Georg Bendemann, the
protagonist of Kafka’s “The Judgement”, thinks he’s a grown up. He runs the
family firm, he is engaged to a woman with both looks and money, he has a place
in his community. Georg has all the apparel of maturity, quite unlike his
‘overgrown schoolboy’ of a friend, who moved to Russia to start a business, who
aimed high and crashed low. Georg, however, is not mature. Kafka smears his
protagonist’s face in this fact. Georg is still under the thumb of his aging
father: Georg is still a child.
