Hey guys--

I've had a horrible day today, my thirtysomething-year-old art teacher had just passed away quite suddenly this weekend and I'm trying to let it sink in so I'm a bit distraught at the moment, and really not making any sense when I ramble on as I'm doing now, but I decided I shouldn't sit around and sulk so here I am trying to bring the Kafka discussion back down to my level. Good job guys, your interpretations are as usual, incredibly insightful, I'm in awe of you as always, and I'm glad you're keeping yourselves clean.

Skipping over the defective wheel because I didn't understand that (sorry Bryan, I couldn't bring myself to finish reading you last post, it was just too much for me - I promise to read it over again when I'm sane), but respondong to Eunice's posts I think you can validly assume Kafka is speaking from the perspective of the explorer, at least at the beginning of the story. Kafka was big on alienation, and I'm assuming he wrote this about society to try to explain its absurdity to himself, and to do that he has to distance himself from the object of description first. Because the explorer is not a member of the penal colony, he is free to observe disinterestedly from a higher plane than that of the colony and use the whole deal with the machine as an allegory for his own society. i.e. I found the last scene particularly powerful for the sheer irony of that ending - when the explorer is in the boat and he's trying to keep the soldier and the prisoner away from the boat (227). [it's only here in this last sentence I think that Kafka distances himself from the explorer because now the allegory's been stretched to outside of the colony]

Eunice, I really liked your idea about the machine's function being forcing conformity and how it explained why the officer places himself in the machine when he realizes he's the nonconformist - but if that is the case why is the prisoner so fascinated with the machine when the officer's getting mutilated?

Also the idea of language / freedom of expression came through quite strongly throughout the story, maybe this is the nonconformist defective wheel you were talking about, Bryan, Eunice. At one point they talk about how the defective wheel "creaks a lot when it's working; you can hardly hear yourself speak" (194). The very idea that the machine inscribes words onto the prisoner's body, how the prisoner is forced to have that disgusting piece of cloth in his mouth "to keep him from screaming" (195)... and how the prisoner and the soldier speak another language so can't understand the officer when he's explaining the machine, how the explorer can't decipher the writing on the sketches of the plan of the machine even as the officer traces out (as would the Harrow) the letters for him, then finally how whatever that'd been written on the officer's body is as illegible as the "BE JUST!" written on the plans. Miscommunication is such a big issue that the officer places himself on the machine when he realizes that he cannot persuade the explorer - if the machine's falling apart parallels society's own breakdown as everyone seems to agree on so far, maybe Kafka blames societal collapse on an inability to communicate within society?

Sorry I rambled on for too long. I promise to learn to write shorter posts. I miss you guys so much--

posted by Tae-Yeoun Keum   [2:46 AM]

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