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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Meditation:
How bizarre these writings.. I'm not too sure of what I read and what they all meant. They seem like perhaps Kafka wrote random thoughts that were actually printed. "The rebuff" was comically bitter. "unhappiness" was spooky and weird at the same time. There's not much more I can add about this small cluster of very short stories.
The judgment:
Is this the same person who wrote "The Trial"?
A conversation between father and son affected by whether the son should write an old friend of his who resides in Russia to announce his recent engagement.. Of course critics and scholars could read many miles into this piece, but if a basic person like me can't understand why such a meaningless subject should anger and affect the father then is it even really worth analyzing?
The Metamorphoses:
Here's what bugs me about the story (no pun intended). Right away it starts that he wakes up transformed into a bug. Yet he's worried because he's woken up late for work and seems more pre-occupied with trivialities of his everyday life rather than be alarmingly concerned about his new dilemma. Seems that having woken up as an insect is secondary on his mind. You would think being late for work would be the least of his problems. There was no explanation for his denial.
Although you want to read sad stories like metamorphoses because you appreciate the emotion of sympathy and compassion it induces, at the same time it's disturbing because certain heart-wrenching moments haunt your mind. These are the kind of stories that impact your reading experience and leave a mark. I can certainly see why this short story is considered Kafka's masterpiece. Although, I think I enjoyed The Trial a bit more. Not sure. I'll have to think about that.
http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/metamor...
The Penal Colony:
I have a feeling I could have enjoyed this story more if I was able to better visualize the torture "apparatus". I also had a hard time understanding why the condemned man was set free, and the officer volunteered himself on the bed of this torturous machine..
Letter to his father:
Is an actual POWERFULLY-written 40 page letter by Kafka to his father explaining why he's afraid of him. Kafka never had the opportunity to give this letter to his dad due to his moms intervention. I wish she wouldn't have interfered by the way he describes his fathers tyranny throughout his entire childhood and the remainder of his adult life. This part of the book feels quite different than reading his stories, knowing it was a real letter meant to be delivered to a real person about troubled unresolved emotions made me feel like I was reading something very private.
How my heart ached each time he would describe the things that he could have admired about his dad had his dad been a decent father, or at least even a decent human being.
When looking at Kafka's picture you can certainly see in his adult face a bewildered little boy who struggled for his fathers approval.
Now all of his work makes sense to me. The feelings of alienation, disapproval, shame, guilt, unworthiness, nothingness comes from the traumatic relationship he had with hid dad.
I'm rating this based mainly on the Metamorphosis and Letter to his Father.
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Quote: From Metamorphosis
The father relentlessly pushed his way forward, hissing like a wild man. Now, Gregor still had no practice at all in going backwards—it was really very slow going. If Gregor only had been allowed to turn himself around, he would have been in his room right away, but he was afraid to make his father impatient by the time-consuming process of turning around, and each moment he faced the threat of a mortal blow on his back or his head from the cane in his father’s hand. Finally Gregor had no other option, for he noticed with horror that he did not understand yet how to maintain his direction going backwards. And so he began, amid constantly anxious sideways glances in his father’s direction, to turn himself around as quickly as possible, although in truth this was only done very slowly. Perhaps his father noticed his good intentions, for he did not disrupt Gregor in this motion, but with the tip of the cane from a distance he even directed Gregor’s rotating movement now and then. If only his father had not hissed so unbearably! Because of that Gregor totally lost his head. He was already almost totally turned around, when, always with this hissing in his ear, he just made a mistake and turned himself back a little. But when he finally was successful in getting his head in front of the door opening, it became clear that his body was too wide to go through any further. Naturally his father, in his present mental state, had no idea of, say, opening the other wing of the door a bit to create a suitable passage for Gregor to get through. His single fixed thought was that Gregor must get into his room as quickly as possible. He would never have allowed the elaborate preparations that Gregor required to orient himself and thus perhaps in this way to get through the door. Perhaps with his excessive noise he was now driving Gregor forwards as if there were no obstacle. Behind Gregor the sound at this point was no longer like the voice of only a single father.
http://www.kafka-franz.com/kafka-Biograp...
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Flamboyantly gay story about a beautiful young man by the name of Dorian Gray who is faced with the decaying image of his soul through a painting as he carelessly leads a life of selfishness, to say the least.
I enjoyed the interaction of all three characters of Lord Henry, Basil and Dorian, until chapter XI. I have no idea what got into Mr. Wilde, but I was reading a lavishly intriguing story about the lifestyles of the three aforementioned characters, then all of a sudden he turns Dorian into a weirdo who adopts all kinds of different cultures from around the world, who collects relics, gems and tapestries. Like some recluse who sits up in bed all night and orders stuff from QVC. It actually almost ruined the book for me. I felt after that there was no possible redemption from it. The story initially had the flavor of a much better version of The Gatsby, but then Wilde goes totally off track on trying to explain Dorians materialistic manias. I know it was symbolic of Dorian's love for the material and the beautiful but it confused the hell out of me. I think Wilde could have chosen a better way of demonstrating how important beauty was to Dorian than to go on an 11 page rant of all the things Dorian collected to validate his existence and to hold on to his youth and beauty. It seemed out of character to the image of the kind of individual I felt Dorian was. He turned a Caravaggio's Bacchus into a Liberace (love Liberaci btw..) in just one chapter. That's very sad and it made me feel disillusioned with the purity an innocence of Dorians character, but I was able to let go and move on. After chapter 11 it continued on in the style in which it left off. Overall I enjoyed Wilde's writing very much. I enjoyed his flair and the manner in which he thinks. I wish he would have written more novels. I could only imagine the wonderfully prismatic people he surrounded himself with in real life. You can tell Dorian Gray wasn't all purely imagination.
Quotes:
Duchess: "I must go. I have to call for my husband at the club, to take him to some absurd meeting at Willis's Rooms, where he is going to be in the chair. If I am late, he is sure to be furious, and I couldn't have a scene in this bonnet. It is far too fragile. A harsh word would ruin it."]]>
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"Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses"
Rachel
added a quote:
"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men." — Joseph Conrad
"Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men." — Joseph Conrad
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