Question

What can the reader infer about the tax collectors power? Where does this power come from and how is it expressed. Use evidence from the text to support your inferences

Answer 1

Born in a Jewish ghetto in Prague, Franz Kafka (1883–1924) allegedly burned up to 90 percent of his own work during his lifetime. Luckily, a few important pieces survived—enough to shape his legacy as one of the most influential 20th-century writers, whose depictions of bizarre and sinister events in a society under bureaucratic control coined the term ‘Kafkaesque’. Written in 1920, “The Refusal” depicts a ritual ceremony in a small town controlled by a government in a faraway capital. In times of need, residents of the town appeal to the tax-collector, the town’s highest ranking government official, for help. The text’s themes of oppression and authoritarianism would have resonated strongly with a readership that had just endured World War I and was on the brink of another global conflict.