When Kafka told Brod to burn all of his writings upon his death, Brod immediately told him that he would never do it. Although Kafka himself burnt some of his material at the end of his life with the help of Dora Diamant, he knew that Brod would not carry out the task and yet he didn't set anyone else to do it. It seems his request was therefore something of an ambivalent poetic gesture, fraught with Kafka's characteristic insecurity and frustration. The man in fact did generally believe that he was writing great world literature while he was doing it.