SOURCE: “Bachelors and Work: Social and Economic Conditions in ‘The Judgment,’ ‘The Metamorphosis,’ and The Trial,” in The Kafka Debate: New Perspectives For Our Time, edited by Angel Flores, Gordian Press, 1977, pp. 147-75.

In the following excerpt, Goldstein examines the interrelationship between economic factors and social behavior in “The Judgment,” “The Metamorphosis,” and The Trial.

In a brief essay on Franz Kafka, the Czech critic Alexej Kusák notes: “Kafka is for me the great writer about the alienation of the human being in modern industrial society. Therein lies the mystery of his actuality and broad validity. To be sure he must be explained, not merely decoded on this general philosophical level—many, who still vulgarize Kafka today, would agree to that—, but directly in the individual motifs of his work, in the character of his figures and situations. As Marxists we must see not only how reality...