I love Kafka. I always have, perhaps because I adore magical realism. Still, I struggled a bit with these stories because they were so fantastical. I had the easiest time with The Judgement, which is why I chose it to focus on in class.
The image that I chose in class to focus on was the dirty underwear. To me, the dirty underwear initially signified neglect, aging, the loss of dignity and respect. However, the reaction of the son is more important here. His feelings of guilt at allowing his father's underwear to become dirty override any effect on the father. He feels guilty because he hasn't been taking the proper care of his father. It also reveals that he's not sure about how his father (his past) will fit into his future (his wife), because he says that he hadn't thought previously about what would happen to his father when he moved in with his wife, but he supposed he would have to bring him with him, now that he's seen the dirty underwear.
When I brought in Hartmann, I could see that Georg was struggling with emotions that weren't immediately evident due to Kafka's matter-of-fact style. We can see that Georg is anxious over this big change in his life and he has a fear about being unable to provide. This goes beyond his father and also applies to his wife. The dream also lets him figure out what to do with his father, so it provides some problem-solving and reveals the anxiety about providing for his wife.
Of course, since we don't know Georg as a human being, we're just making guesses here, so it's hard to know if we're right.
But still, thinking about the story in this way makes Georg's suicide at the end of it make sense. It seemed completely random until I started thinking about what was going on in Georg's head and could see this anxiety revealed by the dirty underwear. Perhaps focusing on other details in the story would give a different reading?
From a literary sense, I then understood why the protagonist kills himself at the end.