Jackals and Arabs – Franz Kafka (1919)

Jackals and Arabs by Franz Kafka, first published in 1919, is a potent short story blending allegory, absurdism, and cultural confrontation. Originally written in German and translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, it appears in Kafka’s posthumous collections and is often studied for its profound reflections on colonialism, morality, and the nature of “the other.” Though not part of a series, the story aligns thematically with Kafka’s broader body of work that frequently explores alienation, power dynamics, and the inscrutable nature of societal rules.

Plot Summary

Under the unblinking desert stars, among the hushed sands and low hum of unseen life, a Northern traveler camps with his caravan in a remote oasis. His companions lie asleep under the foreign sky. An Arab figure, tall and silent, passes by after tending to the camels, vanishing into the darkness like a shadow sliding into its source. The traveler lies awake, adrift in his thoughts, when the howl of a distant jackal fractures the quiet. It is a sound both mournful and expectant. Moments later, the silence is invaded – jackals, sleek and spectral, swarm around him. Their movements ripple like smoke, bodies lithe, eyes flickering with dull gold fire.

One steps forward from the ring of predators, pressing against him with strange intimacy, then locking gazes as though greeting an ancient friend. It speaks with the voice of prophecy and despair. This jackal is the oldest of them all, weathered by generations of waiting. He declares the arrival of the man they have long awaited, foretold by countless jackal-mothers across the ages. The Northerner is not just a visitor – he is the one destined to end a feud older than memory.

The jackals encircle him, panting as if the desert air is too much to bear. Their bodies twitch with anticipation, not for violence, but for revelation. Their enemy, they say, is not him. It is the Arabs – the ones they live among but cannot bear, whose flesh they revile, whose presence sickens them. The Northerner’s intelligence is sacred, they claim, unlike the cold arrogance of the Arabs. His arrival is no coincidence but fate’s culmination. They speak of purity, of cleansing, of a world made right.

Their plea is simple yet terrible – end the division between jackals and Arabs by slitting the Arabs’ throats. To aid him, they offer a small pair of rusted sewing scissors, dangled from the tooth of a solemn jackal. A sacred relic in their mythology, it carries the weight of unfulfilled vengeance and the hope of divine justice. The oldest jackal pleads with the traveler, insisting this act will not be murder, but purification. Their vision is of a world free of interference, where carcasses are left to decay naturally under their ministrations, not sullied by Arab hands and knives. Cleanliness, above all else, is their god.

The traveler, caught between horror and disbelief, watches their ritual of desperation unfold. He tries to rise, but young jackals hold him by his coat, locking their teeth in respectful submission – a mark of honor, the elder says. The air becomes thick with the rank odor of their open mouths and the sorrow of ancient hatred. Their cries rise into a grotesque hymn of longing, pain, and fanaticism. He is their messiah, their last chance.

But before the madness can deepen, a whip cracks through the night. The Arab leader of the caravan has arrived, having sensed the disturbance. With a casual laugh and an easy familiarity, he drives the jackals back. They retreat swiftly but not far, huddling in the dark like a single mass of fear and obedience. The Arab approaches the traveler, amused but unsurprised. The performance, he says, is well known. The jackals do this to every European who enters the desert. The scissors, the prophecy, the plea – it is all part of their delusion, a tired script written into the sand and passed down like a bad dream. They are harmless, foolish, but strangely loyal. The Arabs regard them as dogs – not in contempt, but in the weary affection of long familiarity.

To demonstrate the jackals’ true nature, the Arab orders a dead camel to be brought forward. The carcass is flung to the earth, and at once, the jackals forget everything – their hate, their speeches, their reverence. Something primal overtakes them. Like strings pulled tight, they are drawn forward by the scent of blood. One buries its teeth into the throat of the camel, muscles twitching with ecstatic effort. Then another, and another, until the entire pack is a frenzied mountain of feeding and need. The scissors lie forgotten.

The Arab lifts his whip again, lashing it across their backs. They hesitate, eyes glazed in hunger and dazed recognition, then retreat with cries of pain. Yet the blood calls stronger than the whip. They return, helpless against the gravity of their own desire. Again the whip rises, but the traveler, watching this dismal ballet of violence and survival, stops the Arab’s hand.

The Arab lowers the whip. He nods, understanding. Let them have their feast. There is no need to drive them off. The camp must be broken soon anyway. He laughs softly, a sound dry and quiet like sand in the wind. The jackals are strange creatures, he says. Full of hate, but always returning. Always hungry. Always there.

The desert reclaims its silence, interrupted only by the tearing of flesh and the mournful songs of beasts who know only survival. And as dawn edges toward the horizon, the caravan begins to stir. The jackals remain behind, absorbed in their moment of grotesque glory, their ancient war dissolved in blood and bone.

Main Characters

• The Narrator (European Traveler): A visitor from the North, presumably European, who becomes the unintended centerpiece of a long-standing conflict between the jackals and the Arabs. His voice is rational, observant, and hesitant, reflecting his discomfort and alienation in a foreign land. Though initially curious, he is ultimately passive, caught between surreal demands and grounded reality.

• The Old Jackal: The self-proclaimed oldest jackal, articulate and persuasive, representing centuries of accumulated grievance and obsession. He sees the narrator as a prophesied savior meant to resolve the jackals’ feud with the Arabs. His passionate pleas and vivid descriptions underline the jackals’ fixation on purity and vengeance masked as cleanliness.

• The Arab Caravan Leader: Calm, practical, and subtly amused, the Arab functions as a grounding force in contrast to the jackals’ frenzied emotionalism. He is aware of the jackals’ mythologies and dismisses them with a mixture of tolerance and superiority, reinforcing the colonial dynamic of dominator versus the dominated or manipulated.

Theme

• Cultural Conflict and Colonialism: The story mirrors the strained dynamics between colonizer and colonized, or between Western Europeans and Arabs. The jackals idolize the European traveler as a messianic figure, projecting their cultural desperation and aspirations for domination onto him.

• Purity vs. Filth: A recurring motif is the jackals’ obsession with cleanliness, juxtaposed against their revulsion toward the Arabs. This serves as both a metaphor for moral superiority and a grotesque illustration of racial or cultural prejudice.

• Power and Passivity: Kafka subtly critiques the nature of power – both its myth and its practice. The narrator, seen as a potential agent of change, exercises no real power, while the Arabs control the reality on the ground. The jackals’ belief in prophecy and scissors reveals the illusion of agency amidst real domination.

• Animal Symbolism and Human Nature: Jackals, often seen as scavengers, are here anthropomorphized to express complex human emotions – bitterness, reverence, and longing. Their behavior underscores Kafka’s typical method of blurring the line between animal instinct and human rationality.

Writing Style and Tone

Kafka’s prose in Jackals and Arabs is stark yet layered with symbolic resonance. His language is spare, even clinical, allowing surreal events and dialogues to unfold with an eerie normalcy. This subdued narrative voice heightens the story’s unsettling atmosphere, presenting a dreamlike world where the implausible feels intimately real. Kafka avoids overt exposition, instead relying on dialogue and incident to reveal deeper meanings. The minimalism lends a deceptive clarity, compelling the reader to read between the lines.

The tone of the story is one of restrained absurdity laced with undercurrents of menace and satire. The story opens in quiet observation, then descends into the bizarre as the jackals swarm and speak. Kafka maintains a delicate balance between the grotesque and the comic, particularly in the portrayal of the jackals’ reverence and hysteria. The ending returns to a sense of order, but with a lingering unease. Through subtle irony and disquieting encounters, Kafka reflects on the madness underlying civilized narratives and the futility of ideological absolutes.