SOURCE: “Coherence in Kafka's ‘The Judgment’: Georg's Perceptions of the World,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. IX, No. 1, Winter, 1972, pp. 59–79.

In the following essay, Pondrom asserts that “The Judgment” possesses “an astounding integration through which virtually every detail is coherently significant, and the various levels of the story (mythic, psychological, metaphysical, literal) interact without contradiction.”

One of the fundamentals of Kafka criticism is that there are many ways to interpret the same literary construction: it is part of Kafka's genius—and the eternal frustration of the critic—that all these different interpretations often seem to work equally well. In the case of “The Judgment,” however, we can support one interpretation, besides the literal, in particular detail. In fact, one may proceed with an analysis as minute as the explication de texte of a symbolic lyric poem. Such an analysis shows that far from being a “failure” in...