Jesse’s Reviews > Amerika: The Missing Person > Status Update
Jesse
is on page 100 of 299
Karl allows himself to be talked into visiting one of his uncle’s friends, clearly against the will of his uncle. This works out poorly for him—partly because he has a horrible time and his friend’s daughter, Klara, beats the shit out of him using jiu-jitsu, but mostly because this is used by his uncle the senator as a pretense to break with Karl entirely, abandoning him to the wiles of America.
— 10 hours, 3 min ago
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Jesse
is on page 200 of 299
Karl’s turn of fortune is basically foundational paranoia. Robinson torpedoes his current job and the Head Porter despises him so much that he takes Karl to what is basically a dungeon in order to dress him down, further complicating any reunion with Therese and his effects, and he takes the cab unwisely with Robinson, only to be further waylaid when a policeman takes interest in the scene that the cabbie makes.
— 2 hours, 27 min ago
Jesse
is on page 150 of 299
In a painful moment, after practically thriving as a lift boy at the Hotel Occidental, Karl loses his job because one of the two jerks that had been fleecing him on the way to the hotel shows up fantastically drunk so that Karl has to leave his post in order to remove him from view of the guests. I really hate it because he was getting comfortable and enjoying his time with Therese, the typist.
— 8 hours, 15 min ago
Jesse
is on page 50 of 299
I was expecting something a little more absurd than what I’ve read so far but the way in which Karl quickly takes to the stoker and then is found by his uncle is a little out of the ordinary. Karl has a very naive idea of how the audience with the captain was going to play out, but he’s a seventeen year old German immigrant. He quickly acclimates to English under his uncle, the senator.
— Mar 19, 2026 02:14PM
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9 hours, 58 min ago
there is a question as to whether him introducing Karl to Mr. Pollunder was some sort of capricious test of Karl’s pseudo-filial loyalty. somewhere in here is the deep paranoia of being disowned for what seems like a relatively innocuous action. The subtext appears to be that Karl was abandoned by his uncle the moment he broke away from complete submission to his uncle’s will.
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and now he is traveling with an Irishman and a Frenchman, both of whom are exploiting Karl, fresh off the boat, using him to pay for his meals and selling his good clothes while pocketing most of the proceeds. Karl is submissively good-natured about this—he more or less knows what’s happening—but he consciously excuses their behavior outwardly while simultaneously being infuriated.
