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A Soldier and His Suitcase: Karl Rossmann's Arrival In A Soldier and His Suitcase: Karl Rossmann’s Arrival in and Deliverance from Kafka’s Amerika Charles H. Hammond, Jr. University of Tennessee at Martin In his Brief an den Vater [Letter to his Father], Franz Kafka attempts to describe the conditional nature of his father’s approval through the use of military imagery: “Ich hätte ein wenig Aufmunterung, ein wenig Freundlichkeit, ein wenig Offenhalten meines Wegs gebraucht, statt dessen verstelltest Du mir ihn, in der guten Absicht freilich, daß ich einen anderen Weg gehen sollte. Aber dazu taugte ich nicht. Du muntertest mich zum Beispiel auf, wenn ich gut salutierte und marschierte, aber ich war kein künftiger Soldat” [I could have used a bit of encouragement, a bit of friendliness, you could have kept my path open, but instead you blocked it, with the well-meaning intent, of course, that I should follow another path. But I was unfit for it, you encouraged me, for example, when I saluted and marched well, but I was no future soldier] (Kafka, Zur Frage 15).1 Hermann Kafka had, of course, completed the compulsory military service that was required of all able-bodied males in Austro-Hungary as a condition of citizenship.2 However, the elder Kafka, who paid for Franz to attend the Gymnasium and study law at the university, certainly did not intend for his son to pursue a career in the army. The reference to the soldier in the Brief an den Vater, therefore, can be read as a metaphor for paternal recognition, as will be seen. To be sure, neither Kafka’s diaries, nor his correspondence nor any other non-fictional works (such as the travel narratives) contain any explicit discussion of soldiery as a metaphor for the attainment of paternal recognition.3 Instead, as I seek to demonstrate, the symbolic significance of the soldier is elaborately addressed in Kafka’s first novel, Amerika,4 where the soldier-motif stands for an impossible goal which the protagonist, an outcast son, nonetheless strives to achieve: namely, recognition by his father.5 In order to appreciate the significance of the soldier motif as a metaphor for paternal recognition, I argue that it is necessary to concomitantly examine a related motif: namely, the exiled hero’s suitcase. In its conspicuousness, the suitcase not only represents the last tangible link between father and son, but it is also specifically identified as a soldier’s suitcase [Soldatenkoffer] in the text, thereby establishing the link between the soldier as embodiment of the goal and the suitcase as the literal and figurative inheritance from the father. Put simply, the suitcase (paternal legacy) may be seen as the means and the soldier (paternal recognition) as the end. In this essay, I argue that, for Karl, the loss of the former symbolizes the impossibility of the latter. Despite the protagonist’s 51 52 Charles H. Hammond, Jr. intense longing for paternal acceptance, he is unable to retain the suitcase – much like Kafka himself, who was praised by his father “wenn [er] gut salutierte und marschierte” [saluted and marched well] but in the end was forced to admit to himself and his father that he was “kein künftiger Soldat” [no future soldier]. The opening sentence of the novel encapsulates the plot succinctly: Als der sechzehnjährige Karl Roßmann, der von seinen armen Eltern nach Amerika geschickt worden war, weil ihn ein Dienstmädchen verführt und ein Kind von ihm bekommen hatte, in dem schon langsam gewordenen Schiff in den Hafen von New York einfuhr, erblickte er die schon längst beobachtete Statue der Freiheitsgöttin wie in einem plötzlich stärker gewordenen Sonnenlicht. [When the sixteen year-old Karl Rossmann, who had been sent to America by his poor parents because a servant girl had seduced him and become pregnant by him, entered the New York harbor on a ship that was slowly approaching the harbor, he noticed the Statue of Liberty that he had watched for a while suddenly appeared in a more radiant sunlight.] (Kafka, Der Verschollene 9)6 What promises at first to be a kind of modern Bildungsroman—in which the young European immigrant arrives in the United States, begins anew, and pursues the American dream of social and economic mobility—devolves into a nightmare, as Karl is expelled from one family constellation only to enter other ones, each lower in station and more unforgiving than the last. At each turn, he reassumes the filial role only to be deemed unworthy by the father figure and expelled from the ersatz family. In each case, the suitcase and allusions to the military play pivotal roles. The suitcase—which appears and disappears several times, only to be finally lost altogether—represents Karl’s inability to carry on his father’s legacy. Similarly, the motif of the soldier comes to symbolize a masculine ideal the protagonist longs to achieve, for it is an ideal he imagines would rehabilitate him in the eyes of his father. The pattern commences while Karl is still aboard the ship. Just as he is about to debark, he realizes he has left his umbrella below deck. Before descending into the ship’s interior in order to retrieve the umbrella, he asks a fellow traveler to mind his suitcase. As Karl navigates the labyrinth of nearly empty corridors, hatches and cabins below deck, he comes across a crewman who, when Karl first sees him, is occupied with a suitcase of his own: “[U]nd [er] hörte nicht auf, an dem Schloß eines kleinen Koffers zu hantieren, den er mit beiden Händen immer wieder zudrückte, um das Einschnappen des Riegels zu behorchen” [And he did not stop plying the lock of a small suitcase, which he closed again and again with both hands in order to listen to the sound of the latch snapping into place] (A 10). The two then enter into a conversation that turns almost immediately to the subject of Karl’s suitcase. When Karl suddenly realizes he has forgotten about the suitcase he had left with the acquaintance, A Soldier and His Suitcase 53 the crewman remarks that both have probably disappeared. As Karl attempts to rise from the bunk on which he had been sitting in order to retrieve his piece of luggage the burly man pushes him back onto the bunk. Initially angered, Karl forgets about the suitcase entirely once he discovers that the man he has met is none other than the ship’s stoker: “‘Sie sind Schiffsheizer’, rief Karl freudig, als überstiege das alle Erwartungen, und sah, den Ellbogen aufgestützt, den Mann näher an.” [“You’re the ship’s stoker!” Karl cried out with joy, as if that superseded all of his expectations and, propped up on his elbows, looked more intently at the man] (A 12). From this point on, Karl becomes drawn to the stoker and even entertains the idea of becoming one himself: “‘Jetzt könnte ich auch Heizer werden’ sagte Karl, ‘meinen Eltern ist es jetzt ganz gleichgiltig [sic] was ich werde’” [“Now I could become a stoker too,” said Karl, “my parents don’t care anymore what I become anyway”] (A 13). In addition, Karl feels perfectly and inexplicably content in the cramped cabin: “Er hatte fast das Gefühl davon verloren, daβ er auf dem unsichern [sic] Boden eines Schiffes an der Küste eines unbekannten Erdteils war, so heimisch war ihm hier auf dem Bett des Heizers zumute” [He had almost lost the feeling of being on the shifting ground of a vessel sailing along the coast of an unfamiliar part of the world, so at home did he feel on the stoker’s bed] (A 14). Only after the stoker sends Karl out of the cabin do Karl’s thoughts again turn to his suitcase: Und er fand überhaupt, daβ er lieber seinen Koffer hätte holen sollen [. .]. Als ihm der Vater den Koffer für immer übergeben hatte, hatte er im Scherz gefragt: Wie lange wirst du ihn haben? und jetzt war dieser teuere Koffer vielleicht schon im Ernst verloren. Der einzige Trost war noch, daβ der Vater von seiner jetzigen Lage nicht das allergeringste erfahren konnte, selbst wenn er nachforschen sollte. [And he thought it would indeed have behooved him to go get his suitcase . When his father had handed over his suitcase for good, he had asked jokingly: So how long will you be able to keep it? And now the precious suitcase was perhaps lost in earnest. The only consolation lay in the fact that the father would not discover the slightest detail about his current predicament, even if he were to try to investigate.] (A 14-15) In the short space of time it takes Karl to get to know the stoker, he twice forgets about his “teuere[n] Koffer” [precious suitcase]. If I am correct in regarding the suitcase as a tangible symbol of the father’s legacy, then Karl’s own view of this legacy oscillates between two polar opposites. There is, on the one hand, Karl’s desire to prove he is worthy to assume the role of a father (which, biologically speaking, he is), and on the other hand, a resignation to the fact that he is unfit to do so. Hence the idea of losing the suitcase can be seen, at one moment, to fill Karl with dread while at other times it affords him a sense of relief: no longer burdened by his father’s unmet expectations, Karl is free to pursue his own dreams, albeit at the expense of paternal love. Each .
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