“Give It Up!” Franz Kafka Flash Fiction

Okay, we get it. We are writing about Franz Kafka again. But here’s why:

Not all flash fiction needs to be breathlessly blunt like Hemingway’s. In this single paragraph, posthumously published story, Kafka crystalizes the mood and paranoia that defines most of his work:

Give It Up

It was very early in the morning, the streets clean and deserted, I was walking to the station. As I compared the tower clock with my watch I realized that it was already much later than I had thought, I had to hurry, the shock of this discovery made me unsure of the way, I did not yet know my way very well in this town; luckily, a policeman was nearby, I ran up to him and breathlessly asked him the way.

He smiled and said: “From me, you want to know the way?”

“Yes,” I said, “since I cannot find it myself.”

“Give it up! Give it up,” he said, and turned away with a sudden jerk, like people who want to be alone with their laughter.

Edgar Allan Poe once described the need for a “unity of effect” in short stories: the act of carrying a single emotion throughout the piece to elicit a particular reaction from the audience. In just 130 words, Kafka is able to suck readers into his world and leave them shaken.

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