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Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Franz Kafka and the meaning of "Kafkaesque".

I've heard the term "Kafkaesque" many times in my life through television, books, or movies but I've never been able to grasp the concept. The wiki doesn't help much. Who was he and what does the term mean?
gpt
Franz Kafka was a writer. His stories are full of situations in which people are restricted or mistreated for apparently no reason. The situations never seem to make sense and there aren't any options to escape them. 

For example, in *The Trial*, the protagonist is suddenly arrested and charged with a crime. He's not told what he's being arrested for, or which agency is arresting him, he's just told to go to the courthouse on a certain day. When he goes, the courthouse is a gigantic building with a million rooms, which he has to explore on his own to find the one his appointment is in. In his most famous story, *The Metamorphosis*, a man wakes up one day to find that he is now an insect. He becomes an incredible burden to his family, who begin to hate having to take care of him, and so he kills himself. Nothing is ever explained.

Something is *kafkaesque* if it resembles these kinds of situations. The defining features are confusion, dread, and lack of free will.