The Ascetic or pure self figure of Kafka’s myth, is most strikingly exemplified by Georg Bendemann’s(the Judgement) childhood “friend” who had “virtually fled” their common place of origin to a bachelor’s existence in distant Russia. As the father figure becomes broadened and universalized in Kafka’s work into patriarchal authority in general, and finally collectivized as family, community, people, species, and, ultimately, procreative life, nature, indeed physical reality as a whole, the pure self figure’s flight from paternal power turns into a flight from life, nature, and empirical reality.
The pure self does not seek to supplant the father figure in its own domain. Instead it asserts its apartness, its absolute uniqueness, its difference from and superiority to that domain.