Franz Kafka is known for creating disturbed and unsettling literary art; something uncomfortable that would cut through the ice. In The Judgement, Kafka introduces an unnamed character in St. Petersburg who is living an unstable life while his childhood acquaintance in Prague, Georg Bendemann, sends him letters of inconsequential news. The friend may represent one of Kafka’s identities and throughout the whole story, the relationship between the unnamed friend and Georg seem to be blurred. Kafka insinuates that there are multiple sides to a person and that every single being will never be identical; one cannot judge a person based on stability.

The unnamed friend is the opposite of Georg and he had virtually fled away from Prague to this foreign country with no real ties and social dealings in the local colony of St. Petersburg. The act of fleeing away from home is the result to a new life and experience. The friend was discontented with his development at home so he discovered Russia and isolated himself. Kafka can relate to this in his writing and he isolated himself from the outside world and decided to compose a literary work in one night.

The friend is characterized to have a disease that nears his death at such a young age.
“..whose sallow complexion seemed to indicate a developing disease.” (57)
“…your friend is going to the dogs in his Russia, three years ago he was already yellow enough to be dumped out,..” (71)
His disease may have occurred during his stay at St. Petersburg and this embodies a sign of weakness and that the end is near. Living in St. Petersburg becoming a bachelor for good depicts that there is no progress with his life. The experience he wanted to encounter was a complete downfall due to his own business stagnating. The full exotic beard and his poorly concealing face indicates that he is not taking care of himself and is slowly letting himself go. Maybe he does not have the strength and power to succeed because he needs to have someone to depend on. The reason Georg did not mention his fiancee to him was because he may be envious of him or feel pressured. The friend was struggling to live by himself while Georg was this man of stability and success. Although you can question Georg’s superego because the power of his father’s words had led to his own downfall.
“So now you know what else there was in the world besides you, previously you only knew about yourself! You were truly an innocent child, but you were even more truly a diabolical man! And therefore know: I hereby condemn you to death by drowning!” (71)

Kafka explains the judgement of the two men reflected in this story. You cannot judge a man by his own success of living because every being is significantly differential. Georg having a fiancee and a successful business gave him the ability to have a stable life but his moral sense had overpowered him when he committed suicide. The friend living an unstable life in Russia lacks motivation for success due to his fleeing away from home, the health condition he encounters and his isolation from others. One cannot be successful without the help and support of others.

Throughout the narrative, Georg’s friend was never given a stable, distinct identity. Rather, Kafka provided several hints as to the friend’s living conditions and relationship to Georg. At first, the friend served to be a mysterious entity that Georg was almost obsessed with; this friend obviously means a lot to Georg and is an obstacle in his relationship with his father and fiancée.

Georg described his friend as inferior to him. His friend was dissatisfied with his life and virtually fled to Russia, where he knew no one and had “no real ties with the local colony . . . and almost no social dealings with native families, he was settling in to become a bachelor for good” (58). In this instance, the friend is also the opposite of Georg since Georg was about to be married and his business is quite successful. However, as much as Georg is fascinated with his friend, he is conflicted about his friend’s return and is surely keeping his distance. Georg refuses to update his friend on his good fortunes, making us believe that the reason for this is to spare his friend’s feelings. On that note, he claims that he wants his friend to return home, but then comes up with a lot of excuses and reasons of why it’s best that his friend does not return, most of it concerning his own needs as to deal with his troublesome friend and to explain to his friend about the three years of his lives that he failed to mention. Therefore, Georg is acting as if he is a worried friend, but in reality is shameful of his friend and wants to keep him at a letter’s distance.

This friend becomes an obstacle in Georg’s relationship to his father and fiancée because the friend is someone that Georg wants all to himself, he does not want to share him. There is a lot ambiguity and paradox in the story, but after learning about Kafka’s past, I believe that his friend serves to be Georg’s or rather, Kafka’s inner self. This friend represents the other side of Kafka, the unsuccessful, lonely and hidden part of him. Georg is conflicted about sharing the truth, he does not know how to tell his friend about his recent stages of his life, because though it may seem successful and happy for one part of him, it also brings trouble and misery for the other part. Therefore, I see Georg and his friend as the two halves of Kafka.

Cindy Chan

It’s difficult to make definitive statements when analyzing The Judgment, for Kafka prized ambiguity over plot continuity. It’s no surprise that there are various interpretations of the characters and their significance in this story.

At first blush, the friend in St. Petersburg seems to have an unexpectedly significant influence over Georg and his relationships with his father and fiancee. Upon closer inspection, one may surmise that Mr. St. Petersburg is Kafka’s ego in a way. The friend has “virtually fled” to Russia, perhaps doing so to flee judgment, he is not successful, and has settled for the bachelor life. All of these attributes are reflected in Kafka on a subliminal level. Kafka resented his father’s disapproval of his writing. Although Kafka was successful as a senior executive at an insurance company, it was not the kind of success that satisfied him. Kafka was also torn by the notion that marriage was a betrayal of his literary lifestyle.

In the same vein, Georg and his father may also be interpreted as Kafka’s other alter egos. Georg may be seen as the part of Kafka desperately clinging to the concept of a normal, married life. On the other hand, Georg’s father may be seen as the part of Kafka that reprimands the part that dares to forsake art for normality.

I believe some of the many calculated points of ambiguity and plot discontinuity in the story lend credibility to this interpretation:

• “If you have such friend, Georg, you should never have gotten engaged in the first place.” (61)
  • This statement, which veers startling from the flow of the conversation, is perhaps a reflection of Kafka’s view on marriage.
• Why was George compelled to tell his father about a matter as trivial as a letter to a distant friend? Perhaps this development was to set the stage for the three way struggle (in a sense) between Georg, his friend, and his father.
• “…in order to satisfy your lust with her unhampered, you disgraced our mother’s memory, betrayed your friend, and put your father to bed so that he can’t move. But he can move or can’t he?” (69)
  • This may reflect Kafka’s unshakable feeling that romance betrays his passion for writing.
• “…he knows everything a hundred times better than you do yourself…” (70)
  • This may suggest that the part of Kafka that values literature outweighs the part of him that yearns for companionship.

In “The Judgment” by Franz Kafka, the relationship between Georg and the friend develops throughout the whole story. I believe the role of the friend in St. Petersburg is to represent the fact that things do not always end up the way the individual would like it to.

In the beginning of the story, I questioned what was the purpose of the friend, and what was his obligation to his friend? However, now I believe the idea that Kafka used this friend was to show how superior he was to his friend, but how he was still in a way the loser at the end of the story. For example, the friend was described as one who was “dissatisfied with his progress at home, had virtually fled to Russia many years ago. Now in St. Petersburg, he was running a business… appeared to have been stagnating for quite a while” (57), where as Georg business “had quite unexpectedly prospered during those two years, they had had to double the staff, sales had quintupled, and further growth, was no doubt, just around the corner” (60). Based off these two quotes, the readers can see the clear difference between the two characters. The friend is not successful in a foreign country, where Georg is a huge hit in his hometown. This shows how superior Georg is. Another example that shows Georg superiority is when it states that the friend “having no real ties with the local colony of his compatriots and almost no social dealings with native families, he was settling in to become a bachelor for good” (58), but Georg “had gotten engaged one month ago to a Fraulein Frieda Brandenfeld, a girl from a well-to-do family” (60). Here, the readers can also notice that the friend seems to be an isolated person, not really having an form of social ties, whereas Georg is getting married and is basically entering a binding contract for the rest of his life. From these two examples, it shows a sense that Georg is superior to his friend. His life is definite, where he was successful and getting married, where his friend’s life is more blurry, where he is not succeeding, lonely, and living in another country. Even though I believe that the role of the friend is to show how inferior he is to Georg, it also leads to the idea that even though Georg is more successful than his friend, he did not win at the end. In the end, the father reveals that the friend “knows everything! I’ve been writing to him because you forgot to take away my writing things…he crumples up your letters in his left hand without reading them while he holds up my letters in his right hand to read them” (70)! But, on the other hand, George “leaped from the front door and dashed across the roadway, driven toward the water” (72). This just goes to show that even though Georg’s life seem better in the beginning with his happy career, and family, he ended up committing suicide at the end, whereas the friend who seemed to be at rock bottom, actually knew everything and could not be fooled by Georg. This leads readers to believe that you cannot take anything for granted in the beginning because things do not always end up how it seems. There is no definite ending that can be assumed until it actually happens, and there could be no limit placed on the infinite amount of opportunities existing. People must understand that life is full of endless possibilities and that no one will ever know how it will end.