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.