Kafka and Rot Girl Summer
It’s starting to get warmer… what “girl summer” should I have?
August 12, 1914: “Haven’t slept at all. In the afternoon lay for 3 hours sleepless and dull on the sofa, likewise at night. But it must not hinder me.”
Thus ends another day in the life of Franz Kafka, chronicler of the absurd and reluctant protagonist of his own existence. The man who could find nothingness in the most mundane of tasks—like a metaphysical Marie Kondo, discarding the joyless and organising the void.
When I first started to read and study Kafka, what interested me most wasn’t just his tortured soul, forever waltzing with existential dread, but how much young girls seemed to adore and resonate with him.
I found this image on my pinterest today and it made me chuckle:
There’s a peculiar charm in how these parasocial bonds form with a man who, by all accounts, never existed within a reality of our own…
On Kafka
I'm subscribed to a Thread account that posts Kafka's diary entries from the years 1910 to 1923. Each entry is a little window into his soul, where the curtains are either flung open or drawn tight. For Kafkas entries can be grand and sweeping, filled with existential crises that could rival the most tortured of philosophers. Or they can be delightfully mundane, where the horror of existence is distilled into the most simple observations and words. This simplicity is what I find so brilliant about his writing—with just a few carefully chosen words, Kafka can evoke such profound meaning.
Robert Solomon writes:
"For Kafka, the absurdity of sin and guilt lies not in the indifferent world but rather in the very indistinguishability of the subjective and the objective."
Kafka’s fundamental outlook might be summarised with a sort of bleak optimism: life is uncertain, full of contradictions, but there is a certain liberation in accepting that truth is not the endgame— the lessons and the wisdom we glean from our experiences are.
He grappled with existentialist themes such as alienation, anxiety, disorientation, and the absurd, not just as abstract concepts but as deeply personal struggles. His writing resonates because it doesn’t just describe alienation—it embodies it, weaving it into every fibre of his work.
And as an insomniac, I find this particularly relatable. Kafka’s endless sleepless nights, filled with existential dread and the relentless churn of thoughts, mirror the restless mind’s struggle to find meaning in a world that often seems devoid of it. Instead of leaving my room to try and engage with the world, there are days where my energy is entirely expended in trying to make sense of it all, leaving myself to just simply watch mind numbing narratives and rot instead.
“He’s just like me for real” which leads me to reply, “Kafka really is that girl.”
Rot Girl Summer
The girlies are tired. The girlies are catching themselves in daydreams whilst staring at eggshell-coloured walls, longing for a more profound and meaningful existence. They are modern-day Sleeping Beauties, embodying the protagonist of Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, but without the abuse of prescription drugs (hopefully).
The Urban Dictionary defines “rot girl summer” as “like hot girl summer, but for girlies that just rot cutely in their room all day”
It's a movement born of both defiance and exhaustion, where the act of simply existing is both a rebellion and a resignation. Where we retreat to ones sanctuary whilst indulging in rest we were devoid of the prior night and endless television marathons.
There is something deeply relatable about the act of choosing to rot, to let the world continue its dizzying spin while you swathe yourself in a cocoon, a blanket haven of your own making.
Additionally, Milena Jesenská, one of Kafka's most famous correspondents, once wrote:
"I knew his fear before I knew him…. In the four days Franz was near me, he lost it. We even laughed about it. But he will never be healthy as long as he has this fear…. It isn’t just about me, but about everything which is shamelessly alive, for example, the flesh. Flesh is too open, too naked: he can’t bear the sight of it…. When he felt the fear coming on, he would stare into my eyes, we would wait for a while, and it would soon pass… everything was simple and clear."
Ah, Kafka—a man who could fear his own flesh, as if his skin were just another layer of alienation separating him from the world. He wasn't just battling a fear of intimacy; he was at war with the very concept of being alive. I would also argue that many girls have felt the same, suffocated by the relentless culture of dieting, anti-aging, and the unending pressure of being prettier more valuable “hot girl” or “clean girl”.
Our modern world, with its relentless demands for our visible perfection, is not so different from Kafka’s nightmarish landscapes. We too fear being truly seen, truly known, and so we retreat into our rooms, into our heads, into the safety of rot.
The truth is, I do want to experience “beyond the ordinary”, but sometimes I don’t want to have to leave my bed in order to achieve these things. It appeals to me only if it can be delivered via streaming service, ideally without autoplay interrupting my carefully curated reverie.
Kafka is one of the girls
No… not really.
From reading his dairies he was too restless, too anxious, too caught up in the horrors of existence to simply lie down and rot. But in a way, he understood the impulse. He understood the desire to retreat from a world that feels incomprehensible, a world where even the act of explaining oneself feels futile.
However, there is one of Kafkas character we rotting girls can relate to—Gregor Samsa, our favourite beetle (Sorry, George).
'The rotting apple in his back and the inflamed area around it, all covered with soft dust, already hardly troubled him. He thought of his family with tenderness and love. The decision that he must disappear was one that he held to even more strongly than his sister, if that were possible. In this state of vacant and peaceful meditation he remained until the tower clock struck three in the morning.”
In Metamorphasis, as the apple begins to rot, Gregor inches closer to death. The apple that is thrown by his father symbolises the punishment Gregor receives for his inability to support his family and meet his father’s expectations. His slow decay mirrors the existential rot that many of us feel—an inevitable, creeping demise that we can’t quite bring ourselves to fight against.
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”
And there it is—the essence of Kafka, and perhaps the essence of “rot girl summer”. It’s the feeling that no matter how much you try to explain your exhaustion, your longing, your existential dread, the words will always fall short. So why bother? Better to just lie down, close your eyes, and let the world spin on without you.
As usual, I have made a spotify playlist as a soundtrack for you to reflect upon your existence.
So in the end, Kafka might not be "that girl," but he’s certainly adjacent. He’s the ghost hovering over your bed, whispering, "I understand," as you sink deeper into your pillow, waiting for a reviving sleep that never truly comes.