Literature and Migration

Kafka has written this book although he has never been to the USA. I will now interpret the book based on the evidence on his imagination. It is very interesting that the journey to the USA starts legally. But Karl Rossmann is almost an asylum-seeker. The reason for that is that he is sent by his family to the USA as a half-exile. Because he had a scandalous affair with a maid and this was an unacceptable situation in the case of his family with aristocratic origins. Therefore, he goes to the USA being recommended to someone who knows his father and starts to work in a job. In this first job he does the things that he is told to do without questioning. But later with the conspiracy of a friend, he encounters some problems such as being accused of fraud. Hence, he is fired and he has to find another job. Of course in the free market there are no labour rights and since we are considering the USA in the beginning of the 1900s where these themes are not controlled and checked by the l

Fontamara by Ignazio Silone Another book and another story of fascism. I can hear you saying that this book cannot be interpreted from the point view of immigration. But in fact, no, there is also an element of internal migration in the book although it is not at the centre at all. Fontamara is a village that always has problems with the hierarchy, with the rulers, governors, with the city people. One of the issues mostly underlined in the book is the different living styles and understandings of the people in the town and in the city. An officer comes from Roma to Fontamara but nobody understands what they want to say or implement: they just say "well he has come here for money". That is for sure clear. The taxes increase all the time and this means bad news for the farm workers of the village mostly, rather than the privileged of the village, the landlords get most of the water, the lawyer who is the only educated one that seems to be standing with the people of t