Refusal to work

Refusal to work is the decision Franz Biberkopf reaches while visiting a Jewish household: a person is not a machine and cannot keep giving beyond what is in him. The resolve expands from his own exhaustion into a stubborn refusal to labor at all, voiced as a collective defiance. Its force lies in the collision between material hardship, the spectacle of wealth, and a biblical account of toil as a curse; the passage presents refusal less as a practical plan than as a line Franz will no longer cross.

A Decision Made in the Household

Franz sits on a sofa for an hour, talking and listening while also observing his own reactions. Beneath his outward sociability, he decides not to become involved with his hosts. He recalls that on an earlier visit he had sat on the carpet with one of them, but now tells himself that those days are over. The refusal to work emerges in this inward turn: he has done all he can, and will not give more merely because other people expect it.

The thought takes the form of an eleventh commandment: “Don’t let ’em fool you.” Franz’s phrasing joins self-protection to his refusal of further exertion. He imagines going to bed whether or not a bed is available, and insists that no more work will be done. The account’s comparison to a pump stuck in sand makes effort seem futile: others may keep working at it, but Franz will not. His reflection that he is drawing retirement pay despite having no pension sharpens the passage’s irony, without resolving how that money reaches him.

Wealth, Labor, and the Refusal to Give More

As the conversation turns to the prosperous brother of Feitel, Franz’s hosts become absorbed in the man’s wealth. Their fascination is set against a view of two workers washing an old coach in a yard full of water; one worker’s braces dangle as the men drag their buckets. The scene places labor and riches side by side, while Franz remains outside the household’s excitement about gold. He regards himself as a poor man and cannot share their admiration for a fortune he has no part in.

Against this contrast, the declaration that “no man can give more than what’s in him” becomes both personal limit and refusal. Franz imagines the trams still ringing their bells while the message has already sunk in: he and the others will not lift a finger, even if hell freezes over. The shift from his individual decision to the plural “we” gives the refusal a collective sound, but the passage shows no organized action or agreement with the workers outside. Its solidarity is an insistence in thought and speech, not a depicted labor movement.

The Curse of Toil and Its Consequences

The narration places Franz’s resolve beside the biblical story of the serpent’s curse and the ground made difficult to cultivate. The allusion gives labor a double aspect: work is necessary for survival, yet the story of human punishment makes toil seem imposed and inescapable. Franz’s rejection echoes that burden while refusing its demand. His repeated claim, “We shan’t work any more,” sounds momentarily absolute, but the surrounding circumstances remain unresolved: he has no pension, and his refusal does not provide a means of support.

Franz carries the decision out of the household as an “iron crowbar” in his hands, an image that gives his inward declaration physical weight. Yet he soon remembers that he had come to see Minna and sets off to her house. The scene ends with movement, not with evidence that he has begun working again or secured a livelihood. Refusal to work therefore marks a moment of resistance to endless effort, while leaving open the practical and emotional consequences of that resistance.