Kafka's Doubles

The basic conflict in Franz Kafka's life and work involved his two selves, Dichter and bureaucrat. Kafka's Doubles explores the result of this dichotomy - the doubling - which is a prominent literary feature of the Kafka canon. There are two kinds of doubles in Kafka: autoscopic pairs, that is twins, occur in «The Trial», in «Blumfeld» and «The Castle». Despite their prominently physical similarity they have traits which distinguish one from the other; in this way they represent the divided self. More frequently found are dissociative doubles, separate and physically distinct characters who represent two aspects of one self. In this study the device of doubling, its literary forebears and its psychological nuances are considered with a view to clarifying some of the obscurity in Kafka's work - without attacking its ambiguity.