Grosser Lärm

by Franz Kafka

"Großer Lärm" by Franz Kafka is an autobiographical prose sketch published in October 1912. The narrator sits in his room, surrounded by slamming doors and his father's storming presence, trapped in what he calls "the headquarters of noise." Unable to demand peace openly, he considers crawling "snake-like" to his sisters to beg for quiet. This brief work captures Kafka's hypersensitivity to his chaotic family household, which he described as publicly punishing his family through literature.