Bestial Representations of Otherness: Kafka’s Animal Stories

The grotesque in Kafka is most evocatively expressed in his animal stories. In his use of animal protagonists, Kafka locates an opportunity to explore the tension between human and non-human — the same tension that exists between self and other. By playing off this tension between what is “the self ” and what is “not the self,” Kafka is able to explore the ontology of otherness. He enlists animal stories in order to clarify the space between self and other that is critical to maintaining notions of identity.