Скачать или смотреть Franz Kafka & Infinite Jest - OCD in Literature

Can we use literature to understand better some of the deeply dysfunctional aspects of contemporary society?

This question is explored by tracing some of the links between one of Franz Kafka’s final stories “The Burrow” (1924) and David Foster Wallace’s epic novel “Infinite Jest” (1996).

“The Burrow” is narrated by a vaguely-defined badger-like creature who shows symptoms of OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). The creature builds a seemingly huge underground burrow/building with multiple chambers and a large "castle keep" and initially luxuriates within it very happily, blissfully sleeping for long periods of time. Soon, however, the beast becomes neurotically obsessed about potential external threats - other creatures that may be trying to invade his territory, this threat manifests itself as a whistling sound which he begins to obsessively worry about and compulsively hunt down without success.

The story is poignantly prescient – I argue that it portrayal of obsessive calculation and concern with external threats captures some of the neuroses that became so pathologically deranged that they created the necessary conditions for the horrors of the concentration camps that soon followed Kafka’s death at 40 from tuberculosis.

The full text of "The Burrow" can be found here:
@https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/campusp...

I also argue that Kafka’s tale foreshadows Wallace’s later depiction of widespread social drug and entertainment addiction in “Infinite Jest”. In their very different ways, both authors demonstrate the human need for a “higher authority” without which we are liable to fall into a state of neurotic compulsion and/or depression.

The OCD wheel in the Thumbnail image was created by M. Bitton and is used under a Creative Commons License:
@ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...

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