"In Franz Kafka’s first published story, 'Description of a Struggle,' the narrator is sitting in a drawing room at a rickety little table, eating a piece of fruitcake that 'did not taste very good,' when a man walks up to him. The man is described as an 'acquaintance,' but we soon realize he is a double, or another part of the narrator’s self. The acquaintance has fallen in love and wants to boast about it. 'If you weren’t in such a state,' he scolds, '[you] would know how improper it is to talk about an amorous girl to a man sitting alone drinking schnapps.' The comment seems to threaten an unchecked appetite. What would the lonely, schnapps-drinking man do if tempted by the girl? The struggle that follows, metaphorically speaking, is between the sides of the protagonist’s character—on one side, the man who desires to stand apart from society and guard his creative self, and on the other, he who wishes to fit in and reap the pleasures of fruitcake and amorous girls. ..."
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