SOURCE: “The Pathos of Fatherhood,” in The Problem of “The Judgment”: Eleven Approaches to Kafka's Story, edited by Angel Flores, Gordian Press, 1977, pp. 168-92.

In the following essay, Flores analyzes the theme of isolation in “The Judgment” and the relationship of father and son in the novella.

Kafka's story “The Judgment” has been analyzed so often and in such scrupulous detail it would seem not a word has been left unexamined. There is, however, one word that so far as I know has been neglected, as if it held no significance; and lest it be overlooked I should like to accord it the consideration given most other words in this story. That word is “alone”.

“Alone—” Georg Bendemann says to his bride-to-be of his bachelor friend in Russia, “do you know what that means?”

Georg Bendemann is evidently a man sensitive to what it means to be alone...