"The Stoker" (original German: "Der Heizer") is a short story by Franz Kafka. Kafka wrote it as the first chapter of a novel that Max Brod titled Amerika and that has subsequently been translated as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika) and as Amerika: The Missing Person, but Kafka abandoned the novel in 1913 and published the one completed chapter alone as a pamphlet later that year. Since his death, it has usually been published along with the uncompleted fragments of Amerika.[1]
Sixteen-year-old Karl Rossmann arrives in New York Harbor on a slow-moving ship. He has been sent to America by his parents "because a maid had seduced him and then had his child." As he is about to go ashore, he remembers that he has left his umbrella below deck, so he asks a young man with whom he had been briefly acquainted during the voyage to watch his trunk while he runs to get it.
Karl gets lost in the corridors and begins pounding on a door. A man lets him in and, since the man convinces Karl that it will be easier to find his umbrella and trunk (if they have not been stolen, that is) after all of the passengers have disembarked, the two start to talk. The man explains he is a stoker on the ship, but he is about to be fired because the chief engineer, a Romanian named Schubal, has a preference for Romanians, even though the ship, like the Stoker, is German. He says this must be the reason he is being let go because he has worked on many ships and, until now, has always been praised for his hard work.
Karl sympathizes with the Stoker's story and accompanies him when he goes to collect his money and complain one more time about Schubal to the Chief Purser. They are admitted to the Purser's office, but are quickly told to leave when the Purser indicates he is too busy to listen to the Stoker. At this, Karl goes over to the Purser's desk, grabbing the attention of everyone present, including the Captain of the ship, who has been talking with a civilian. He explains that he believes the Stoker has been done an injustice and should be given an opportunity to air his grievances.
The Captain steps forward and asks the Stoker to speak. The Stoker begins describing the details of his case, but in a random and disorganized way. Karl notices the Stoker gradually losing his audience and eventually interrupts to tell him to be more organized and avoid unnecessary details. The man who had been talking with the Captain takes the break in the Stoker's testimony as an opportunity to ask for Karl's name, but just then Schubal comes in, saying he is ready to refute any charges laid against him with documents and witnesses. The Captain cuts off Schubal and invites Mr. Jakob, the man with whom he had been talking, to repeat his question. Karl, who had been feeling energized and wished his parents could see him arguing for a just cause in such distinguished company, gives his name and is recognized by Mr. Jakob as being his nephew. As it so happens, Karl's Uncle Jakob Bendelmayer (who in America has become Senator Edward Jakob) had been informed of Karl's trip via a letter sent to him by the maid who had earlier seduced Karl, so he met the ship on its arrival in America to try to find his nephew.
Everyone except for Karl forgets about the Stoker while the Senator tells an abbreviated version of his story. Afterward, all present, including Schubal, congratulate Karl and the Senator on finding each other. Karl tries to use his perceived newly found influence to gather some sympathy for the Stoker's cause, but the Senator explains that it is really up to the captain to decide what happens next. Not seeing anything else he can do to help, but noticing the Stoker seems to have lost all hope for a satisfactory resolution to his situation, Karl asks the Stoker to promise he will defend himself in Karl's absence. Karl is lead away by the Senator to a boat the Captain has arranged to ferry them to shore. As he is climbing into the boat, Karl begins to weep.
Karl looks at the windows of the Purser's office while he is being rowed away. He can see Schubal's witnesses, who cheerily wave to his small boat. Switching his gaze to the Senator, Karl wonders if, to him, his uncle could ever replace the Stoker.[2]
Publication
Having stopped work on Amerika in January of 1913, in March Kafka sent the publisher Wolff a copy of The Metamorphosis and tried to convince him to publish it along with The Stoker and The Judgment as a book called The Sons. This plan was not followed, and in May The Stoker was published as a 48-page book in a run of Wolff's usual 1000 copies. It was presented as Volume 3 of Wolff's Day of Judgment series.
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer based in Prague, who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the novella The Metamorphosis and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing.
The Trial is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka's two other novels, The Castle and Amerika, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which appears to bring the story to an intentionally abrupt ending.
Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka and first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggles to adjust to this new condition. The novella has been widely discussed among literary critics, who have offered varied interpretations. In popular culture and adaptations of the novella, the insect is commonly depicted as a cockroach.
"A Hunger Artist" is a short story by Franz Kafka first published in Die neue Rundschau in 1922. The story was also included in the collection A Hunger Artist, the last book Kafka prepared for publication, which was printed by Verlag Die Schmiede shortly after his death. The protagonist, a hunger artist who experiences the decline in appreciation of his craft, is typically Kafkaesque: an individual marginalized and victimized by society at large. "A Hunger Artist" explores themes such as death, art, isolation, asceticism, spiritual poverty, futility, personal failure and the corruption of human relationships. The title of the story has also been translated as "A Fasting Artist" and "A Starvation Artist".
"In the Penal Colony" is a short story by Franz Kafka written in German in October 1914, revised in November 1918, and first published in October 1919. As in some of Kafka's other writings, the narrator in this story seems detached from, or perhaps numbed by, events that one would normally expect to be registered with horror. Internal clues and the setting on an island suggest Octave Mirbeau's The Torture Garden as an influence. The story is set in an unnamed penal colony and describes the last use of an elaborate torture and execution device that carves the sentence of the condemned prisoner on his skin as he slowly dies over the course of twelve hours. As the plot unfolds, the reader learns more and more about the machine, including its origin and original justification.
Max Brod was a Bohemian-born Israeli author, composer, and journalist.
Amerika, (German working title Der Verschollene, "The Missing") also known as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika), Amerika: The Missing Person and Lost in America, is the incomplete first novel by author Franz Kafka (1883–1924), written between 1911 and 1914 and published posthumously in 1927. The novel originally began as a short story titled "The Stoker". The novel incorporates many details of the experiences of his relatives who had emigrated to the United States. The commonly used title Amerika is from the edition of the text put together by Kafka's close friend, Max Brod, after Kafka's death in 1924.
"The Judgment", also translated "The Verdict", is a short story written by Franz Kafka in 1912, concerning the relationship between a man and his father.
A fireman, stoker or watertender is a person whose occupation it is to tend the fire for the running of a boiler, heating a building, or powering a steam engine. Much of the job is hard physical labor, such as shoveling fuel, typically coal, into the boiler's firebox. On steam locomotives the title fireman is usually used, while on steamships and stationary steam engines, such as those driving saw mills, the title is usually stoker. The German word Heizer is equivalent and in Dutch the word stoker is mostly used too. The United States Navy referred to them as watertenders.
"Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" is the last short story written by Franz Kafka. It deals with the relationship between an artist and her audience. The story was included in the collection A Hunger Artist published by Verlag Die Schmiede soon after Kafka's death.
Michael Hofmann is a German-born poet, translator, and critic. The Guardian has described him as "arguably the world's most influential translator of German into English".
The Sons is a collection of stories by Franz Kafka.
The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces is a collection of short stories and recollections by Franz Kafka, with additional writings by Max Brod. First published in 1948 by Schocken Books, this volume includes all the works Kafka intended for publication, and published during his lifetime. It also includes critical pieces by Kafka, "The First Long Train Journey" by Kafka and Brod, and an Epilogue by Brod. The collection was translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.
"The Cares of a Family Man" is a short story by Franz Kafka, originally written in German, between 1914 and 1917 about a creature called Odradek.
Franz Kafka, a German-language writer of novels and short stories who is regarded by critics as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century, was trained as a lawyer and later employed by an insurance company, writing only in his spare time.
"First Sorrow" is a short story by Franz Kafka. It was probably written between the fall of 1921 and the spring of 1922. It appeared in Kurt Wolff Verlag's art periodical Genius, III no. 2 and in the Christmas 1923 supplement to the Prager Presse. The story was included in the collection A Hunger Artist published by Verlag Die Schmiede soon after Kafka's death.
"Shamefaced Lanky and Impure in Heart" is the title usually given to Franz Kafka's earliest surviving work of fiction, a short story that he wrote in 1902 and that has survived only because it was included in a letter to his friend Oskar Pollak.
"My Neighbor" is a short story by Franz Kafka. It was written in 1917 and published in 1931 in Berlin by Max Brod and Hans-Joachim Schoeps. The first English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir was published by Martin Secker in London in 1933. It appeared in The Great Wall of China. Stories and Reflections.
A Country Doctor is a collection of short stories written mostly in 1917 by Franz Kafka, containing the story of the same name. Kurt Wolff published it in 1919 as the second collection of stories by Kafka, after Betrachtung.
The Metamorphosis is a novella written by Franz Kafka which was first published in 1915. One of Kafka's best-known works, The Metamorphosis tells the story of salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a huge insect and subsequently struggling to adjust to this new condition. The novella has been recreated, referenced, or parodied in various popular culture media.
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