The beast that consumes us

The Vulture - Franz Kafka

A Vulture was hacking at my feet. It had already torn my boots and stockings to shreds; now it was hacking at the feet themselves. Again and again it struck at them, then circled several times restlessly around me, then returned to continue its work. A gentleman passed by, looked on for a while, then asked me why I suffered the vulture.

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"I'm helpless," I said. "When it came and began to attack me, I of course tried to drive it away, even to strangle it, but these animals are very strong. It was about to spring at my face, but I preferred to sacrifice my feet. Now they are almost torn to bits."

"Fancy letting yourself be tortured like this!" said the gentleman. "One shot and that's the end of the vulture."

"Really?" I said. "And would you do that?"

"With pleasure," said the gentleman, "I've only got to go home and get my gun. Could you wait another half-hour?"

"I'm not sure about that," said I, and stood for a moment rigid with pain. Then I said: "Do try it in any case, please."

"Very well," said the gentleman, "I'll be as quick as I can."

During this conversation the vulture had been calmly listening, letting its eye rove between me and the gentleman. Now I realized that it had understood everything; it took wing, leaned far back to gain impetus, and then, like a javelin thrower, thrust its beak through my mouth, deep into me. Falling back, I was relieved to feel him drowning irretrievably in my blood, which was filling every depth, flooding every shore.

Analysis

Kafka is one of my favorite writers. His themes, his vision of reality, the images him produces in our minds are strong and powerful, leading us to the most obscure corners of our consciousness. In that story, this is more than evident. The surrealism is amazingly clear.

Many interpretations may be possible for this narrative, from the influence of classical Greek, even the pessimism with respect to humanity. Although may be unable to know what was the intention of Kafka to write a masterpiece like this, nothing prevents us from trying to examine it, contextualizing it to our reality.

But first, let's try to find out why the man (the character) is being punished? In some part of the text is that explained? No. The man suffers so much without at least understand why he is alive eaten. There is a feeling of helplessness in the air, suffers simply because he is alive.

First the vulture devours his feet, preventing the man from around itself, preventing it from escaping. But who is this vulture? From where it came? Why does it do this? The answer is simple: the vulture is the weakness of the man himself. We all have within us vultures. We all can destroy ourselves, and if we do not take care, we will be devoured by the vulture.

When the vulture devours the feet of man, this is the man who gave up of his dreams. When the vulture devours his mouth, that means he lost the ability to express himself, because he thinks that nobody is concerned more about him. Finally, he lives in pure state of loneliness, melancholy and agony possible

Applying this in our current reality, we can see that more and more the vultures are on the loose. Increasingly, people feel alone and isolated, living with fear. Many claim that they are afraid of death. This is just a inconsistent excuse, a lie. Many people are afraid to live and that is why they are being slowly devoured by their own vultures.

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