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?
No comments:
Post a Comment