Kafka

Kafka was a very modernized gothic writer who was very succesful in doing so. The main way in which he did this was by using metaphors to communicate traditional gothic themes. For example, in The Judgement, he uses words and things modern people can understand and relate to. Specifically the word traffic is something that people nowadays can understand but hundreds of years ago before there were cars, people might not have understood what Kafka meant when he stated the character saw a motor coach that could drown out the noise and the unending stream of traffic that followed. To us, this makes sense but it also can translate to a deeper meaning when it is brought together with the rest of the story. Also, using a modern story of a father being disappointed in his son is something people can relate to. In The Castle as well, Kafka uses very modern language that is easily relatable to people nowadays. He talks about "ringing up" the land surveyor on the telephone which, once again, is something that people hundreds of years ago would not understand, yet we do because we are surrounded by this technology. The setting of both of these stories is also a way Kafka modernizes his gothic stories. He uses a very modern setting for his stories by describing villages and bridges that look like what we have in today's world instead of the settings hundreds of years ago.