Sadomasochism in Kafka’s Literature Background Literature explores numerous themes that reveal the author’s inner thoughts and perspectives about life. For example, Corngold’s “The Commentator’s Despair” sums up Franz Kafka’s prose that encompasses both conscious and unconscious symbols, metaphors, allegories, and references (Cerfeda 1). Significantly, the analysis of Kafka’s narrative requires an understanding of the cultural changes that happened during his time. For example, he lived in the era of the women’s emancipation movement, in which the woman acquired working and voting rights and could access education in different parts of the world (Cerfeda 2). The psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud also opened the door to the gender concept because Freud explicitly theorized perversion and explored sexuality (Cerfeda 2). Kafka’s exploration of
