2 - A psychoanalytic reading of The Man who Disappeared

Summary

Kafka's first novel, The Man who Disappeared (Der Verschollene), still better known in the English-speaking world at least under Max Brod's title, Amerika, is set against the realist backdrop of the most modern and technologically advanced society in the world, the USA. The America of this novel remains strangely hyper-real, however, in spite of Kafka's careful depiction of various icons of modernity. This strange encoding of reality, both mimetic and anti-mimetic, cannot fully be explained by Kafka's lack of first-hand experience of American life. Rather, it has to do with the way he employs modern America both as the main locus of social contest and as a metaphor. From the outset, the novel is characterised by the citation of cultural myths and stereotypical images of the American dream, such as the description of the Statue of Liberty in the opening paragraph and Uncle Jakob's life story, which seems to validate the all-American 'From Rags to Riches' fairy tale.

Kafka repeatedly evokes the great American myth of boundless opportunities: there is Uncle Jakob’s enormous steel residence in chapter 2, which, with its six overground and five underground storeys, its enormous lift and balconies, is a symbol of power and cutting-edge technology. In chapter 5 American architectural and technological modernity is further underlined by the multistorey Hotel Occidental, which contains a buzzing self-service restaurant and operates some thirty lifts. In addition, there is the detailed description of Uncle Jakob’s gigantic business enterprise, which, with its mechanical telephone operators, reads like an early version of the modern call-centre.