"The Vulture" is a short story by Franz Kafka

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...

, written sometime between 1917 and 1923.

Plot summary

A vulture hacks at the protagonist's feet until a man passing by asks him why he doesn't do anything about it. The protagonist explains that he is helpless to resist, though at first he tried to drive the vulture away, when he saw that it was about to attack his face he stopped, preferring to sacrifice his feet. The onlooker exclaims, "Fancy letting yourself be tortured like this!", and offers to go and get a gun to shoot the vulture. The protagonist asks him to hurry. The vulture listens to the conversation, then takes wing and thrusts its beak into the protagonist's head, killing him, but also drowning in his blood, as it flows on "filling every depth, flooding every shore."

Analysis

This text has often been compared with Kafka's Prometheus, with the vulture substituted for the eagle. Vultures were believed by the ancient Egyptians, and later by Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 thinkers, to be invariably female, and self-impregnating.

The title of the text, "Der Geier", is also laden with diverse connotations. The term "geyer" is Yiddish for "peddler", and is a common German surname. Engels' 1850 The Peasant War in Germany

The Peasant War in Germany

The Peasant War in Germany by Friedrich Engels, 1850, is an account of 16th century uprisings.This book was written by Friedrich Engels in London, during the summer of 1850, following the revolutionary uprisings of 1848-1849. The book draws a parallel between the uprisings of 1848-1849 and the...

highlights the life of Florian Geyer

Florian Geyer

Florian Geyer , also known as "Florian Geier from Giebelstadt", was a Franconian nobleman, diplomat and knight...

, the nobleman who died fighting alongside the peasants in the 16th century German Peasants' War

German Peasants' War

The German Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt was a widespread popular revolt in the German-speaking areas of Central Europe, 1524–1526. At its height in the spring and summer of 1525, the conflict involved an estimated 300,000 peasants: contemporary estimates put the dead at 100,000...

, and whose ill-fated Black Company

Black Company

The Black Company or the Black Troops was a unit of Franconian mercenaries during the Peasant's Revolt in the 1520s during the Protestant Reformation in Germany.The original German name of the Black Company was "Schwarzer Haufen"...

became much celebrated in German-language song and fable.