A Cruelty Complex

Kafka’s examination of the human condition as a vehicle for cyclical and self
perpetuating suffering suggests that neither humanity nor suffering can exist without one
another, and how, though the latter may be inexplicable, it is not necessary for, yet still a fact of,
living, even within the confines of meaning, and a complete lack thereof, resulting in our search
for meaning, and our ultimately futile attempt. In finality, there is no use for suffering other than
to further it once again.
A commentary of a species. A transcending of society through what we all fear and long
to connect through. It is as if suffering is a great emotional equalizer, as though we all
understand, on a base level, each other’s possible cruelty. This is what Kafka seems to suggest in
“In the Penal Colony,” in which a traveler is invited to view a new method of capital
punishment, the officer gleaming over his hideous invention. He gleefully reminisces on the
audiences the machine fetched, squatting there “with a small child in each arm, right and left,”
taking in “the transfigured expression from the tortured face, how intensely [their] cheeks basked
in the glow of that justice, attained at long last and already fading!” To the officer, the act his
machine performs is pure, justice. Yet, it is ultimately in the traveler that his ultimate judgement
of the machine lies, his unflinching positivity perhaps a facade. The traveler denies the officer
approval of his darling machine, echoing this judgement to the new commander, and the officer’s
other higher ups. Still, though this is the traveler’s final judgement, he tells the officer that he had
not “[hardened his] resolution--- on the contrary, [the officer’s] sincere conviction is touching
even though it cannot deter [the traveler].” The officer’s newfound, perhaps hidden, guilt,
becomes incarnate at the end, this machine killing the officer, as he is desperate to showcase his
cruelty under the guise of human connection. Still, disgusted, the traveler acknowledges the
officer’s intention, he sees the throes of the officer’s human connection, and as the traveler sees
the superficial, so he sees the officer’s final outcome, and understands more than is at the
surface, this final demonstration an exposition of how cruelty’s superficiality must hit us in a, as
stated, deeper, subliminal aspect of our being.
In parallel, “A Hunger Artist” is certainly observational of both human society, and our
species.​ ​It is the extreme of the fetishized pain of the modern artist, truly starving for the passive
entertainment of the public. Literally in a cage, the hunger artist is only entertaining as long as he
stays within this trap of starvation. It is the only value the public sees in his art: his pain.
Reflected in our own society, we champion pain and suffering as not only a goal, but a measure
of humanity; how “true” we are seems to be dependant on the suffering one may or may not have
experienced. Yet, it is not weakness that is acceptable. As is our nature, power is generated
through strife, through overcoming struggle, and if this struggle and strife continues past our
transcendance, it only furthers its meaning. Still, this becomes a spectacle, and such is present in
“A Hunger Artist,” the artist “occasionally proffering an arm through the bars for them to feel
how skinny it was, but then sinking down and retreating completely into himself…” Within that,
two metaphors are present: this public’s excitement to feel how ill he has become, and that this
performance is indeed not a performance, but a true exhibition of suffering, a willingness of
cruelty towards oneself; it is this artist’s willing self cruelty that reflects the cage, the bars, he
must reach through to actualize himself to the public.
The hunger artist’s worth is still determined through lancing a societal disbelief, even
against irrefutable evidence that no greater sacrifice is present. For, is death not an ultimate
sacrifice, and would teasing death and mortality in such a painful way not show one’s
commitment to this sacrifice? Or will this never be enough, even as “he [gazes] into the eyes of
the ladies, who were seemingly so friendly but in reality so cruel, and shook his head, which felt
too heavy for his enfeebled neck.”
Modern thirst for actualizing internal struggle now generates sensationalized media,
condemning those who seek fame through an exploitation of this. But it is exploitation that
perpetuates this? Exploitation of those who wish their suffering stay hidden, exploitation of those
who try to end their suffering, exploitation of those who unwittingly cause suffering. So, one
must ask, when it is indeed witting, when exploitation is feigned, when the perpetrator suffers,
who is the victim? Is this hunger artist the victim, or the perpetrator, for a fading gain of
attention? Is his suffering true because he suffers himself? Or does he serve the greater
exploitation of the suffered masses? When one accepts their place in this societal sensation, the
line between perpetuation and exploitation blurs within. So, again, is the hunger artist really
suffering, or does he exploit those who feel it purely; is he cruelty incarnate?
There is a mirror between the world, society, his writing, and Kafka’s entire life. His
dialect, a reflection of his culture, a minority within a minority; his society, an ever changing
perception of; his health, an unrelinquishing pain, illness; his death, a final crippling, suffered to
starvation. Even within his native tongue of Prague German, his Jewish heritage, and his
inhabitancy, there exists a history of persecution, derision, destruction. His being multilingual
(French, Czech, Prague German) is ironic in the relationship each language held with each other;
the French forcing acculturation and assimilation upon Prague living Jews. Despite this, it was
Prague German that he spoke among friends, strangers, and Czech in familial setting, while ​In
the 19th and 20th century, new generation Jews would speak to their older family in a Yiddish
dialect, and a different language amongst themselves, as well as with Christians (an example of
this within important historical figures of that time is Marx and Heine writing to their parents in
Western Yiddish)​. Prague German directly affected his writing, being regarded by its speakers as
a “pure” linguistic mode, lending itself to literature directly, the speech identical to the writing.
In parallel to the French treatment of Prague’s Jewish population, Prague German was almost,
and intentionally, eradicated by the Nazis. Kafka in turn viewed language as a symbol of
personhood, the destruction of language a mirror of one’s dehumanization. Hauntingly, Kafka’s
judgement preceded the Nazi reign, and their eventual occupation of Prague. The predictive
sorrow held in his texts proffers a side of our collective humanity that transcends past
knowledge, a representation of our subliminal bounds for fear: A complete interpersonal web of
expectational suffering.
As it ran through his life, so it ran through Kafka’s writing, inescapably cruel, yet still
gentle. It was a steadily sinking sky, a ceiling that, though transparent, held below it, us, staring
up into what was once clear, what we thought was clear, until it was upon us, and we too sank
into it’s reality. It is all suffering, and an acceptance of this is what maintains our sight into the
space above a crushing window. See clear this reality as it descends and we may finally see our
suffering as constructive. We may finally see clearly suffering as innately human. Our capacity
for cruelty is natural. Constructive almost. And so, to ponder on why Kafka’s writing was dismal
in its undertones would be useless: there is no question of why this exists, but more so how this
could possibly run so deeply, and how this abysmal examination of humanity then, in turn,
became a reality. It’s as if the cruelty of the world existed within him, and when his body ceased,
so released this cruelty back upon the world he merely accepted to inhabit. He did not seek an
end to his life, it simply found him. Cruelty began to bleed through the pages, spinning its web to
overtake him… he died suffering, alone… the glass ceiling’s shattered rain drifting upon him,
the world. He died in pain.