Summary

©2015 eNotes.com, Inc. or its Licensors. Please see copyright information at the end of this document.

Summary
Summary (Comprehensive Guide to Short Stories, Critical
Edition)
At night in a desert oasis, the narrator, traveling with an Arab caravan, tries to get to sleep. The distant
howling of jackals causes him to sit up again, and in no time the pack is swarming around him. One of them
presses close against his body, then stands before him and speaks. It is the oldest in the pack, and it assures the
narrator that his arrival here has been awaited for a long time, by countless generations of jackals, in fact. This
sounds curious to the man, as he has only come by chance and on a short visit to the African desert.

As if to cast the newcomer in the role of a messiah or liberator, the jackal explains that he and his race are the
persecuted enemies of Arabs and place all their hopes in a “Northerner,” whose intelligence far exceeds that
of an Arab. The blood enmity between jackals and Arabs requires the extinction of one or the other. The
narrator at first thinks the jackals mean to attack the Arabs sleeping in the camp, and he warns that they
themselves would undoubtedly be shot down in dozens. Meanwhile, two younger beasts have set their teeth
into his coat and shirt and are holding him down.

The old jackal corrects the man’s misunderstanding and tells him that jackals have only their teeth for
weapons and that to attack and kill the Arabs would make the animals unclean forever—a kind of
unpardonable sin. To be rid of Arabs is what they desire, to return their territory to the natural order of
cleanliness: “Every beast to die a natural death; no interference till we have drained the carcass empty and
picked its bones clean. Cleanliness, nothing but cleanliness is what we want.” Their wish is for the man to slit
the Arabs’ throats for them, and to facilitate the deed they now present him with a small, ancient, rusted pair
of sewing scissors.

At this point the leader of the caravan appears from downwind, cracks his whip over the jackals, and sends
them fleeing. He knows what has been going on and explains to the narrator that the jackals regard every
passing European as their chosen savior and entreat him to kill the Arabs for them. The rusted sewing scissors
follow his people like a curse until the end of their days, he says. For the jackals it is a vain, foolish hope, and
that is why the Arabs like them. To demonstrate his point, he has a dead camel carried up, and the jackals
abandon every thought but that of the carrion. They approach, their fear of the whip forgotten, and soon they
are swarming over the carcass. Now the caravan driver begins to lash them with his whip, bringing them to
their senses and driving them off in pain and fear. However, they have tasted the blood and flesh and are
drawn irresistibly back. The Arab raises the whip again, but the narrator grasps his arm. It is enough; the
demonstration is clear. “Marvelous creatures, aren’t they?” smiles the caravan driver, “And how they hate
us!”

1
Source: Comprehensive Guide to Short Stories, Critical Edition, ©2004 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights
Reserved.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information
storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.

For complete copyright information, please see the online version of this work.

2
Themes

©2015 eNotes.com, Inc. or its Licensors. Please see copyright information at the end of this document.

Themes
Themes and Meanings (Comprehensive Guide to Short
Stories, Critical Edition)
For Franz Kafka and for his narrator, the world of this story is an alien one, geographically and culturally. The
two sides between which he finds himself know their places and their desires, but the outsider is subjected to
confusion. As in many of Kafka’s narratives, he hears conflicting sides of an issue and is not in the position
to know which is correct. In fact, probably both are valid in “Jackals and Arabs.” The beasts and the men
exist in a dual relationship of enmity and symbiosis, hating each other and needing each other to survive and
flourish. Their symbiotic existence may be considered a part of the natural order of life, but not their enmity,
for it relies on deception and duplicity, and these are human, not animal, traits. Thus, the jackals appeal to a
noble sense of cleanliness in order to have the stranger assume the guilt of murdering their enemies. The
Arabs are equally perfidious, if less sophisticated, in their treatment of the beasts. The caravan driver asserts
that the jackals make finer dogs than any of the ordinary kind, yet he gives them the food they crave most and
then would drive them repeatedly from it with his whip. It is a closed world that functions handsomely and is
founded on age-old traditions of coexistence, yet the sum of its parts is paradoxical.

Alongside this commentary on the strange system itself is the portrait Kafka presents of the outsider
momentarily caught in it. “Jackals and Arabs” is also about the “Northerner,” the European, a satire on the
presumed superiority of Western thought and culture. It is given to the cunning old jackal to flatter the
storyteller as a savior from the North, clever and possessed of an intelligence not found in the Arabs, and it is
possible that he would be taken in by the flattery. Should his European wisdom fail him, in any case, there is
great persuasive force in the teeth of the encircling jackals, two of them already locked on his clothing.
Luckily, however, the narrator has no time to consider the rightness of what he is asked to do, for the caravan
leader’s intervention relieves him of making that decision.

3
Source: Comprehensive Guide to Short Stories, Critical Edition, ©2004 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights
Reserved.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information
storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.

For complete copyright information, please see the online version of this work.

4
Analysis

©2015 eNotes.com, Inc. or its Licensors. Please see copyright information at the end of this document.

Analysis
Style and Technique (Comprehensive Guide to Short
Stories, Critical Edition)
As in many of his other stories, Kafka here employs a simple, matter-of-fact narrative style to recount a plot
both realistic and fantastic. As a result of that style, one can easily overlook the logical incongruities of the
mixture. Most evidently, Kafka has animals converse with men about matters normally thought to preoccupy
only human beings: subjugation and liberation, sin and guilt, the upholding of cultural traditions. He has them
act with a cunning and deceit of the sort also generally thought to be humankind’s exclusive talent—or
weakness. If the conversation at the heart of “Jackals and Arabs” makes exceptional creatures of the jackals,
however, it also implies a critique of humanity. The animal chosen for this parable is not a noble one in the
popular mind, but one thought of as a scavenger, unclean, ill-tempered, and cowardly.

For most northern Europeans, a desert oasis is not an ordinary and familiar place, but the overlay of Kafka’s
realistic description nevertheless includes occasional glances into its far-from-exotic corners, as with the
references to the unbearably rank smell that the beasts emit and with the account of the jackal that sinks its
teeth into the dead camel’s throat, working at the artery “like a vehement small pump.” Even when his
purpose is serious, Kafka’s essentially humorous view of events is apparent. The narrator glosses his delicate
situation among a pack of unpredictable jackals with dry understatement of the dangers. Both the jackals and
the Arab caravan driver are given to sarcastic opinions of each other; at a point of potentially high
philosophical seriousness, the jackals resort to comic buffoonery to illustrate the uncleanness of killing.

On the subject of parables, Kafka once said that they reside in and refer to a fabulous realm and have no use in
practical, everyday life. The most they can do is tell readers that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible,
and they know that in any case. To follow parables one would have to abandon reality and become a parable
oneself. As usual, “Jackals and Arabs” will be comprehensible to the jackals and Arabs in the story. To the
“Northerner” on his brief stay in their country, and to the reader, it offers no explanation of its paradoxes.

5
Source: Comprehensive Guide to Short Stories, Critical Edition, ©2004 eNotes.com, Inc.. All Rights
Reserved.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means
graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, Web distribution or information
storage retrieval systems without the written permission of the publisher.

For complete copyright information, please see the online version of this work.