“Letter to His Father” by Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka had an unhappy life, filled with anxiety and hidden rage. And it’s not hard to figure out where the source of his misery was coming from: his overbearing father.
Hermann Kafka was a narcissistic strict disciplinarian who raise his children using emotional abuse, double-standard, hypocritical actions, threats, explosive temperament and sarcastic comments, which, in his own words, made Franz feels “rejected, put down, oppressed.”
But it was the father’s disapproval of his engagement to Felice Bauer that became the last straw for Franz, and prompted him to express his feelings towards his father in the best way possible for him, through writing. Something that his father disprove of.
And in this letter Franz pour it all out, at the age of 36, all the emotions that have been building up for the past 3 decades.
It’s amazing how by looking into this meticulously written letter we can see the inner thought and feelings of Franz Kafka and what makes him human. And we can unintentionally see the biography of his life, the occurrences in his childhood that made a mark on him, and what helped to create his Kafkaesque world view.
“My writing was about you,” Franz wrote in the letter, “indeed I was only confiding my troubles to a book because I could not confide in you.”
The letter was never read by his father, however, where Franz gave the letter to his loving mother but she never revealed it to Hermann.
THE CHAOS THEORY 