The Burrow (short story)

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For other uses, see Burrow (disambiguation).

The Burrow is an unfinished short story by Franz Kafka in which a mole-like being burrows through an elaborate system of tunnels it has built over its life.

Allegedly, Kafka had written an ending to the story detailing a struggle with the encroaching beast, but this completed version was among other works destroyed by lover Dora Diamant following Kafka's death.

[edit] Themes

Kafka's hyperrational creature parodies human reason.

The only direct reference to the creature being physiologically a mole is the line "my forehead -- that unique instrument," in reference to its capacity to burrow tunnels. The forebrain is also the seat of human consciousness.

[edit] Quotes

"Lying in my heap of Earth I can naturally dream of all sorts of things, even of an understanding with the beast, though I know well enough that no such thing can happen, and at the moment when we see each other, more, at that at the instant we merely guess at each other's presence, we shall both blindly bare our claws and teeth, neither of us a second before or after the other, both of us filled with a new and different hunger, even if we should already be gorged to bursting."

"But all remained unchanged."

--Muir Translation