Revised Schedule Until Spring Break!

NOTE: I changed the schedule slightly after posting this originally...I just made it a little easier on you this week! :) 

Unfortunately, the snow days have cut into our class time once again, so here's a revised schedule for the next few weeks. Let me know if you have any  questions!  

21                    Kafka, “A Report to an Academy” & “A Hunger Artist”

23                    Snow Day

25                    Snow Day 

 

28                    Film: Kwaidan (instead of Writing Exam #3) 

 

MARCH

2                      Film: Kwaidan

4                      Writing Exam #3

 

7                      Soseki, Kokoro 

9                      Soseki, Kokoro 

11                    Soseki, Kokoro  

 

14-18               Spring Break

For Monday: Kafka, "A Report to An Academy" (pp.250-259) & "The Hunger Artist" (pp.268-277)

NOTE: be sure to check your e-mail for your graded Paper #1s this weekend. It might take me until Sunday to get them all back, but I'm working on it! All papers can be revised for a higher grade any time this semester, so look over my comments and let me know if you have any questions. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: What does the Hunger Artist mean, at the end of the story, when he claims, "I couldn't find the food I wanted" (277)? This is his secret, the reason why fasting was so easy for him. What do you think this "food" could have been? What was he really wanting to "eat" that made him take a perverse pleasure in depriving himself?

Q2: Note that all of Kafka's stories are about people who are trapped and forced to perform for an audience (even Gregor is in a cage, and though no one watches him directly, they're constantly watching his movements and what he leaves behind). Why might trapped people be a form of entertainment, or better yet, an art? What might be the attraction in watching people in a cage? Are there ways we do this in real life, too?

Q3: The Ape makes it clear that "there was no attraction for me in imitating human beings; I imitated them because I needed a way out, and for no other reason" (257). If we see the Ape is a metaphor for humans in general, what might this say about the nature of education? How are we all a little bit like the Ape?

Q4: Though the Hunger Artist practices an extreme and dangerous form of art, he is still an artist: his goal is to perfect his art for an adoring public. How might this story be a metaphor for the problems that all artists face, in whatever discipline? How are all of them (or all of us, for those of us who create) "hunger artists" of one form or another? 

For Friday: Kafka, "In the Penal Colony" (pp.140-167)

Read the very stranger story, "In the Penal Colony" for Friday's class, and consider that Kafka is not only writing in German, but he is writing in 1914, only two decades before Hitler assumes power and gives rise to the Nazi party. Something to think about...

Answer TWO of the following for Friday's class:

Q1: What does the officer think the explorer will see--and be convinced of--once he sees the Apparatus in action? Besides the obvious (that it's cruel and inhuman) why doesn't the explorer agree with him, even though he is moved by his passion?

Q2: Rather than tell the condemned man of his crime, or that he's even convicted of a crime, the officer says "There would be no point in telling him. He'll learn it on his body" (145). Why does he want it written on the flesh, even though the convict inevitably dies of his wounds? And how might this relate to Kafka's interest in bodies, as in the previous story?

Q3: When the officer dies at the hand of his beloved apparatus, the explorer notes, "no sign was visible of the promised redemption; what the others had found in the machine the officer had not found" (166). What do you think he was looking for in his death, and why did he tamper with the machine to make his end even more brutal? 

Q4: The nature of the characters in this story--officer, soldier, explorer, condemned man, apparatus--suggest the nature of an allegory, where everything represents larger ideas at play. What might this story be an allegory of, precisely? How might we read these events in a less literal light, much as we might read The Metamorphosis as a story of illness, rather than of a giant bug? 

For Wednesday: Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Edward Munch's The Scream (1893)

Don't forget that Paper #1 is due by 5pm on Monday! You can turn it in late, but you lose a letter grade each day, with Wednesday at 5pm being the last day you can turn it in for credit. So be careful! 

Otherwise, read "The Metamorphosis" and answer TWO of the questions below:

Q1: Kafka is almost obsessed with describing Gregor's body, not only what it looks like (the apple rotting in his back!) but also how it moves, and the sensations and pleasures of moving with such a large body. Why do you think this is such an important part of the story? What might this suggest about his choice of a cockroach rather than, say, a wolf or a bat (which, only a decade or so earlier, was the subject of Stoker's Dracula)? 

Q2: Why is Grete, Gregor's sister, so protective of her job in taking care of him, when she is visibly terrified of him (and in some sense, loathes him)? How are we supposed to understand her fit of rage when her mother decides to clean the room without her help? 

Q3: Why might it be significant that the longer Gregor is an insect, the less and less he wants to eat, until by the end is he "completely flat and dry"? Does his transformation slowly remove his humanity, or is something else lost in the process? How can we tell? 

Q4: Do you consider this story more of a work of horror or satire? Are we supposed to be terrified at the random possibility of becoming a bug? Or is Gregor never really a bug at all...is it all a metaphor for feelings and roles that we are forced into through class, money, and society? In other words, is this more a Stephen King story or one by Voltaire? 

For Wednesday: Read "The Fatalist" & Paper #1 assignment below (with new due date)

 No questions for Wednesday. Instead, catch up on "Princess Mary" if you haven't finished it, and read the very short story, "The Fatalist" for Wednesday. In class, I'll give you an in-class writing prompt (Writing Exam #2) based on "The Fatalist," though it will ask you to apply this to the rest of the book as well. Bring your book so you can quote from it and show your profound knowledge of the events of the story! 

Make sure, too, that you  have our next book, Kafka's Complete Stories, since we'll be starting that before long. Check out the Revised Schedule (below) to see how I changed a few dates based on our Snow Day. 

ALSO: The Paper #1 is pasted below with the revised due date:

Paper #1: Portraits of Caustic Truth

In the Narrator’s Preface to A Hero of Our Time, he writes that the novel “is indeed a portrait, but not of a single individual; it is a portrait composed of all the vices of our generation in the fullness of their development…[people] need some bitter medicine, some caustic truths…Suffice it that the disease has been pointed out; goodness knows how to cure it.”

While the Preface could itself be a bit satirical, Lermontov seems to have the same general aim as Voltaire, who in Candide  is depicting the “vices of [his] generation” through “some caustic truths.” Surprisingly, both novels are almost unanimous in how these “truths” are depicted, as the same types of characters appear quite frequently, even though one work was published in 1759, and the other in 1840. Had society changed so little in 81 years? Has it ever changed?

For your first paper, I want you to put both works in conversation with each other to answer the question, what does each author believe is the general vice or symptom of their respective societies? What are the “caustic truths” that society ignores or hides from which only literature can reveal? And what is the “bitter medicine” each work prescribes to society? Do you feel that they generally agree on the symptoms and the mode of treatment? Or might they each object to the others’ cure? Look for similarities and shared approaches between both works, but don’t ignore shades of difference. Is there something a Russian soldier would notice that would escape a French philosopher?

REQUIREMENTS

• Be FOCUSED and try to narrow your ideas down to a specific topic or idea: don’t talk about every problem each work explores, and don’t just compare and contrast the books. Take a focused and critical approach to each book.
• QUOTE significant passages from both books and discuss them. Make sure we understand why you quoted the passage and what it says about the novel.
• Use CONTEXT for each passage and cite according to MLA guidelines (typically, the page number of the passage). Make sure we know where the quote comes from, who’s speaking, etc. Don’t use ‘floating quotes.’
• No set number of pages, but the less you explain/explore, the less effective your paper will be. I would say generally that 1-2 pages isn’t going to cut it, but beyond that, it’s up to you. Just try to have fun exploring the ideas and tell me what you see and what you thought as you read both novels.
• DUE Monday, February 14^th by 5pm

 

 

Revised Schedule from Week 5 on

 REVISED SCHEDULE FOR WEEKS 5-16

 

FEBRUARY

7                      Lermontov, “Princess Mary,” Part 2

9                      Lermontov, “The Fatalist” & Writing Exam #2

11                    Context: The Uncanny

 

14                    Paper #1 due by 5pm [no class]

16                    Kafka, “The Metamorphosis”

18                    Kafka, “In the Penal Colony”

 

21                    Kafka, “A Report to an Academy” & “A Hunger Artist”

23                    Kafka, The Shorter Stories (pp.379-407)

25                    Writing Exam #3

 

28                    Film: Kwaidan  

 

MARCH

2                      Film: Kwaidan

4                      Film: Kwaidan

 

7                      Writing Exam #4

9                      Context: Eastern and Western Art  

11                    Soseki, Kokoro  

 

14-18               Spring Break

 

21                    Soseki, Kokoro

23                    Soseki, Kokoro

25                    Soseki, Kokoro

 

28                    Writing Exam #5

30                    Context: Postcolonialism/Paper #2 due by 5pm

 

APRIL

1                      Scissortail CW Festival: attend instead of class!

 

4                      Duras, The Lover

6                      Duras, The Lover

8                      Duras, The Lover  

 

11                    Writing Exam #6

13                    Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies: “A Temporary Matter” & “The

       Interpreter of Maladies”

15                    Lahiri, “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine," "Mrs. Sen's”

 

18                    Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies: “Sexy” & “This Blessed                                  House”

20                    Lahiri, The Interpreter of Maladies: “The Third and Final                                    Continent”

25                    Writing Exam #7

 

27                    Discuss Final Project/Wrap-Up                     

 

 

For Monday: Lermontov, "Princess Mary" (finish!)

Since the snow cancelled our class on Friday, finish "Princess Mary" for Monday's class. You can read "The Fatalist" too, if you like, but we'll wrap that one up on Wednesday (we'll need the entire class to finish "Princess Mary"!). Answer TWO of the following as usual for class...

Q1: Though Pechorin satirizes the Romantic affectations of the people around, notably Grushnitsky and Mary, how might Lermontov (or the Narrator?) also satirize him throughout the story? Why might Pechorin's various actions and statements be a parody of the cynical, Romantic soldier he so wants to be seen as? And how might we see that this role is only skin deep?

Q2: There are numerous inconsistencies in Pechorin's story, and just before the duel, he admits that he stopped keeping the diary and instead writes the ending months later, by which time he's already met Maksim Maksimich (thus placing this story well before "Bela"). Why do you think Lermontov continues to make the narrative so inconsistent for the reader?  Whom do you think is more at fault: Pechorin or the Narrator? Or Lermontov himself? 

Q3: When Pechorin prepares to face Grushnitsky's shot, he tells Werner, "Perhaps, I wish to be killed." Do you think Pechorin has a death wish? Is death the only thing that truly interests him in life? Or is this, too, an act for the benefit of those around him? 

Q4: Do you think Pechorin was in love with Vera or Princess Mary? Were they merely ways to occupy his time and amuse him, the way Bela was? Or are we meant to see a deeper connection to one or both women? Wouldn't this be a "dull" story if he was simply a womanizer who set out to ruin the lives of every pretty young woman he meets? Is that really all there is to the story?