Daily Archives: February 26, 2013

Kafkaesque, Franz Kafka own literary style.

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When I see the word Kafkaesque, my first guess is that it is something ‘of Kafka.’ I thought the word means his own works of literature maybe, or the style which he uses to write. From reading “The Metamorphosis,” the reader gets a sense of what style Franz Kafka uses, and one can say that is something different. It is not the plain literature we are used to, but something different and awkward. After searching the word Kafkaesque, I got that its meaning is “of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or resembling the literary work of Franz Kafka; marked by a senseless, disorienting, often menacing complexity.”

When I read The Metamorphosis, my first reaction was that of disgust and fear at the same time. We are taken into this dream world, one can say, where Gregor has incarnated into a vermin, and now he is forced to live life like an animal, isolated from his family, who feel disgusted by his new appearance. “He was especially fond of hanging from the ceiling; it was quite different from lying on the floor; he could breathe more freely; his body had a light swing to it; and up there, relaxed and almost happy, it might happen that he would surprise even himself by letting go of the ceiling and landing on the floor with a crash…very soon his sister noticed his new way of entertaining himself- he had, after all, left traces of the adhesive from his feet as he crawled about.” Here we have a person who from nights’ sleep, went from being a perfect man to a creature. As the reader, one thinks that this only happens in dreams or nightmares better yet. Then we continue to read how he lives life as a horrible vermin, deprived from his human qualities for months.

From “The Metamorphosis,” we get to see how Franz Kafka uses a different literary style that is unique to his own writing, which is bizarre and grotesque, as what the word ‘Kafkaesque’ defines.

A Rose For Emily…

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In William Faulkner  A Rose For Emily it  mostly pictures a women life full of insecurity. Which bounds her to become detached  from this world. For any one their fathers death gives them a feel of insecurity ,the loss of parents  can easily tell upon a person’s emotion.  And the same happens to her. But what makes it worse for her is that she was left with a house but no money. Though she was saved from paying taxes but she still had other issues in her life with men and society. This is a problem through out generation to generation.  In our world women are totally depended on men and their emotional dependence make them weak. The situation that she dealt with through out her life made her what she was. Not letting people berry her dead father makes a clear point that she had psychological issues. And the events through out her life made it worse. She couldn’t even be with the person she admired because of this society.

The point I’m trying to make here is we can never let our self change for others or let others dominate our life. Emily couldn’t  face the hardness of the society .She bow down to the society . She let the society dominate her so much that in one point when she couldn’t take it any more she decided to look her self her up in her own house. Created her own colorless world . For her that was the only way to tell the world to mind their own business. And specially when she society  effect her love relation.  Her cousin was called to deal with her relation. She was more effected .  Over all she had an emotional break down that she even gave up her artwork. When a person doesn’t have independence of any kind they fail towards creativeness .  So I guess her not providing any more painting classes shows that  after all she has been through she had nothing to offer to the society. And she waned to save what ever she was left with .

This story is short . But a lot of events related to each other and the events are not even in sequence. The idea of making a time  line for this story puts the evens in sequence and it helps the story unfold in a more understandable way.

The indirect work of William Faulkner, “A Rose for Emily”

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So for two class sessions, we’ve been talking about the piece called “A Rose for Emily” and how the chronology was presented in this. To me, the effect of this sequencing was quite interesting. It makes the reading a bit more difficult but the author can give more of an interesting way of learning about a specific person, group or even the whole story, like the one we read so far. The order of this piece was a confusing one but if read more thoroughly, one can understand and find that it is an attention-grabber for most of us. As for me, this definitely got a hold me and I would rather see more of this kind of non-linear narrative. Non-linear narrative, also called disrupted narrative, is where events are out of chronological order or does not show direct patterns towards the events happening. It is often used to mimic the structure and recall of human memory but has been applied for other reasons as well. Maybe some of you guys can share if you would want more of this type of narrative and try to challenge ourselves in the slightest way?

This piece was portrayed nicely with the sequence of events, Faulkner wrote “That was two years after her father’s death and a short time after her sweetheart–” which is mentioned in the second section of the second page. He comes back to this event in two parts, with the father and later on, with Homer Barron. Basically, we are going through her life and it was since it started with her already dead. I think this is one of the ways that can be a good attention-grabber for most of us, getting to know Emily but also seeing how it all down to her dead. The effectiveness of this piece wouldn’t be good but that’s if people do not prefer this type of narrative. Having it linear would’ve completely turned around the story, having her alive and just basically being said by others, in which, would be another type of narrative. Even movies can be portrayed in non-linear very nicely like “Kill Bill 1 & 2” and “Pulp fiction” and t.v series such as “Lost”. Some of you guys can share your opinions and tell me if you found this piece interesting. If so, was it the type of narrative we have here?