Contemplation (short story collection)  

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Contemplation, or Meditation (Betrachtung in German) is a sequence of eighteen short stories by Franz Kafka written between 1904 and 1912. Eight of these stories were published under the same title in the bimonthly Hyperion and were Kafka's first publication. Some of the stories are also included, in whole or in part, in "Description of a Struggle". All the stories appear in The Complete Stories of Franz Kafka and were published in a single volume edition by Twisted Spoon Press.

The Stories

• Children on a Country Road

• Unmasking a Confidence Trickster

• The Sudden Walk

• Resolutions

• Excursion into the Mountains

• Bachelor's Ill Luck

• The Tradesman

Description of the sysiphean life of a tradesman.

• Absent-minded Window-gazing

• The Way Home

• Passers-by

The narrator meditates on the vision of a man running down the street in the night. He imagines several scenarios involving the man and another man chasing him, raising issues of the narrator's responsibility for the possible actions of the two men.

• On the Tram

The narrator stands on a platform waiting for a tram and is impressed by a girl he sees there.

• Clothes

A contemplation on how fancy and expensive clothes will someday turn old and creased and how the girls wearing these clothes might also feel worn out and dusty when they return home from a party.

• Rejection

• Reflections for Gentlemen-Jockeys

The idea of winning a horse race is revealed to be an insignificant victory.

• The Street Window

A window overlooking a street is all that's required to draw a man from his solitude.

• The Wish to Be An Indian

This story focuses primarily on the subject of social repression in English gentry society. The work is notable for early use of experimental writing techniques, though often considered incomprehensible by literary scholars.

• The Trees

Humanity is compared to tree trunks in the snow. Seemingly, a single push could move them, but in reality they are firmly rooted to the ground. This too, however, is only seemingly.

A comics adaptation of the story, illustrated by Peter Kuper, is included in Give It Up!.

• Unhappiness