현대 소설가로서 카프카와 조이스는 모두 소외를 예술가의 창작 조건으로 인식하는 동시 에, 이를 작품의 주요 주제로 다루었다. 카프카는 고독한 공간에서 순수한 글쓰기의 영역을 추구했으며, 조이스 역시 스티븐의 미학 이론을 통해 자발적 고립과 소외를 창작 조건으로 보았다. 두 작가는 또한 소외를 극화하는 과정에서 아이러니한 글쓰기 전략을 사용했는데, 카프카의 경우 이는 주체의 침묵과 타자의 서사적 우위라는 형태로 나타난다. 이에 따라 주 체는 타자의 관점에 의해 왜곡된 모습으로 드러나며, 침묵으로 저항하거나 타자의 관점을 회 피함으로써 더욱 깊은 고립과 소외의 세계로 도피한다. 반면, 조이스는 소외를 인물 설정과 주제로 확장하고, 특히 상반되는 관점과 목소리를 통해 타자의 세계를 해체한다. 이와 같은 두 작가의 글쓰기 특징은 현대 문학과 소외 문제에 대한 새로운 관점을 제시한다.

Yoko Tawada’s drama Kafka Kaikoku (2013) depicts Japan’s encounter with Western culture from the Meiji era on as the catalyst for a metamorphosis much like Gregor Samsa’s in the work of the same name by Franz Kafka. Ironically, the victim of this East-West clash turns out to be Izumi Kyōka (1873-1939), a man who was anything but an enthusiastic adopter of European literary style. Interweaving elements also from Kafka’s Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor, 1919), Tawada’s play suggests further that Izumi’s fate was set, since he—and, by extension, all Japanese—could not resist roles the West had prepared for him. Ultimately, this article explains, Kafka Kaikoku offers a critical view of modernization as a force that made Japanese into beings with a hybrid literary consciousness who lacked both much of their own native particularity and also their very humanity.

Yeats and Murakami are writers who believe in spirits. They both treat them as if they are real. Yeats's Purgotory is a story of Father and Son, Father killing his own son to disrupt the cycle of Life that is tainted, whereas Kafka on the Shore is a story of Mother and Son, Mother causing all the tragedies in Kafka's father, sister, and himself. Kafka's mother is a person of Memory that stays constant, which is the origin of all the tragedies, and refuses to flow with time; and Son intervenes in her Fate, changing her and himself. The leitmotif of the novel is the Oedipus complex. In the meantime, Purgatory is a practice of Yeats's religious system of Life and humanity. In the play, the two kinds of people are illustrated by Father and Son; Father can see the invisible, ghosts, but Son cannot. The play is based on the conception of souls being born again and again in endless cycles. To disrupt it Father kills his own Son, as he had killed his own Father. It is beyond the moral of the world, killing his own son, following his own belief. Both works could be read as a metaphor of life. One relies on psychology, and the other relies on mythology. Murakami may have read Yeats, and Yeats might be interested in Murakami if he lived and read him. Murakami is in a position to deal with this kind of subtle subject in a subtle way, because he is a writer of the East well versed in the West. In the same way, Yeats was in a unique position, who was familiar with things eastern. Hence, their works manifest strong inclinations toward mysterious milieu, most prominently what is supernatural.