...Once again the odious courtesies began again, the first passed the knife on K. to the second, who handed it back to the first on K.. K. then clearly understood that he was supposed to grab the knife himself, which was being passed from hand to hand above him, and plunge it into his own chest. But he didn't do it, he just turned his head, still free to move, and looked around him. He could not fully rise to the occasion, he could not relieve the civil servants of all their tasks; the responsibility for this last failure of his lies with the one who had not left him the remainder of the strength necessary for the act....--excerpt from the TrialFranz Kafka, b. Prague, Bohemia (then belonging to Austria), July 3, 1883, d. June 3, 1924 became one of the most influential writers of this century. Virtually unknown during his lifetime, Kafka's works have since been recognized as symbolizing the distressing and grotesque alienation of modern man in an unintelligible, hostile or indifferent world. Kafka came from a middle-class Jewish family and grew up in the shadow of his authoritarian merchant father, who impressed Kafka as a formidable patriarch. The feeling of helplessness, even in his rebellion, was a syndrome that became a pervasive theme in his fiction. Kafka successfully completed his studies at the prestigious German Lyceum in Prague and received a law degree in 1906. This allowed him to earn a living and gave him time to write, which he considered to be the essence - at the both a blessing and a curse -. of his life. He quickly found a position in the semi-public workers' compensation insurance institution, where he remained a loyal and successful employee until, beginning in 1917, tuberculosis forced him to take leave from work. repeated illnesses and finally, in 1922, to retire. Kafka spent half his time after 1917 in sanatoriums and health resorts, his tuberculosis of the lungs eventually spreading to the larynx. Kafka lived his life emotionally dependent on his parents, whom he loved and resented. None of his largely unhappy amorous adventures could wean him from this inner dependence; even though he wanted to get married, he never did. Sexually, he apparently oscillated between an ascetic aversion to sexual intercourse, which he called "the punishment of being together", and an attraction to prostitutes. Sex in Kafka's writings is often associated with filth or guilt and treated as an attractive abomination..