Georg and His Friend are FOILs
The definition of a foil is a character who contrasts with another to highlight particular qualities of the other; they often differ drastically or are very similar with one big difference separating them. As an example, last year my english class talked about a very commonly-know foil pair: Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
At the very beginning of the story, it's easy to depict the main differences between Georg and his friend. Georg is an engaged business man who lives at home while his friend is a world wide, poor bachelor.
I think Kafka uses the friend as a foil to show Georg's side to the conflict. Georg wrote many letters about other people's engagements before he even mentioned his own; he likes to hide some things about his personal life. However, he admits he wanted to protect his friend; he didn't want to hurt his feelings by telling him about the engagement. Georg is in a tricky place by hiding something from his friend in order to protect him emotionally, but his friend will ultimately be upset once he hears later on. But I'm not quite sure what exactly Kafka is trying to highlight, I just know that based on their differences, the friend is a foil.
Grace: remember that you're supposed to post about Crumb's version of "The Judgment." Does he depict the two as foils visually? What role does the friend serve in Crumb's comic?
ReplyDeleteWell actually the friend doesn't show up in Crumb's version of "The Judgement" visually. The father only calmly responds to the friend on the second page of the cartoon saying that the son has no friend in Petersburg. The father is shown pouring tea while talking about the joke/friend, so that's calm. However, he is very angry at his own son. Since he believes the friend is nonexistent, it contrasts with the father needing the son to take care of him. We visually see how angry he gets in the story when he leaps out of bed and points at the son.
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