"Although he despaired of metaphor, Kafka was innately strong at it, and could not avoid it. Translator Mark Harman has argued that metaphor in Kafka carries his deepest personal obsessions—in an intricate web of interconnections. The connection, via metaphor, between the story above and others in the Kafka canon is readily apparent. Horse is a recurring emblem. The word horse is embedded in the name Karl Rossmann, the Kafka cipher in his first novel, Amerika. “Ross,” meaning horse, is thus Karl “Horseman.” And horsepower in Amerika alludes to desire, travel, and freedom: Karl Rossmann, naïve teen, leaves his homeland under scandalous circumstances, travels across the ocean to seek freedom and fortune in the new world. Horses and horsepower in “A Country Doctor,” the title story of the collection, Der Landarzt, joins riding / travel to erotic drive—suppressed, misplaced, and defeated. In “The New Advocate” (“Der neue Advokat”), the short opening story in the same collection, the character of Dr. Bucephalus—Alexander the Great’s valiant war steed, now proud of his human accomplishments as a lawyer—is a transposition of Kafka’s workplace self."
Follow the the link to read the full essay.
https://thesepia.org/blog/6brced5lcr1uccb1vznqtkujy9um6l