"Description of a Struggle" (German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

: "Beschreibung eines Kampfes") is a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 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...

.

Origins

"Description of a Struggle" is one of Kafka's earliest stories that was not destroyed and is usually the earliest included in collections of his work. (His oldest surviving work of fiction is "Shamefaced Lanky and Impure in Heart

Shamefaced Lanky and Impure in Heart

"Shamefaced Lanky and Impure in Heart" is the name usually given to Franz Kafka's earliest surviving work of fiction, a short story which he wrote in 1902 and survived only because it was included in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollack.-Background:It is unclear whether "Shamefaced Lanky and...

," which he wrote a few years earlier and which only survived because it was included in a letter to his friend

Letters to Family, Friends, and Editors (Franz Kafka)

Letters to Family, Friends, and Editors is a book collecting some of Franz Kafka's letters from 1900 to 1924. The majority of the letters in the volume are addressed to Max Brod. Originally published in Germany in 1959 as Briefe 1902-1924, the collection was first published in English by Schocken...

 Oskar Pollak.) Kafka began the story in 1904 at the age of 20 and worked on it on and off until 1909.

It is also notable for being the story that Kafka first showed to his friend Max Brod

Max Brod

Max Brod was a German-speaking Czech Jewish, later Israeli, author, composer, and journalist. Although he was a prolific writer in his own right, he is most famous as the friend and biographer of Franz Kafka...

 and which convinced Brod that Kafka should further pursue his writing. Brod liked the story so much that he mentioned Kafka as an example of "the high level reached by [today's] German literature" in a theatre review of his, this before Kafka had even been published. Brod eventually convinced Kafka to submit his work to Franz Blei

Franz Blei

Franz Blei was an essayist, playwright and translator from Vienna...

's literary journal Hyperion

Hyperion (journal)

Hyperion was a bimonthly literary magazine published out of Munich by Franz Blei and Carl Sternheim. Between 1908 and 1910, twelve booklets in ten editions appeared....

, which published a short fragment of the story in its inaugural 1908 issue. Two further chapters were published in the short-lived Hyperions final issue in the spring of 1909.

Plot summary

"Description of a Struggle" is one of Kafka's longer minor works and is divided into three chapters. The first chapter is narrated by a young man attending a party and tells of his "acquaintance" (as he is referred to in the story) that he meets there. The second chapter is the longest and is itself split into several sections. The narrator leaps onto his acquaintance's back and rides him like a horse and imagines a landscape that responds to his every whim. He then meets an extraordinarily fat man carried on a litter

Litter (vehicle)

The litter is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include lectica , jiao [较] , sedan chairs , palanquin , Woh , gama...

 who tells him the story of a "supplicant" that prays

Prayer

Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...

 by smashing his head into the ground. In the third chapter, the narrator returns to reality, so to speak, and continues his walk up the Laurenziberg in winter with his acquaintance.

Criticism

"Description of a Struggle" is not usually considered one of Kafka's better works and it is often dismissed by critics turned off by its fragmentary nature and lack of polish. John Updike

John Updike

John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....

, in his foreword to an English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 collection of Kafka's stories

The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka

The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka is a compilation of all Kafka's short stories. With the exception of Kafka's three novels , this collection includes all of Kafka's narrative work. The book was originally edited by Nahum N. Glatzer and published by Schocken Books in 1971...

 calls it (along with "Wedding Preparations in the Country

Wedding Preparations in the Country

Wedding Preparations in the Country is an incomplete work by Franz Kafka which depicts in great detail the journey of the groom, Raban, travelling to the country to meet his future wife, Betty...

," another early story) "repellent" containing "something of adolescent posturing" and advises new readers of Kafka to skip them. Updike encourages readers to return to these early stories once "initiated" with his other works.

Versions

The original version of "Description of a Struggle" ran to 110 pages long; in 1909 Kafka attempted to completely rewrite it. This rewrite, which is only 58 pages, is the version that is known today. It is not clear if the rest was lost or if he simply never finished it. In 1910 Kafka gave the manuscript to Brod, writing "what pleases me most about the novella, dear Max, is that it's out of the house." More fragments appeared in Kafka's first book, 1913's Meditations

Contemplation (Kafka)

Contemplation, or Meditation is a sequence of eighteen short stories by Franz Kafka written between 1904 and 1912. Eight of these stories were published under the same title in the bimonthly Hyperion and were Kafka's first publication. Some of the stories are also included, in whole or in part, in...

 and the modern version of the story was assembled by Brod in 1935 after Kafka's death.

Adaptations and derivative works

• A short film loosely based on the work was made in 1993 by Tony Pemberton starring Parker Posey
  Parker Posey
  Parker Christian Posey is an American actress. She became known during the 1990s after a series of roles in several well-received independent films. As a result, she has often been referred to as the "Queen of the Indies"....
  
   and himself. Some of the scenes, like those depicting the fat man on his litter and those about the supplicant, are somewhat faithful to the original and use Kafka's (translated) dialogue almost verbatim, while others are variations on the theme that otherwise have little to do with it. Pemberton plays the part of the unnamed protagonist and Posey plays a female version of his acquaintance who is also the protagonist's ex-lover.
• A monument to Kafka in Prague
  Prague
  Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
  
  created by sculptor Jaroslav Róna is inspired by the events of the story; it depicts Kafka riding on the back of an empty suit.