Susan Sontag, in "Against Interpretation" (1964), in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)

The work of Kafka … has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than three armies of interpreters. Those who read Kafka as a social allegory see case studies of the frustrations and insanity of modern bureaucracy and its ultimate issuance in the totalitarian state. Those who read Kafka as a psychoanalytic allegory see desperate revelations of Kafka’s fear of his father, his castration anxieties, his sense of his own impotence, his thralldom to his dreams. Those who read Kafka as a religious allegory explain that K. in The Castle is trying to gain access to heaven, that Joseph K. in The Trial is being judged by the inexorable and mysterious justice of God.

— Susan Sontag

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The work of Kafka … has been subjected to a mass ravishment by no less than three armies of interpreters. Those who read Kafka as a social allegory see case studies of the frustrations and insanity of modern bureaucracy and its ultimate issuance in the totalitarian state. Those who read Kafka as a psychoanalytic allegory see desperate revelations of Kafka’s fear of his father, his castration anxieties, his sense of his own impotence, his thralldom to his dreams. Those who read Kafka as a religious allegory explain that K. in The Castle is trying to gain access to heaven, that Joseph K. in The Trial is being judged by the inexorable and mysterious justice of God." in the context of "Susan Sontag, in "Against Interpretation" (1964), in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (1966)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Franz Kafka" (Quotes about Kafka: Sorted alphabetically by author or source) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Franz Kafka

About Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a Bohemian-Jewish novelist, and one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century.