The Cares of a Family Man
Encyclopedia
"The Cares of a Family Man" ("Die Sorge des Hausvaters") is a short story by Franz Kafka
which deals mostly with a small creature called Odradek. The creature has drawn the attention of many philosophers and literary critics, who have all attempted to interpret its meaning. The story was written between 1914 and 1917. In 1919 it appeared in Ein Landarzt. Kleine Erzählungen (A Country Doctor), a collection of Kafka's short stories published by Kurt Wolff
(Munich
and Leipzig
).
The narrator goes on to describe the creature's other characteristics, including its habits, environment, and manner of conversation, and in the end wonders about the Odradek's future, and the painful notion that it might outlive him.
literary critics this story could be seen as a critique to Capitalism
in its ultimate stage. Odradek represents commodities
, it is "what is left of life once everything is reduced to materialism".
Anya Meksin agrees that this is appliable from a Marxist perspective. Odradek, being made of thread for mending, represents the world of manmade practical objects separated from the human work that produced them, and the relation between the house father and Odradek represent the alienated
relation between worker and commodities he has produced. The idea that Odradek will survive the narrator and the anguish this situation causes to him can also be interpreted as the idea of commodities being inherited and transcend the worker that made them, but in such a way that the worker himself would be completely ignored.
approach Odradek can be seen as "the psychological return of the repressed
". In this case, it is a representation of leftovers of life, things that we would like to forget, but come back again and again. Odradek may hide in dark places just like human fears, or may lay in front of a doorway so as to warn us not to enter. These could be the kind of things that the family man has to care for, the repressed memories that never go away entirely.
According to Meksin, Odradek represents a rupture between the world of the family man and some other transcendent realm. It is immortal, and hides in shadows carrying a message from generation to generation, and witnessing it all. Meksin goes on to indicate that the physical description of Odradek with its wooden crossbar sticks joined to that at a right angle can also remind us of crucifixion
.
, emphasis is put on the fact that Odradek "once had some sort of intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant", and as such it should be part of a whole. The relation between the narrator (a family man, a father) and the creature could be this whole, and thus Odradek could be the complement of the narrator, who would also be broken-down having part of him put into the form of Odradek. That is why Odradek is something a family man has to care for.
Several characteristics can be found to show Odradek and the narrator as opposites, for example:
verb "odradeti", which means "to counsel against" could be the root of the word. This would indicate that the name odradek itself points at something that tries to dissuade the reader to understand its meaning. Odradek would be, in this case, a way of naming something that is meaningless, a kind of semantic paradox
.
Jean-Claude Milner
notes in, "Odradek, la bobine de scandale," that the odradek is also part of an anagram for the Greek
word dodekaedron. This interpretation of the word is as well consistent with the fact that Odradek seems to be a broken-down remnant of something.
Another possible meaning of the word is proposed by Goetschel, based on the fact that Kafka often played with names and used his own name as part of the names of his characters. He indicates that odradek contains the Czech word for "crow", which is also a translation of Kafka's name. In this case the Odradek refers to Kafka himself, the same way Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis
, Josef K. in The Trial
and K. in The Castle also refer to him.
which premiered at The House Theatre of Chicago
on January 8, 2011. The play tells the story of a single father from a small Iowa
town concerned with his son’s declining mental heath. After a visit with a new doctor, the boy returns home and develops a friendship with an “Odradek,” a creature of twine and rags that lives under the stairs. The play was met with mixed reviews.
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
which deals mostly with a small creature called Odradek. The creature has drawn the attention of many philosophers and literary critics, who have all attempted to interpret its meaning. The story was written between 1914 and 1917. In 1919 it appeared in Ein Landarzt. Kleine Erzählungen (A Country Doctor), a collection of Kafka's short stories published by Kurt Wolff
Kurt Wolff
Kurt Wolff was a German publisher, editor, writer and journalist.Wolff was born in Bonn, Rhenish Prussia. Together with Ernst Rowohlt he began to work in publishing in Leipzig in 1908. He was the first to promote and publish the authors Franz Kafka and Franz Werfel...
(Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
and Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
).
Plot
The story begins with a discussion of the unclear linguistic origin of the name Odradek, followed by a detailed description of the creature:
At first glance it looks like a flat star-shaped spool for thread, and indeed it does seem to have thread wound upon it; to be sure, they are only old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colors. But it is not only a spool, for a small wooden crossbar sticks out of the middle of the star, and another small rod is joined to that at a right angle.
The narrator goes on to describe the creature's other characteristics, including its habits, environment, and manner of conversation, and in the end wonders about the Odradek's future, and the painful notion that it might outlive him.
Interpretations
As in all Kafka's work, this creature and its description can be read from different points of view. It is not possible to define exactly what Odradek is, not even what Kafka thought it was when he was writing the story. One possible direct interpretation is that Odradek represents any useless, harmless object which is kept around for no obvious reason. However, many other levels of meaning can be extracted from this story.Useless object
Odradek appears to represent an object with no clear purpose or apparent use. It could be an almost exhausted spool for thread, only wounded by "old, broken-off bits of thread, knotted and tangled together, of the most varied sorts and colors". These sorts of useless objects are sometimes kept indefinitely in someone's home, in the hope that one day the bits of thread might be used to sew something. It could be that the story was inspired by an actual nearly empty spool in Kafka's home, that he ran across from time to time. This could explain the defining characteristic of an Odradek: it lives in crevices, margins and hallways, and has no real fixed abode. The word odradek has been sometimes used since to depict an object which has no purpose and the reason for which it is kept around and not thrown away is unclear. Or perhaps it simply represents the unfinished threads of thought that litter a text, are never finished and sit in the "margins" with no apparent use.Critique to Capitalism
Willi Goetschel analyses "The Cares of a Family Man" from several points of view. He states that upon the eye of MarxistMarxist literary criticism
Marxist literary criticism is a loose term describing literary criticism based on socialist and dialectic theories. Marxist criticism views literary works as reflections of the social institutions from which they originate...
literary critics this story could be seen as a critique to Capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
in its ultimate stage. Odradek represents commodities
Commodity
In economics, a commodity is the generic term for any marketable item produced to satisfy wants or needs. Economic commodities comprise goods and services....
, it is "what is left of life once everything is reduced to materialism".
Anya Meksin agrees that this is appliable from a Marxist perspective. Odradek, being made of thread for mending, represents the world of manmade practical objects separated from the human work that produced them, and the relation between the house father and Odradek represent the alienated
Marx's theory of alienation
Marx's theory of alienation , as expressed in the writings of the young Karl Marx , refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony...
relation between worker and commodities he has produced. The idea that Odradek will survive the narrator and the anguish this situation causes to him can also be interpreted as the idea of commodities being inherited and transcend the worker that made them, but in such a way that the worker himself would be completely ignored.
Objectification of memory
According to Goetschel, from a FreudianSigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
approach Odradek can be seen as "the psychological return of the repressed
Repressed memory
Repressed memory is a hypothetical concept used to describe a significant memory, usually of a traumatic nature, that has become unavailable for recall; also called motivated forgetting in which a subject blocks out painful or traumatic times in one's life...
". In this case, it is a representation of leftovers of life, things that we would like to forget, but come back again and again. Odradek may hide in dark places just like human fears, or may lay in front of a doorway so as to warn us not to enter. These could be the kind of things that the family man has to care for, the repressed memories that never go away entirely.
Religious interpretation
Another interpretation of the text can be seen under the religious optics, Goetschel indicates that taking in account the star-shaped form of the creature, Odradek could represent tradition (specifically Jewish tradition), which is passed from generation to generation and gains some more bits of thread in each generation.According to Meksin, Odradek represents a rupture between the world of the family man and some other transcendent realm. It is immortal, and hides in shadows carrying a message from generation to generation, and witnessing it all. Meksin goes on to indicate that the physical description of Odradek with its wooden crossbar sticks joined to that at a right angle can also remind us of crucifixion
Crucifixion
Crucifixion is an ancient method of painful execution in which the condemned person is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross and left to hang until dead...
.
Odradek as the antagonist
In the analysis made by Slavoj ŽižekSlavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....
, emphasis is put on the fact that Odradek "once had some sort of intelligible shape and is now only a broken-down remnant", and as such it should be part of a whole. The relation between the narrator (a family man, a father) and the creature could be this whole, and thus Odradek could be the complement of the narrator, who would also be broken-down having part of him put into the form of Odradek. That is why Odradek is something a family man has to care for.
Several characteristics can be found to show Odradek and the narrator as opposites, for example:
- The narrator is particularly concerned with the fact that even when he dies, Odradek will survive doing exactly what it does now. Odradek is immortal while the family man has to die.
- Odradek has no purpose at all while the narrator is a man who is in charge of a family, having a well defined purpose.
- Odradek has no real fixed abode while the narrator lives precisely in the house where he keeps finding Odradek.
Etymology
In the first paragraph of "The Cares of a Family Man", Kafka introduces vague concepts about the etymology of the word "odradek". It says that it could come from slavic or German origin, but neither attempts to find the root of the word could give an intelligent meaning. Meksin points out that this first paragraph is both a joke played on future scholarly efforts at understanding the story, and a clue to the meaning of the word. An antiquated slavonicSlavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
verb "odradeti", which means "to counsel against" could be the root of the word. This would indicate that the name odradek itself points at something that tries to dissuade the reader to understand its meaning. Odradek would be, in this case, a way of naming something that is meaningless, a kind of semantic paradox
Paradox
Similar to Circular reasoning, A paradox is a seemingly true statement or group of statements that lead to a contradiction or a situation which seems to defy logic or intuition...
.
Jean-Claude Milner
Jean-Claude Milner
Jean-Claude Milner is a linguist, philosopher and a French essayist. In particular, he is a specialist in the field of both linguistics and psychoanalysis...
notes in, "Odradek, la bobine de scandale," that the odradek is also part of an anagram for the Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
word dodekaedron. This interpretation of the word is as well consistent with the fact that Odradek seems to be a broken-down remnant of something.
Another possible meaning of the word is proposed by Goetschel, based on the fact that Kafka often played with names and used his own name as part of the names of his characters. He indicates that odradek contains the Czech word for "crow", which is also a translation of Kafka's name. In this case the Odradek refers to Kafka himself, the same way Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis
The Metamorphosis is a novella by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of short fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world...
, Josef K. in The Trial
The Trial
The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1925. One of Kafka's best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader.Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never...
and K. in The Castle also refer to him.
Odradek (play)
Odradek is a play by Brett NeveuBrett Neveu
Brett Neveu is an American playwright, and ensemble member at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago.-Work:His works have been produced at The Royal Court Theatre, The Royal Shakespeare Company, A Red Orchid Theatre, The House Theatre, Goodman Theatre, TimeLine Theatre Company, Writers' Theater and 29th...
which premiered at The House Theatre of Chicago
The House Theatre of Chicago
The House Theatre of Chicago is a non-profit, ensemble theatre company in Chicago, IL. The House was founded in 2001 by a group of friends from the British American Drama Academy and Southern Methodist University with the mission of exploring the ideas of Community and Storytelling in order to...
on January 8, 2011. The play tells the story of a single father from a small Iowa
Iowa
Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New...
town concerned with his son’s declining mental heath. After a visit with a new doctor, the boy returns home and develops a friendship with an “Odradek,” a creature of twine and rags that lives under the stairs. The play was met with mixed reviews.