Johannes Türk has argued that literature can function as an immunity mechanism, using the writings of Kafka as an example. Türk, however, theorizes immunity as a personal, individual coping strategy against one’s own mortal sickness and death. In this view, strongly influenced by Luhmann’s systems theory, literature has the capacity of providing us with an emotional skill set. The view that immunity mechanisms are a personal skill set leads to inevitable difficulties and limits our understanding of the functioning of a literary immunity. Kafka’s texts were written in a context in which problematic and destructive discourses about immunity were prevailing. By focusing on Kafka’s story Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer as an exploration of the problems with immunity discourse, I show that the different stylistic features of Kafka’s writing function as tactics to render destructive immunity discourses inoperative.