ICE3. Unhappiness. The ghost in Franz Kafka's Unhappiness..

Unhappiness
Name
Institution
Date
The ghost in Franz Kafka's Unhappiness.
Franz Kafka's Unhappiness begins with the narrator in a bewildered state. Suddenly from a dark corridor appears the phantom of a child. The narrator is doubtful about whether the young girl is real or a ghost. After striking a dialogue with the child, he learns she knows him. The exchange becomes exasperated and intense for the narrator. After lighting a candle, the child disappears without bidding goodbye. The narrator gathers the child as a ghost from his neighbor's engagement as he leaves the apartment. The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes a ghost as "the soul of a dead person assumed to be an occupant of the invisible world or appear to the living in the bodily likeness (Merriam-Webster)." From this definition, it is then inferred that a ghost must be the soul of a dead person and must appear to the living in bodily likeness. Kafka talks of a character in an apparition, which confronts the narrator in the dark. The ghost is familiar with him; it evades the light, looks frail, and instills fear into him. However, it portrays particular unlikely behavior such as leaning on the wall and acknowledges its nature. Despite these peculiar behavior, it is a ghost because it has a history with the narrator, scared of light and looks fragile, its conscious of its nature and interacts with physical objects.
Firstly, a typical ghost appears to individuals who know or have a history with them. From Kafka's story, the narrator looks like he does not see the child from the onset. He even asks the child whether she is looking for him or someone else. The narrator says, 'Nothing is easier than to make a mistake in this big building. I am called so-and-so, and I live on the third floor. Am I the person you want to find?' (Kafka). He then asks the child into the room. After a little dialogue, the girl tells the narrator that she knows him, which does not make her any safer with him in a dark room. The child tries to connect us with the kind of person the narrator is or used to be. Furthermore, the narrator feels hurt by how the child speaks to him. He cannot believe someone he has known and shared a past with can hurt his feelings that way. He retorts, 'why do you insist on spoiling this brief moment of your presence here? A stranger would be more pleasing than you are (Kafka).' Therefore, the realization of a past experienced between the narrator and child makes her a typical ghost.
Secondly, the child is scared of the light and also looks fragile. Typical ghosts are said to be scared of light and tend to thrive in darkness. The description of how she appears to the narrator is more indication of her mysterious nature. She seems 'like a small ghost from the pitch dark corridor, where the light of the lamp did not reach yet.' She also 'stood on tiptoe on a floorboard that quivered imperceptibly. She conceals her f...