007 ed., Arkadia, Max Brod, 1913.