Franz Kafka is in a penal colony. Franz Kafka “In a penal colony In a penal colony summary
Lecture plan.
1.Biography of the writer. Analysis of a letter to F. Kafka's father.
2. Characteristics of the writer’s creativity. Major works. Novelistic creativity. Novels “Castle”, “Trial”, “America”. Modernist irony in the works of F. Kafka.
3.Analysis of the writer’s short stories (“In the penal colony”, “The Hunger Man”, “Metamorphosis”).
Kafka is born 3 July 1883 year in Jewish family living in the Josefov district, a former Jewish ghetto city of Prague ( Czech, at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). His father is Herman (Genykh) Kafka ( 1852 -1931 ), came from Czech-speaking Jewish community in South Bohemia, with 1882 Mr. was a wholesale dealer in dry goods. The writer's mother is Julia Kafka (née Etl Levi) ( 1856 -1934 ), the daughter of a wealthy brewer - preferred German. Kafka himself wrote in German, although he also knew Czech perfectly. He was also quite good at French, and among the four people whom the writer, “without pretending to compare with them in strength and intelligence,” felt “as his blood brothers,” was the French writer Gustave Flaubert. The other three: Franz Grillparzer, Fedor Dostoevsky And Heinrich von Kleist. Although a Jew, Kafka nevertheless had virtually no knowledge of Yiddish and began to show interest in the traditional culture of Eastern European Jews only at the age of twenty under the influence of those who toured in Prague Jewish theater troupes; interest in studying Hebrew arose only towards the end of life.
Kafka had two younger brothers and three younger sisters. Both brothers, before reaching the age of two, died before Kafka turned 6 years old. The sisters' names were Ellie, Valli and Ottla (all three died during Second World War in the Nazi concentration camps V Poland). Since 1889 By 1893 gg. Kafka visited primary school(Deutsche Knabenschule), and then a gymnasium, which he graduated from 1901 year of passing the matriculation examination. Having graduated from Prague Charles University, received a doctorate in law (Kafka’s dissertation supervisor was professor Alfred Weber), and then entered the service as an official in the insurance department, where he worked in modest positions until his premature - due to illness - retirement in 1922 d. Work for the writer was a secondary and burdensome occupation: in his diaries and letters he literally admits his hatred of his boss, colleagues and clients. In the foreground there was always literature, “justifying his entire existence.” IN 1917 after a pulmonary hemorrhage a long period ensued tuberculosis, from which the writer died June 3 1924 years in a sanatorium near Vienna.
Asceticism, self-doubt, self-judgment and a painful perception of the world around him - all these qualities of the writer are well documented in his letters and diaries, and especially in “Letter to Father” - a valuable introspection into the relationship between father and son and in childhood experience. Due to an early break with his parents, Kafka was forced to lead a very modest lifestyle and often change housing, which left an imprint on his attitude towards Prague itself and its inhabitants. Chronic diseases ( psychosomatic whether nature is a moot point) tormented him; in addition to tuberculosis, he suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, abscesses and other diseases. He tried to counteract all this naturopathic in ways such as vegetarian diet, regular exercise and drinking plenty of unpasteurized cow's milk. As a schoolboy, he took an active part in organizing literary and social gatherings, and made efforts to organize and promote theatrical performances, despite misgivings even from his closest friends, such as Max Brod, who usually supported him in everything else, and despite his own fear of being perceived as repulsive both physically and mentally. Kafka impressed those around him with his boyish, neat, strict appearance, calm and imperturbable behavior, as well as his intelligence and unusual sense of humor.
Kafka's relationship with his oppressive father is an important component of his work, which also resulted from the writer's failure as a family man. Between 1912 -m and 1917 For years he courted a Berlin girl, Felicia Bauer, to whom he was twice engaged and twice broke the engagement. Communicating with her mainly through letters, Kafka created an image of her that did not correspond to reality at all. And in fact they were very different people, as is clear from their correspondence. (Kafka’s second bride was Julia Vokhrytsek, but the engagement was again soon called off). At first 1920s years, he had a love relationship with a married Czech journalist, writer and translator of his works, Milena Jesenskaya. IN 1923 Kafka, together with nineteen-year-old Dora Dimant, moved to Berlin, hoping to distance himself from family influence and concentrate on writing; then he returned to Prague. Health was deteriorating at this time, and June 3 1924 Mr. Kafka died in a sanatorium near Vienna, probably from exhaustion. (A sore throat prevented him from eating, and in those days intravenous therapy was not developed to feed him artificially). The body was transported to Prague, where it was buried June 11 1924 at the New Jewish Cemetery in the Strašnice area, in a common family grave.
During his lifetime, Kafka published only a few short stories, constituted a very small proportion of his work, and his work attracted little attention until his novels were published posthumously. Before his death, he instructed his friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to burn, without exception, everything he had written (except, perhaps, for some copies of the works, which the owners could keep for themselves, but not republish them). His beloved Dora Dimant did destroy the manuscripts that she possessed (although not all), but Max Brod did not obey the will of the deceased and published most of his works, which soon began to attract attention. All of his published work, except for a few Czech-language letters to Milena Jesenskaya, was written in German.
Many critics have tried to explain the meaning of Kafka's works based on the provisions of certain literary schools - modernism, « magical realism"etc. The hopelessness and absurdity that permeate his work are characteristic of existentialism. Some tried to find influence Marxism on his satire of bureaucracy in such works as “In the Penal Colony”, “ Process" And " Lock" At the same time, others view his works through the prism Judaism(since he was a Jew and showed some interest in Jewish culture, which, however, developed only in the later years of the writer’s life) - made several insightful comments on this matter Borges; through Freudian psychoanalysis(due to stressful family life); or through allegories of the metaphysical search for God (the champion of this theory was Thomas Mann).
Rate this publication“That’s who I feel sorry for,” says the inexorable judge in the novella-parable “A Knock on the Gate.” “At the same time,” writes Kafka, “he clearly meant not my current situation, but what awaits me... Will I ever breathe air other than prison? This is the main question that confronts me, or rather, would confront me if I had the slightest hope of liberation.”
The feeling of doom, persecution, persecution, hopelessness and meaninglessness of existence, loneliness in the crowd, meaningless service, alienation from family - this is what makes up the world of Kafka, the writer and the man.
His talent was not noticed by his contemporaries, although Kafka’s literary contribution was appreciated famous writers of that time: R. Musil, G. Hesse, T. Mann. He felt like an exile, homeless and restless. Judge for yourself how a Jew speaking and writing German, living in Prague, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, could feel. If you think about it, this already contains the beginnings of Kafka’s tragic worldview. One of his German biographers wrote: “As a Jew, he did not belong among Christians. As an indifferent Jew... he did not belong among the Jews. As a person who speaks German, he did not belong among the Czechs. As a Jew who speaks German, he did not belong among the Germans. He was naked among those dressed. As a worker's insurance clerk, he did not belong entirely to the bourgeoisie. As a burgher's son, he's not exactly a worker. But he was not a writer either, because he devoted his energies to his family. He lived in his family more as a stranger than anyone else.” A parallel involuntarily suggests itself: Kafka and Gregor Samsa, unlike other people, alien in the family, not understood by his relatives. Of course, there was a “transformation” of a boy from an ordinary Jewish family, an average official, into a great writer who was ahead of his contemporaries and therefore was not understood and accepted neither in his family nor by his time.
The unusual, complex, contradictory feature of the writer was created by life itself. He witnessed terrible, destructive world events. In his short life, he managed to become an eyewitness to the First World War, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and clearly felt the tremors of revolutions. “The war, the revolution in Russia and the troubles of the whole world seem to me to be a flood of evil. The war opened the floodgates of chaos.”
During the lessons, the teacher needs to give the basic facts of the writer’s biography and introduce students to the Kafkaesque atmosphere.
Franz Kafka was born in Prague on July 3, 1883. His father, Hermann Kafka, was initially a small merchant, then, thanks to perseverance and a successful marriage, he managed to found his own business in Prague (trading haberdashery goods). Kafka himself considered himself an heir on his mother's side, which was represented by Talmudists, rabbis, converts and madmen. In 1893-1901. he attends the gymnasium. In 1901 he entered the University of Prague, first studying chemistry and German studies, then - at the insistence of his father - switching to jurisprudence. After university he was engaged in accident insurance, working in a private insurance office. The service, ending at 2 p.m., provided an opportunity to engage in literature. It is no coincidence that the beginning of Kafka's career as an official practically coincides with the debut of Kafka as a writer. He will never become a “free artist”, although he will constantly dream about it. “Writing and everything connected with it is the essence of my small attempt to become independent, this is a test of escape.... I write at night,” he admitted, “when fear does not let me sleep.” Is this why his works are so gloomy, so gloomy, so dark? “I will always inspire horror in people, and most of all in myself” - this is the terrible confession of the writer. On December 11, 1912, he held in his hands his first book, a collection of short stories, which he dedicated as a gift to his fiancée, Felicia Bauer.
The famous literary critic B. L. Suchkov defined the place as follows: early works author in his work: “Already his first works... carried within them the germs of themes that invariably disturbed and tormented his imagination, important and dear to him, which in his mature works he only varied, maintaining a constant commitment to the early identified problems of his work. His first short stories and parables revealed Kafka’s desire to give implausible situations external plausibility, to clothe the paradoxical content in a deliberately prosaic, everyday form so that an incident or observation that cannot be justified in reality would look more reliable and believable than the authentic truth of life.”
Kafka turns to the genre of the novel. He tries to portray the life of the contemporary American metropolis, although he has never been to America, the monstrous technicalization of life, the loss and abandonment of man in this world. The novel "America" will remain unfinished, but will be published three years after the writer's death. In parallel with the work on the novel, his famous short stories “Metamorphosis”, “The Verdict”, “In the Correctional Colony” were written.
In 1914, he begins work on the novel “The Trial,” which will also remain unfinished, as V.N. Nikiforov notes, “programmatically unfinished,” because the process, according to the author’s own oral remark, could not reach the highest authorities at all. Thus, the novel seems to go into infinity. And this work will also be published after the death of the writer. By the way, it is interesting to know that many Kafka scholars see in The Trial a reminiscence of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. Kafka in The Trial uses the same technique as in his first novel America: looking at the world exclusively through the consciousness of the hero. The number of versions in the interpretation of the novel is enormous. But there is still no complete answer. Is the novel a prediction of Nazi terror, concentration camps, murder? Does “The Trial” herald a longing for lost peace of mind, a desire to be freed from feelings of guilt? Maybe “The Trial” is just a dream, a nightmare vision? The absurdity of the situation is that the hero sets a deadline for himself to appear in court and the judge is waiting for him at that time, etc. Perhaps the character suffers from persecution delusions. Not a single version covers the entire novel, does not embrace all the hidden meaning.
After the novel, short stories were published: “Report for the Academy”, “Jackals and Arabs”, “At the Gates of Law” and others. G. Hesse gives the following interpretation of Kafka’s parables and short stories: “His whole tragedy - and he is a very, very tragic poet - is the tragedy of misunderstanding, or rather, false understanding of man by man, of the individual by society, of God by man.” His stories of these years are evidence of Kafka’s growing interest in the parabolic form (here it would be appropriate to repeat this concept with students - Author).
The year 1917 was eventful in the writer’s personal life: a second engagement to Felicia Bauer (Kafka did not finish a single novel, either in literature or in life), studies in philosophy, a passion, in particular, for Kierkegaard, and work on aphorisms.
On September 4, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and from that moment on, Kafka would take long-term leaves from the bureau and spend a lot of time in sanatoriums and hospitals. In December, the second engagement was also called off. Now there was a good reason - poor health. In 1918-1919 creative work practically reduced to zero. The only exception is “Letter to Father,” a letter that did not reach its addressee. Kafka's critics classify this document as an attempt at autobiographical research.
The twentieth year is work on the novel “The Castle”, which also, and this is already clear, will remain unfinished. This novel is absolutely ahistorical, there is no hint of time and place, the mention of Spain or South America sounds dissonant to the entire work, it becomes nonsense.
Kafka's health deteriorated, in 1921 he wrote his first will, where he asked M. Brod, his executor, to destroy all manuscripts. He gives Milena Jesenskaya, Franz Kafka's friend and last hopeless love, the diaries, which she must destroy after the author's death. In 1923-1924. his last bride will burn part of the manuscripts in front of his eyes at Kafka’s request. F. Bauer will leave for America at the beginning of the Second World War and take with him over 500 letters from Kafka, refuse to print them for a long time, and then sell them in the days of poverty for 5 thousand dollars.
The last collection Kafka worked on before his death will be called The Hunger Man. The writer read the proofs of this collection, but did not see it during his lifetime. The latest collection is a kind of summing up, central theme stories - reflections on the place and role of the artist in life, on the essence of art. In a letter to Brod, he speaks of his writing as “service to the devil,” since it is based on “vanity” and “thirst for pleasure.”
Another side of Kafka's work is the creation of aphorisms. Ultimately, there were 109 of them in total. He is not going to publish them, but M. Brod collects all the aphorisms, numbers them, gives the title “Reflections on Sin, Suffering, Hope and the True Path” and publishes them for the first time in 1931. A review of the author's work would be incomplete without talking about his diaries. He wrote them, albeit irregularly, for 10 years. Many of the entries are interesting because they are almost finished short stories.
Franz Kafka died on June 3, 1924 in a sanatorium near Vienna, and was buried in Prague, in the Jewish cemetery.
Introducing students to Kafka's biography, the teacher emphasizes the tragedy of his life and the pessimism of his views.
After brief information about the author’s biography, it makes sense to immerse students in Kafka’s world with the help of the parable “Railway Passengers”, because, in our opinion, the tragedy of Kafka’s worldview, his concept of the world and man, showing the collapse of the value system of this world is best felt in this parable .
It should be noted that E.V. Voloshchuk in No. 5-6 of the journal “All-World Literature” is given detailed analysis this parable, so there is no need to repeat what has been covered.
This analysis can only be supplemented by a proposal to consider the stylistic load of nouns, their enormous semantic role in the parable.
Each noun has several interpretations, which gives children the joy of discovery. A searching atmosphere is created in the class, when everyone tries himself in the most difficult test - to penetrate into the world of Kafka (the text of the parable lies in front of each student on the desk).
Finishing the analysis of the parable, the teacher invites students to think about how Kafka’s aphorism, namely: “There is a goal, but there is no way, what we called the path is delay,” relates to the main idea of the parable “Railway Passengers.”
Summarizing what has been said, the teacher concentrates the students’ attention on the author’s existential vision. It would be appropriate to repeat what existentialism is, make notes in a notebook, and correlate what was written with what the students learned in class. The following entry is proposed: “Existentialism (from the Latin existentia - existence) is a movement of modernism that arose in the pre-war period and developed after the Second World War. Existentialism is associated with the philosophical theory of the same name and is based on its postulates. Existentialists depicted the tragedy of human existence in the world. Man could not comprehend and know the general chaos, the tangled tangle of problems, accidents, and the absurdity of his existence, they argued. Everything depends on fate, fate, and this manifests itself with particular force in so-called “borderline” situations, that is, especially critical ones, such that they place a person on the border between life and death, causing unbearably severe suffering, confirming that the goal of human existence is death, and man himself is a particle of a cruel and meaningless world, alien to everyone, lonely and misunderstood.” Kierkegaard, whom Kafka studied with such care, argued that there can be no question of man's understanding of reality, because he is limited in his capabilities, and that his wisdom consists in turning to God and understanding his own limitations and insignificance. Human life is “existence for death.”
But the theory of existentialism is not based only on these statements. The main idea existentialists there is the following, expressed by Sartre: “Existentialism is humanism.” A lonely person coexists with others like himself. That is, life is the coexistence of equal individuals, in the face of God everyone is equal, everyone is doomed, therefore everyone’s duty is to help their own kind. The essence of human existence is humanism, adherents of this philosophy argued.
This philosophical theory is filled with sympathy for man, a desire to help him navigate a complex and cruel world; it helps to understand the truth, resist evil, violence, and totalitarian thinking.
Now the ideological and thematic content of one of Kafka’s short stories, “In the Correctional Colony,” will be more understandable for students (it is assumed that high school students have read this work at home).
So, we are starting work on Kafka’s novella “In the Penal Colony.” It should be noted that the problem of power, violence against the individual interests the writer in a philosophical, universal sense; in his works power is always faceless, but omnipresent and irresistible, invincible. This is the power of the system. Many critics argue that Kafka, in a sense, prophesied, or rather, presciently foresaw the emergence of fascism and Bolshevism (novels “The Trial”, “The Castle”, the short story “In the Penal Colony”, etc.). Power is always illogical, because it is power and does not deign to explain the logic of its actions. Power, according to Kafka, is always the embodiment of evil and absurdity.
G. Hesse called “In the Penal Colony” a masterpiece of the author, “who also became an incomprehensible master and ruler of the kingdom German language».
The teacher informs that Kafka’s creative method is magical realism, and draws the students’ attention to the note made in advance on the board:
“One of the main aspects of magical realism is the fusion of the fantastic and the real. The incredible happens in an everyday, trivial environment. The invasion of the fantastic, contrary to tradition, is not accompanied by bright effects, but is presented as an ordinary event. Creating a special artistic reality - fantastic - is a way of understanding and displaying the deep, hidden meaning of real life phenomena."
As a result of working on the text, students are invited to prove that the short story “In the Correctional Colony” belongs to magical realism.
It is most appropriate to start the analysis with questions about the place and time of the events.
Why do you think there is no exact dating of the events and the geographical location of the colony is not indicated?
How does Kafka describe the location of the colony? Find the relevant quote. Why does the author emphasize the enclosed space of the colony? Where have we already encountered the “island” location of the main place of events of the work? (“Robinson Crusoe” by D. Defoe, “Lord of the Flies” by G. Golding, “How One Man Fed Two Generals” by M. Saltykov-Shchedrin, “The Forty-First” by B. Lavrenev, “We” by E. Zamyatin, etc.) Why Does the author need to separate the place of events from life? How does the problem of a confined space help the author to better reveal his thoughts? Why is the figure of the traveler given?
(During the conversation, students come to the idea that, firstly, the enclosed space helps the writer to conduct an “experiment” on the characters in its purest form. The island, or (in the short story) “a valley closed on all sides by bare slopes” is a kind of flask , in which flow without interference " chemical reactions”, and we, the readers, have the opportunity to observe the experience that the writer stages. Secondly, the emerging theme of a colony, violence, pressure on a person leads high school students to think about the essence of totalitarianism, which protects itself from life, from outside influence, because totalitarianism is afraid of light and openness. A totalitarian system is a closed, self-contained system that lowers the “iron curtain” at its borders because it is afraid of comparison, which is followed by an understanding of its essence.
The traveler is the only link between the colony and the world. The more interesting are his reactions to everything that happens).
So, the main idea of the parable is guessed: a protest against violence, destruction human personality, deformation of the soul, enslavement of man by man.
It is not for nothing that the execution apparatus became the symbol of the colony. (Lines are read describing the torture machine.) Interestingly, Kafka gives a formula for the operation of any apparatus of violence: first it “acts manually,” then “completely independently,” and, in the end, when “the last gear falls out,” the machine “falls apart.” This is the whole horror and doom of any suppressive apparatus.
Show the cruelty and absurdity of relations in the colony, talk about its laws, in other words, draw up a moral code for this “closed” society.
(Using the example of the life of a convict, students draw a conclusion about the feeling of guilt that instills in everyone the morality of the colony. “Guilt is always undoubted,” says the officer.)
Naturally, the “justice” system stands guard over those in power. Students characterize the laws, legal proceedings and bailiffs in a correctional colony.
Now it does not seem strange that a trial is not provided for, that the guilt of one is established from the words of another, that the condemned do not know about the upcoming execution, that they do not have a defense lawyer, that they do not know about the sentence passed on them. For what? The condemned will learn this later, “with their own bodies,” they will “understand the sentence with their wounds.”
The scary thing is that the apparatus is always covered in blood, but this, according to Kafka, will be the reason for its destruction. The officer complains: “Great pollution is his disadvantage.”
The teacher and the students come to the conclusion about the prophetic beginning of Kafka's legacy. Kafka's genius foresaw both the future system of Stalinism and Hitler's “paradise.” He understood why autocratic “commandants” are terrible, who themselves are “soldiers, and judges, and designers, and chemists, and draftsmen.” The author of the parable novel understood perfectly well that “the structure of the colony is integral,” that changing the existing order is incredibly difficult and that this will take many years. But Kafka also foresaw the collapse of any totalitarian system, because it contains a mechanism of self-destruction.
But... let us repeat once again after Kafka’s hero: new generations “will in no way be able to change the old order, at least for many years.” Let us ask ourselves: why? What ensures the viability of a deadening order?
He controls thoughts, he infringes on freedom of thought. And this is his greatest evil, and this is his greatest strength. Why did the totalitarian Soviet state last for more than 70 years? Why was there such strong fascist rule in Germany? One answer will be: the authorities have achieved unanimity. In such societies, everyone is a victim: bosses, subordinates, executioners, and convicts. The parable “In a penal colony” also tells us about this.
Consider the image of an officer. Who is he? What is his value system? A hasty answer will be correct, but not sufficient. The officer, of course, is a cog in this apparatus of violence, this machine of torture. What is surprising is his touching, admiring attitude towards the commandant’s brainchild. He looks at the device not without admiration, with great diligence he carries out all the work on servicing the mechanism, he is a special supporter of the “integral system”. The officer is cruel and has no pity for the convict. He speaks with delight about the torment of the tortured as a “seductive spectacle”; he calls murder “court”. He is a man who has never once doubted the normality of the order established by the commandant. His devotion to the former commandant personally and to the previous system knows no bounds.
But why do we feel so sorry for a man who voluntarily accepted death from that monster that he so lovingly courted and to which he tied himself? Why does the executioner (read: judge, in the colony’s value system) become a victim? Why is the traveler so delighted with the officer’s behavior before his voluntary execution? He considers it his duty to tell the officer the following: “Your honest conviction touches me very much.” The traveler sees in this monster, stroking the murder weapon, an essentially honest and courageous man, fulfilling his duty as he understands it.
In the notebook, high school students will have the following equation:
OFFICER = JUDGE = EXECUTIONER = VICTIM
No one can escape the pressure of the totalitarian machine, which flattens and mutilates souls.
We pitied the convict as long as he was in danger, but how disgusting he is when he vindictively awaits the death of the officer, refuses to help save him, and a “wide silent smile” of approval of what is happening freezes on his face. Now the convict becomes an accomplice of the apparatus.
CONVICTED = EXECUTIONER
In a totalitarian society, everyone is doomed; a feeling of kinship arises between people, since they all have a common destiny. The soldier and the convict are equally hungry (we see this when the soldier finishes a plate of rice for the convict), equally powerless, downtrodden, humiliated. It was not without reason that when the execution of the convict was cancelled, the soldier and the one he had previously guarded became friends. They joke, play, argue.
The world of totalitarianism, on the one hand, is devastatingly logical, and on the other, extremely absurd. In Orwell's novel 1984, this is very clearly formulated in the slogans of Big Brother: “War is peace,” “Freedom is slavery,” “Ignorance is strength.” And, of course, people will only be tortured in the Ministry of Love. In the Ministry of Truth, reality is destroyed and falsified. This is the logic of the absurd.
How does the world react to coexistence with totalitarian regimes? A traveler helps us understand this. It seems that it will be interesting for students to follow the traveler’s changing assessments of what is happening. This, summing up the students’ answers, says the teacher, is Kafka’s brilliant foresight. The world looked in exactly the same way at the formation of the young Republic of Soviets and at the coming to power of the fascists. The world did not see a threat to itself in the terrible regimes; it did not understand that this ulcer was a pestilence, that the tumor was metastasizing. “The traveler thought: decisive intervention in other people’s affairs is always risky. If he had decided to condemn... this execution, they would have told him: you are a foreigner, so keep quiet... This is, after all, a penal colony, special measures are required here and military discipline must be strictly observed.” But how the traveler is in a hurry from this kingdom of “justice”, swinging at the soldier and the convict so that they fall behind, because he wants to leave as quickly as possible, wants to get rid of any memories of this damned colony.
Kafka would be inconsistent if he did not notice another terrible feature of totalitarian regimes: the former victims of this system are eagerly awaiting their return.
The officer rightly notes that under the new commandant, who is much more humane than the previous one, “everyone is entirely supporters of the old one.” They are poor, hungry, they were brought up in admiration of power and therefore do not know what to do with the freedom that the new government offers them. It’s not for nothing that the inscription on the grave of the former leader, that is, the commandant of the colony, reads (by the way, doesn’t the grave in the coffee shop remind us of the Mausoleum on Red Square?): “There is a prediction that after a certain number of years the commandant will resurrect and lead his supporters to recapture the colony from this house . Believe and wait! This prediction is truly scary. The terrible execution machine is not so much scary as the possibility of its restoration.
The teacher, finishing the discussion and analysis of the short story, returns the high school students to the question of magical realism and asks them to reveal its essence using the example of the short story “In the Correctional Colony.”
It seems to us that the lesson will be incomplete if there is no evidence in the class that the description of the totalitarian apparatus is a unique tradition of world literature. How can one not recall the Benefactor’s Machine from E. Zamyatin’s novel “We”? J. Orwell, in an article about Zamyatin’s Utopia, wrote that executions there have become commonplace, they are carried out publicly, in the presence of the Benefactor, and are accompanied by the reading of laudatory odes performed by official poets. In the novella, executions take place in front of a huge crowd of people, and the children, for their edification, are given the first rows. Orwell calls the Machine a genie that man thoughtlessly let out of the bottle and cannot put back.
In Orwell's novel 1984, room 101 plays the role of the machine.
The machine is a state apparatus for introducing into the brain, into the soul, into the body the commandments of the state (colony), the commandant (Elder Brother, Benefactor) for the destruction of free thinking, the individual. In Narokov’s novel “Imaginary Values,” the Bolshevik Lyubkin shouts in ecstasy: “People are driven into the brain, heart and skin with such a consciousness that you not only cannot want anything of your own, but you don’t even want to want it! The real thing is to bring 180 million into submission, so that everyone knows: he is gone! He is not there, he is an empty place, and everything is above him.” And, of course, it is impossible to talk about a totalitarian system without remembering the great fighter against the inhumane regime of A. Solzhenitsyn, his destructive characteristics of a totalitarian society, the state apparatus of suppression, and the destruction of people.
It seems that everyone will draw conclusions from this lesson on their own, because it is impossible to see all the semantic layers of Kafka’s short story in a lesson; everyone will undoubtedly have their own associations, guesses, and reminiscences. Much will remain undisclosed. It's not scary. Let the students themselves, having become interested in Kafka, open the pages of his works. One thing must be learned by everyone - the tragedy and greatness of Kafka's world.
An interesting story. And again, Kafka tells a seemingly ordinary story... about an execution machine, about a strange penal colony with strange rules. Moreover, all the “strangeness” arises after reading; during the same time, you only feel a slight chill from what is happening. A machine that tortures, cutting out on the convict the corresponding rules that he violated... and the execution lasts twelve hours and for twelve hours the defendant is alive and feels his “sin” in his back (and he was convicted for some nonsense by human standards, but not by the standards of the place , in which everything happens) and at the sixth hour the tortured person comes to a pre-death clarification of consciousness. And then the teeth pierce him and throw him into a special pit. And the old commandant, the creator of the machine, whom the executioner worships so much... His strange grave in a coffee shop, a gravestone under a table in the corner, with almost religious inscriptions. And most importantly, this is probably another work by Kafka on the theme of “man as power.” This power is the commandant. There was an old commandant, and people came in droves to admire the execution, they waited with interest for the “sixth hour” and everyone wanted to look at the “enlightenment” so much so that they even had to introduce the rule “children first”; there were so many people who wanted it. But he died and a new commandant came with new views. And people immediately, instantly, accepted his ideas... But the people in both cases were the same. Why is that? Where does this bestial desire to walk, please and even think, as the authorities do? Here's the question...
Perhaps the executioner is the only one who behaves like a human being. Yes, he is cruel, but he goes to the end with his faith, with his truth and does not cling to the new...
And, in the end, he does to himself what he did to his victims. Lies under deadly thorns. And the machine, collapsing, destroys him. He does this because he cannot change, because for him to change is to betray. This is not devotion to the old commandant, this is devotion to yourself, to your dignity.
That's how I understood this story.
The story is easy to read. Strange details, strange things (like a tombstone under a table in a coffee shop) make the story somehow... no, I can’t put it into words. It's worth reading. He is something special. And it is remembered, lodged in memory.
Rating: 10
The story is an allegory through which the author reveals the essence of totalitarian regimes. The topic is not new and not particularly interesting, but Kafka managed to create a surprisingly vivid image of an officer-judge. This image is not revealed immediately. For most of the story, the officer seems to personify the sadistic elements of unchecked power, with the judge acting as investigator and executioner, and the commandant only from afar expressing disapproval and not giving money for spare parts for the torture machine.
But in the final part of the story, the officer suddenly reveals himself from a completely different side - we see a mad fanatic, convinced that he is right. Unable to prevent changes, he voluntarily goes under a torture machine and accepts a painful death in an effort to comprehend the essence of justice.
Why did he do this? In his system of the world, the machine is an instrument for instilling proper behavior in a person. The soldier who violated the guard duty regulations had to learn to respect his superior. And what goal was pursued by the officer who determined the punishment for himself in understanding the essence of justice? What was the offense for which the officer sentenced himself? Is it a secret doubt that suddenly crept into consciousness at the sight of a person from another system? Or the desire to use the car against the traveler? No answer. Only one thing is clear: in the short minutes of preparation for the execution, the officer did something that he considered unfair and requiring appropriate punishment. He does not put himself above the system, does not demand concessions in things that he himself did not give to anyone.
The officer's impulse turns out to be able to be appreciated only by a casual spectator - a traveler. The soldier and the convict show only curiosity about the execution procedure; the meaning of what is happening remains inaccessible to their sleeping minds. The death of a man dispensing murderous justice leads to the death of a machine.
A global regime change took place without anyone noticing. The soldier and the convict have gone to their barracks, people are drinking in the tavern, the new commandant is still somewhere in the distance, and the traveler is fleeing a crazy world where murder is considered synonymous with justice. The allegory is simple: a totalitarian regime is supported by a machine of justice driven by fanatics convinced of their rightness. The machine and fanaticism exist only together; the death of one automatically destroys the other. It is unclear what will replace it.
Judging by the distance of the commandant surrounded by ladies, he is not a fanatic of any idea. This is good. But there is no clear idea in his actions, only a desire to please the clergy and secular society is visible - this is scary. The machine of justice does not have to be glass. And it does not have to be put into action by a fanatic thirsting for justice.
The story leaves an extremely difficult impression. The author’s logical constructions do not raise any objections, and some of the absurdity of the world and people’s behavior does not interfere with understanding the essence and seeing analogies with reality, but the aftertaste is so negative that after reading it you no longer want to do anything: neither read Kafka, nor reflect on the structure of society and the psychology of people. I want to run away, like the traveler ran away, and quickly, so that madness does not have time to overtake me.
Rating: 6
When I read Kafka, it’s like I’m being sucked into a swamp. You wander through the quagmire, there is silence and darkness all around, but something glitters in the muddy water - this is the meaning. You reach for it, it takes on bizarre shapes, teases you and slips away, and in this pursuit you will get covered in swamp fluid. And somewhere along the same swamp someone else is walking, and for him the meaning also looks different...
Rating: no
Cold, subtle, daring, absurd, realistic, deeply thought out and smart story. And again, nothing inhumane. Just a description of the torture machine. Quite original, by the way. Something like a loom coupled with a typewriter. You begin to understand the primary sources of modern empty horror films. But the novella has an IDEA, unlike them.
The world is just cruel, and Kafka responded to this cruelty in any way he could. And this bystander, he, of course, was not a coward, he was able to firmly answer “No” to the officer, but he simply did not want to interfere in all this.
How similar this is to us humans.
Rating: 10
I really like Kafka. He deserved to be a world-class writer with his many works. And this is just one of them. By the way, he himself was a complex and unhappy person. This story, like other works, is similar to a nightmare, which is why it is an unpleasant feeling and this is why it is a feeling of nonsense, some time after reading it (the direction is “absurdism”, etc.). Of course, it’s unrealistic, and even with such a machine - in this way it’s impossible to “write” a person through and through... because a person is not a piece of plywood)) that’s just not the point, and besides, it doesn’t reduce the unpleasant feeling.
In general, some people like it. some don't. I found a stunning idea for myself there: smile: - this is that power and orders change and disfigure people, and when they become outdated, these people with their views... become unusable! A new time is coming, and those are going to the dump, that means. There are a lot of ideas there, this work is a bit old, far from King, for example. It is a parable (many people also know) and the heroes there are “flat” because they are symbols, they are not individuals in the full sense of the word, a traveler, for example, is an outsider’s view of a totalitarian inhuman machine (society)... etc. d.
So HANDS OFF Kafka! He is a classic, and this automatically cancels out the ignorant reviews about him.
Rating: no
There is nothing extraordinary in this story. Everything is described in such detail that the reader is left to “think out” nothing - as in the old joke about a wife and husband: Kafka said, Kafka did, Kafka argued, Kafka appreciated. I also didn’t notice any stunning internal idea. Yes, a little dark, a little disgusting, a little scary, but that’s all. All this abomination of an invented machine, which should seem to shock, is not shocking. The fear that it should arouse in the reader does not. The gloomy atmosphere disappears as quickly as the smoke from a burnt match dissolves - and it even smells the same: for some it’s tasty (I know people who like the smell of a burnt match), for others not so much. What contributes to this? I think that the very manner of storytelling is so ordinary, detailed down to the atom, but most of all - the characters. These nameless four - an officer, a traveler, a soldier and a convict - are like drawings on cardboard from a box or on wrapping paper: gray, lifeless and amorphous. The only exception here is the officer, and only because his entire “vitality” and at least some presence of emotions are due only to fanaticism towards the system, selfless devotion to the old commandant and the machine. The rest is gray, but roughly speaking, not at all.
Rating: 5
The colony. Tropics. Heat. Convicted. Execution. Twelve-hour torture with a fatal outcome for falling asleep on duty. With a detailed description of the process, the behavior of the person being tortured and other delights that obviously should make us understand (according to the author’s intention) how cruel our world is. Personally, they made it clear to me that I wanted to stay away from the author’s work, from this quintessence of gloom and depression, after which I want to hang myself and forget myself.
"In the penal colony" summary You can remember the story in 7 minutes.
“In a penal colony” summary
The main characters of Kafka's story have no names:
- Traveler
- Officer
- New commandant
- Convicted
- Soldier
The story centers on a Traveler who arrives at a penal colony on a remote island. and sees the cruel machine for the first time. The officer tells him all the information about the execution machine and its purpose.
He is offered to attend the execution of a guilty soldier. A simple, somewhat simple-minded soldier, assigned as a servant and supposedly disobedient to his master, is to be killed by a machine with the words "Honor your superior."
Execution usually involved placing the convicted person in a “special kind of apparatus” for executions. The device works on the following principle: it scratches the commandment that he violated on the person’s body, then turns it over to the other side and scratches the same words again, only deeper, and so on until the offender dies. The criminal dies slowly over 12 hours
The officer is a supporter of the apparatus and considers it necessary. However, since the death of the old commandant, this punishment has found more and more opponents and the new commandant among them.
The officer asks the Traveler to speak with the current Commandant and support him at a meeting of the colony's command, but the Traveler refuses.
Then the officer releases the Convict and gets into the execution machine himself. However, the machine malfunctions and instead of the usual elegant operation, it quickly kills the officer.
After this terrible spectacle of the self-destruction of man and machine, the traveler, accompanied by two soldiers, visits the grave of the old commandant, who invented this execution machine. The tombstone is set very low, and the inscription states that his followers believe that he will one day rise from the dead and take control of the colony again.
The traveler leaves the island.
Kafka Franz
In a penal colony
FRANZ KAFKA
IN THE CORRECTIONAL COLONY
“This is a very unique apparatus,” the officer said to the traveling researcher and, despite the fact that the apparatus had been familiar to him for a long time, he looked at it with a certain amount of admiration. The traveler, apparently, only out of politeness accepted the commandant’s invitation to attend the execution of a soldier convicted of disobedience and insulting a superior in rank. Although in the colony itself there was no particular interest in execution. In any case, in this deep, sandy valley surrounded by bare slopes, besides the officer and the traveler, there was only a condemned man - a dull-faced, long-mouthed man with scraggly hair and face - and a soldier with him, holding a heavy chain, into which thinner chains were joined, shackling his ankles and the wrists of the condemned man and his neck, and also connected to each other by chains. And the condemned man, meanwhile, looked so devoted like a dog that it seemed that if you freed him from his chains and let him run along the slopes, all he had to do was whistle for the beginning of the execution.
"Would you like to sit down?" - he finally asked, pulled one out of the pile of folding chairs and handed it to the traveler; he couldn't refuse. He sat down at the edge of the ditch, into which he glanced briefly. It wasn't very deep. On one side the excavated earth was piled in a heap, on the other there was an apparatus. “I don’t know,” said the officer, “whether the commandant explained to you how the apparatus works.” The traveler made a vague gesture with his hand; the officer was just waiting for an opportunity to explain the operation of the apparatus himself. “This apparatus,” he said and took hold of the handle of the bucket on which he was leaning, “: the invention of the former commandant. I worked on it from the first samples, and also participated in all other work until their completion. The credit for the invention belongs to only to him. Have you heard about our former commandant? No? Oh, I can say without exaggeration that the entire structure of the colony is the work of his hands. We, his friends, even when he was dying, knew that the structure of the colony was so perfect ", that not a single follower of his, even if he had a thousand plans in his head, for many years would be able to change anything created by his predecessor. And our prediction came true; the new commandant was forced to admit it. It's a pity that you didn't find the former commandant! However, ", the officer interrupted himself, "I was chatting, and meanwhile the apparatus is standing in front of us. As you can see, it consists of three parts. Over time, each has acquired a certain popular designation. The lower one is called a bed, the upper one is called a draftsman, and the middle one the free part is called the harrow." "Harrow?" - asked the traveler. He didn't listen very carefully, the sun was caught and held by the shadowless valley, it was difficult to gather his thoughts. All the more surprising to him was the officer in a tight-fitting ceremonial uniform, hung with aiguillettes, weighed down with epaulettes, who so diligently presented his subject and, in addition, throughout the conversation, here and there, tightened the bolts with a screwdriver. The soldier seemed to be in the same condition as the traveler. He wrapped the condemned man's chains around both wrists, leaned one hand on the gun, his head dangled from his neck, and nothing attracted his attention. This did not seem strange to the traveler, since the officer spoke French, and neither the soldier nor the convict, of course, understood French. What was even more noteworthy was that the convict, despite this, listened carefully to the officer’s explanations. With a certain drowsy persistence, he directed his gaze to where the officer was pointing, and when the traveler interrupted him with a question, the condemned man, like the officer, turned his gaze to the traveler.
“Yes, harrow,” the officer confirmed, “the appropriate name. The needles are located like on a harrow, and the whole thing is set in motion like a harrow, albeit in the same place and much more sophisticated. Yes, you will now understand for yourself. Here, on the bed , they lay the condemned man down. I am going to first describe the apparatus to you, and only then begin the procedure. It will then be easier for you to follow what is happening. In addition, the gear train of the draftsman has worn out; it grinds a lot during operation; it is almost impossible to hear each other; spare parts here, unfortunately, are difficult to obtain. So, this, as I said, is a bed. It is entirely covered with a layer of cotton wool; you will learn about its purpose later. The convict is placed on this cotton wool on his stomach, naked, of course; here are the straps for arms, here for the legs, here for the neck, with them the convict is fastened in. Here, at the head of the bed, on which, as I said, the person is first placed face down, there is a small felt cushion, it can be easily adjusted so that it fits the person straight into your mouth. It is designed to prevent screaming and tongue biting. Of course, the person is forced to take it into his mouth, otherwise the seat belt will break his neck." “Is this cotton wool?” asked the traveler and leaned closer. “Yes, yes,” the officer smiled, touch it." He took the traveler’s hand and ran it over bed. “This is specially treated cotton wool, that’s why it looks so unusual; I’ll tell you about its purpose." The traveler was already a little fascinated by the device; raising his hand to his eyes, protecting them from the sun, he glanced at its top. It was a large structure. The bed and the drawer were the same size and looked like two dark chests. The drawer was placed about two meters above the bed, they were held together by four brass rods at the corners, almost shining in the rays of the sun.Between the boxes, a harrow hovered on a steel rim.