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Erika Prasad
Conference Presentation: Published in Calaveras Station, 2014
Kafka’s Creatures: In “Josephine the Singer, or the Mousefolk”
In the cryptic short story of Franz Kafka’s “Josephine the Singer or the Mousefolk,”1 the
author creates an ambiguous, labored community of mice where the oppressor is unnamed and
unstated. The parable is shaped through a spokesperson for the mousefolk who leads the debate
on whether the community’s singer, Josephine, is in fact singing or merely piping- an ordinary
act that is an expressive trait to all of the mice. Kafka generates the narrator to create a
dichotomy between Josephine and the mouse folk. Josephine’s function is to represent the
“devoted artist” who wants more time to dedicate to her art which entails being relieved from her
daily chores to practice singing. In opposition, the mousefolk represent the oppressed, colonized
community who are struggling to rise up from the brutality of their daily lives. The oppressor
while not mentioned in the context, is implemented as another character, yet is implicitly
described through the unperceived obedience of the mousefolk, the temporary relief they
experience during Josephine’s performance, and the community’s desire to be self-directing. The
mice are utilized by Kafka to represent an ambiguous, colonized oppressed society to argue that
once dominated the mouse images reflect inhuman environments of the colonized people.
Obedience
Although the characters in the story do not experience any physical punishment on the
oppressor’s behalf, they are still living a life of submission. This is evident in Kafka’s illustration
1 Franz Kafka was a Czech writer whose friend and agent Max Brod published the short story in German under the
title “Josefine de Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse,” in 1924. Brod went against Kafka’s request to burn all the
works he had written after Kafka died of Tuberculosis the same year the work was published.

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of the community as “scurrying here and there for reasons that are unclear” (152). The mice are
busied, but don’t recognize the reason for their labors. The obedience resides in the duty of the
work (in particular fieldwork) without questioning any motives behind it. No answers are
uncovered to explain why the mice labor or what kind of occupation they are doing. Instead, we
are told from Kafka’s narrator that the mice have “A hard life and even on the occasions when
[they] have tried to shake free from the cares of daily life,” the narrator continuous, “We still
cannot raise ourselves up to something so lofty and remote from our routine lives” (149). The
emphasis on the word “lives” is demonstrated through Kafka’s repetition. The word serves a dual
purpose. In one aspect, life encapsulates the definition of the community’s labors as a physical
embodiment of their makeup. It facilitates the inescapable hard work and the daily routines that
the mice undergo. In a more elevated stance, life also serves as something which holds promise.
The mousefolk desire a life that uplifts them from their mundane routine, but are unable to
achieve their wishes. Through this limitation Kafka elucidates a fracture from what his mouse
community desires and what they are given. This disruption highlights the cyclical suffering of
the mice. By crushing the mousefolk’s dream of ever uprising, they are forever contained in their
animal shells obeying to their masters who loom on the outskirts of the parable. This complexity
of animal vs. human work is described in Walter Sokel’s essay exploring Marx’s observations of
self-alientation. “Animals, Marx observes, “produce only under the compulsion of physical need,
and only in this freedom is he humanly creative” (Sokel, 149). Thus, by having the mice realize
their hard labors and desire for something greater, Kafka promotes a human-like community.
“Life” is the only concrete detail alluding to time or space in the world Kafka creates.
Though setting and time are missing from the loose plot, an organization of life is well
illustrated through the narration. Kafka is liberated to exclude elements of reality because he

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chooses to use the mice as a perfect specimen for replicating the spasmodic behavior within the
text. Here, the author is free from the responsibilities of explaining plot, characters, and history.
In contrast to the narrative in a traditional sense, Kafka’s fragmented images uncover the
ontology of suffering that become apparent and are reinforced through the mouse community’s
tolerance to their lives. To further understand Kafka’s depictions of animals, an excerpt from his
autobiography provides some justification. Replying to his friend’s allegation that an English
story, Lady into Fox was borrowed from Kafka’s work, the author refutes by stating “But no!
Animals are closer to us than human beings. That’s where our prison bars lie. We find relations
with animals easier than with men…human existence is a burden to them so they dispose of it in
fantasies” (107). Kafka’s ideologies on human suffering and punishment are translated into
animal characters because he can relate to them with greater ease. It is through this medium of
“animality” (to borrow the term from Gramsci) that Kafka is able to project the oppression of a
colonized, society in his images of mousefolk. Any other demonstration of colonization would
fall into the dangers of being overly sentimental and constricted to the “burden” of human
characteristics. In the forum of the animal kingdom, there is a distance that is created by obvious
physical differences. Simultaneously, a retraction occurs, inserting anyone’s story because of the
absence of time and space creates an intimacy with Kafka’s works. By creating an animal
exterior, Kafka displays the mousefolk with the caged mindset of human subjectivity. Thus, an
inversion occurs where the mice are disassociated with their animal lives and are troubled with
human ailments of suppression. The mice are held suspended somewhere between the
consciousness of their misery and lack of effort to understand their horrible circumstances.
Taking a closer look at Kafka’s argument, the blind obedience of the colonized can be applied to
Antonio Gramsci’s essay “Animality” and Industrustrialism.

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The term “animality” is coined from Gramsci who explores the word through the lens of
industrialism. Gramsci defines animality as “An uninterrupted and painful process of subjugating
the instincts to new and rigid habits of order, exactitude, precision. There is mechanization or the
aspect of mechanization” (Gramsci, 235). Gramsci creates a sense of timelessness in this quote
as he claims the process of oppression being endless and unremitting. The instincts, the very trait
that associates humans to animals becomes disconnected, only to be replaced with a new type of
industrialized survival that transforms the meaning of human necessity. This is what Kafka
remarks as the prison bars, but instead of representing the reality in human conditions, he
perversely torments the mousefolk with human flaws. Survival only seems to operate through a
formation of one large operating group or entity. The foundation of the community holds on to
any comforts by physically crowding together during Josephine’s performance.
Crowded Comforts
The character of Josephine holds performances to act out her self-proclaimed art. Her
presentation gathers around an audience of mice that sit quietly and listen. We discover through
Kafka’s narrator that even though Josephine’s singing/piping is weak, no one pipes with her for
fear of breaking the peaceful silence among the herd. The narrator reveals that “The audience
does not pipe, we are as quiet as mice, as if we were partaking of the peace we long for, and this
somewhat restrains us from our piping, we keep silent” (151). We find that during the
performance, Kafka’s mice almost transcend out of their bodies becoming more complex than
mice as they crowd together. This is alluded to the subtle line “We are as quiet as mice” instead
of Kafka choosing to say “quiet mice.” In the sentence a tonal shift occurs that complicates the
community. No longer are the images of mice scurrying mindlessly the premise of the text.

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Kafka draws out an emotional reaction from the mice by the gathering that causes them
to rest their frenzied, mechanized actions to view not exactly Josephine’s singing, but her
gestures that are framed into a spectacle. “She takes her stance,” as described through narration,
“Head thrown back, mouth partially opened and eyes turned heavenward to indicate that she
intends to sing” (152). Here, Josephine’s singing serves more like a ritualized act, filled with
dramatics. The singing/piping itself is described as “weak” or “feeble” (152). The performance is
the main attraction. Moreover, she does not wait for anyone when she decides to hold her
concerts. She is described as performing “wherever she pleases; it need not be a place visible
from very far away-any secluded corner chosen on the spur of the moment will do” (153). These
spur of the moment events occur to serve the purpose of a break in everyday life. Though Kafka
marks Josephine as being stuck on her musicality, the mousefolk are graced with a rest period.
Both sides are creating an opposition to the oppressor as everything temporarily stops
production. In a lecture delivered by Judith Butler on the subjects of Kafka and Walter
Benjamin, Butler explores a discourse that deconstructs the social implements of everyday
actions through Benjamin’s theory of mechanization and Kafka’s usage as an act performed
completely from gesture. Butler states: “That a mediate instrumental value of an action is
suspended and what we get instead is a gesture that quotes an interruption of that very action”
She continuous to argue that the more there are these interruptions, the more gestures result:
The more we accept the flow of or continuity of daily gestures of compliance,
subordination[…]that obscure the workings of power the fewer gestures emerge, but the
more we are able to produce interruptions then actions get distilled, suspended and
become gestures, [ceasing] to be functional. They become arrested actions, [stopping] the
illusions of everyday life and recall histories that have been covered over.

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Butler’s analysis on the methods of gesture, accentuates Kafka’s illustration of the mousefolk.
They are temporarily paused at the influx of Josephine’s performance. In this moment of
performance the mousefolk are serving no one but themselves and so their everyday actions are
halted by Josephine’s art. Even though music and history are not familiar things to the oppressed
colony as stated by the narrator, the mice are still rising against their oppressor just by forming
an audience to witness an interrupted action by one of their own kind. Josephine however, is not
the heroine. Like the rest, she is trapped by the overbearing authority of ambiguous forces
through the inability to see the main purpose that her performance, not her song, serves.
Autonomy
Kafka disillusions Josephine so that she is unable to see the true power of her
gestures and not the singing capability which is where she thinks she possesses power. Josephine
is created as a diversion to have the reader assume that she is the leader. Yet, she does not
profess any qualities that describe a heroine. She does not save her people, but rather puts them
in dangerous situations when she demands an audience. The mousefolk obey Josephine without
question in the same way they are suppressed by outside forces and when they are not able to
meet her demands, she becomes outraged. Kafka portrays this behavior through the narrator’s
accounts as Josephine “Stamps her feet, and swears in an unmaidenly fashion…she even bites,”
The narrator continues, and “instead of trying to moderate her excessive demands, people go out
of their way to meet them: Messengers are dispatched to gather new listeners, but she is kept
ignorant of all this practice” (153). The mousefolk are being labored on two different levels. One
is by the implicit nature of their oppressor who are absent within the text and the other is
Josephine’s clear necessity to be the one deemed special through her art. In this sense, she adopts
the same mentality as her oppressors and acts out the authority by verbal abuse and even physical

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violence. Moreover, the mousefolk do not seem to have a choice on attending Josephine’s
concerts. This refutes the previous topic of Kafka’s relief to the mousefolk through gesture
because in one sense the gathering is for a temporary interruption to the redundancy of
subordination. Yet on the other hand, the mouse community is being forced to attend these
performances. In any which way the topic is tackled, mice are coming up short of their desires
for peace. In an aphorism written by Kafka, perhaps best summarizes Josephine’s hunger to be
above her status is as follows: “The animal wrestles the whip from its master and whips itself in
order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the
master’s whiplash” (29). Delineating Kafka’s own words provides an answer to Josephine’s
desires to be noticed outside of her herd. She wants to be special and the only way to do this is
demand respect through the reinforcement of violence. However, she does not comprehend that
her selfishness hurts her whole community and indirectly turns her into a villain, but instead of
being ambiguous, outside the seams of Kafka’s parable, Josephine becomes infamous to the
reader and even the mousefolk. Frantz Fanon’s incites on the colonized people helps to focus on
the idea of the oppressed wanting the seat of the oppressor. Fanon writes:
The colonist’s world is a hostile world, a world which excludes yet at the same
time incites envy. We have seen how the colonized always dream of taking the
colonist’s place. This hostile oppressive and aggressive world bulldozing the
colonized masses, represents not only the hell they would like to escape as
quickly as possible but a paradise within arm’s reach…(16).
This excerpt reflects back to Kafka’s beginning line of the mousefolk having a hard life. Fanon
remarks that there is always this dream to linger on through the eyes of the colonized that maybe
one day they can replace the oppressor. The motion to “bulldoze” the “masses” gives an image to

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how Josephine’s character tries to be overbearing with her violent rages. In both Kafka and
Fanon the oppressor’s needs come back full circle because the colonized are unable to “escape”
as Fanon highlights, the tug of war between liberty and servitude.
The Mousefolk are devoted to their Josephine, like a father is to a child with the
exception that the mouse people do not love Josephine unconditionally. Kafka alludes to this in
the oppressed community’s response to Josephine’s request on being excused from her daily
chores to pursue music. The Narrator claims, “Perhaps the people individually capitulate to
Josephine too readily, but collectively they capitulate unconditionally to no one and so not to
her” (159). By giving this response to the Mousefolk, Kafka shows that everyone within this
community has to pull their own weight. Simultaneously, the performance that relinquishes the
mice from their troubled lives is the very thing they are resisting. The mouse people are
suppressing themselves when they ignore Josephine’s excuses to create music because they hold
the daily work to have more primacy than the mental escape that the audience provides. Thus,
the mice are trapped in the same way Josephine is kept suppressed, both sides never able to reach
the independence they are looking for. Instead, their efforts all circle back to the impending
agency that is characterized through the Mousefolk’s mechanized actions and Josephine’s
disillusions or blind devotion to a less than perfect art.
Conclusion
Kafka creates a community of mice that are extraordinary through his illustration of their
wants and desires to be raised above what they are given. This simple idea is inspired by small
rodents that live amongst humans, but are rarely praised. Kafka asserts through his parable that
oppression is something that can be unstated, and yet, humans work for this very oppressor every

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day. Whether it is drawn from mice or men, there is always a higher form of power that tries to
dominate over the rest of the masses. Though this parable is filled with a feeling of no escape,
there is something that provides optimism. The temporary breaks within Josephine’s gestures
create a hopeful and peaceful mood for the working mice. Similarly, Kafka may suggest that
through the arts and aesthetics humans survive their daily routines and the more disruptions of
aestheticism there are created, the greater a chance there is to become distanced from the
coercions of daily life.

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Notes
1. In this context I provide the German translation for “Josephine the Singer or the
Mousefolk. For further reading, see Kafka.

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Works Cited
Butler, Judith. “Judith Butler on Benjamin and Kafka.” European Graduate School. EGS.
Leuk-Stadt, Switzerland. 08 Aug. 2011. Lecture.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press,
2004. Print.
Gramsci, Antonio. “Animality and Industrialism.” Prison Notebooks. Trans. Qualderni del
Carcere. New York: Oxford UP, 1991. 235-36. Print.
Kafka, Franz. Aphorisms.Trans. Michael Hoffman. New York: Shocken, 2004. 29. Print.
Kafka, Franz. “Excerpts from Kafka’s Autobiographical Writings.” Franz Kafka: A Study of
Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990. 99-120. Print.
Kafka, Franz. “Josephine the Singer or the Mousefolk.” Trans. Donna Freed. The Metamorphosis
and Other stories. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2003. Print.
Sokel, Walter. “From Marx to Myth: The Structure and Function of Self-Alienation in Kafka’s
“Metamorphosis.’” Franz Kafka: A Study of Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne Publishers,
1990. 147-55. Print.