“The Judgement” by Franz Kafka is a short story of a young man named Georg Bendemann, the protagonist of the story. The story unfolds when Georg’s father reveals to him that he has been unfaithful to his friend. Also, Georg has betrayed his mother by marrying a woman who his father detest. The story takes an unforeseen direction when Georg swung himself over the window of the room and lets himself drop. Virginia Woolf’s novel, Mrs. Dalloway, also takes an unanticipated turn of events when Septimus is also seen throwing himself out of a window. The novel features a severely mentally ill man named Septimus Smith, “aged about thirty, pale-faced, beak-nosed, wearing brown shoes and a shabby overcoat, with hazel eyes which had that look of apprehension in them which makes complete strangers apprehensive too.” (Woolf 14). Septimus is a World War I …show more content…
Dalloway, Virginia Woolf described the doctors as evil and heartless. Doctors who are dealing with mentally ill people should take into consideration that their actions can cause harm. They should display more love and the passion to assist those who need help. Although Septimus’ wife, Lucrezia, shows a lot of love for him, it wasn’t enough. Septimus still felt distant from society. Dr Holmes calls Septimus a coward and expresses a complete lack of understanding about why Septimus would do such a thing. Both stories have similarities regarding insanity and psychological effects of war. Although Kafka wrote “The Judgement” in 1912, before World War I, Georg’s father still may have experienced some sort of psychological effect resulting to the character he is. We can see Georg loved his father as much as Lucrezia does with Septimus, when he says “Dear parents, I have always loved you…” (Kafka 87) In the end, we can see that his love wasn’t enough, the father didn’t feel any remorse. Septimus and the father both have comparisons to each other. They are both mentally ill and they both have witnessed the horrors of
Irish Playwright, George Bernard Shaw, once said, “The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.” Inhumanity is mankind’s worse attribute. Every so often, ordinary humans are driven to the point were they have no choice but to think of themselves. One of the most famous example used today is the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel’s memoir Night demonstrates how fear is a debilitating force that causes people to lose sight of who they once were. After being forced into concentration camps, Elie was rudely awakened into reality. Traumatizing incidents such as Nazi persecution or even the mistreatment among fellow prisoners pushed Elie to realize the cruelty around him; Or even the wickedness Elie himself is capable of doing. This resulted in the loss of faith, innocence, and the close bonds with others.
Frederick Winterbourne, for example, comes to a realization of his internal struggle between conventionality and instinct not in and of himself, but because of Miss Daisy Miller. Winterbourne meets the young Miss Miller in Vevay, Switzerland, while v...
In Heinrich Von Kleist's The Marquise of O. and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper, the female protagonist is terribly mislabeled. The inaccuracies in treatment, administered by seemingly authoritative and knowledgeable characters -- family members and a medically certified spouse, respectively -- result in tragic deterioration of the state of mind of both the Marquise and The Yellow Wallpaper's narrator. The delineation of each character's weakness is comprised of blatant references to an applied infantile image and approaching unstable mentality. In The Marquise of O, the Marquise is thrust unwillingly into the external world; in The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is locked away unwillingly in an interior world. Though both are persecuted because of their gender, in The Marquise of O, the Marquise is troubled by the symbolic rebirth of her womanhood; while in The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is troubled by the symbolic death of her womanhood.
Bad choices are made every day by everybody. Those bad choices could lead to consequences that are going to bother a person for a long time. Even more, that person may try various ways to correct that error. The intention is good, but things can go even worse if the effort is based on unrealistic fantasies. This effort is presented as a part of modernist ideas. Modernist writers dramatize this effort through the tragic outcomes of the characters. Three modernist pieces, A Street Car Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, The Great Gatsby, all of them sent out a message to the audience, the loss of past and how it cannot be recovered. Each piece features a character who lost hope, strived to recover the hope, and ended with a tragic outcome. A Street Car Named Desire featured Blanche; Blanche spent her whole life trying to get some attentions. Death of a Salesman featured Willy; Willy spent his whole life trying to apply the idea “Be Well Liked.” The Great Gatsby featured Jay Gatsby; Gatsby spent his whole life trying to win back Daisy. All of those characters ended with tragic outcome. Blanche was sent to asylum by her own sister. Willy committed suicide after felt humiliated by his sons. Gatsby was murdered with a gunshot planned by Tom Buchanan. Blanche, Willy, and Gatsby’s tragic fates are caused by their false beliefs about life, which are proven wrong by the contradictions between the reality and the illusion.
The reader is introduced to an insight of Titus Andronicus’ cruel nature, after he ignores Tamora’s cry to have her first-born son saved from his sacrifice to revenge the lives of his sons that her Goth people took. This new interpretation of Titus as a ruthless murderer heavily contradicts the reader’s first impression of Titus that Marcus gave the reader. Marcus initially leads the reader to except that Titus is good and honorable man. Titus’ sudden act of violence makes the reader realizes that he has two sides to his character: the relentless warrior and the beloved hero. However as the play unfolds, an individual can realize that everything that occurs throughout the play is connected to the initial sacrifice. It is evident that Titus’ character goes through many changes, the not one but many sides of his personality are revealed.
In the popular literary works of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Franz Kafka’s novella “The Metamorphosis,” we are given examples of the importance of a profound narrative point of view in creating an integral depth to the author’s story and enchanting its characters. Through key placement of well-rounded characters, both works of art succeed in creating a perfect narrative point of view which illuminates their stories in emotionally moving ways. The Great Gatsby’s Nick Carraway, plays the role of a secondary character in most of the novel. Enabled by his laidback, trustworthy nature, he manages to provide an extremely interesting first person point of view on all the events surrounding him throughout the story. He also functions as the author’s voice as he reflects on the human condition of man, the American dream, and the “modern” world’s moral values. In “The Metamorphosis,” we experience a third-person omniscient point of view which is mainly limited to Gregor Samsa’s thoughts, feelings, and assessment of his predicament. After Gregor dies, the point of view shifts to his remaining family members, but we don’t experience the same intimacy involving their innermost thoughts and feelings; instead we are given an impersonal third-person narration. Kafka intelligently uses this technique to further establish the Samsa’s sense of morals and final adjustments to the situation. We are left with an unmistakable impression of the opposing natures man can live at and accept. A strong, well-written narrative point of view is evident in both these literary works; it is the character’s undertaken, excellent role in their expression which ultimately shape and guide the author’s stories into a masterpiece.
There are many different factors that play a role in shaping one’s life. Two of these, family and society, are expressed by Leo Tolstoy and Franz Kafka. Tolstoy’s novella The Death Of Ivan Ilyich draws attention to the quality of Ivan Ilyich’s life. Although he has a life the whole community aspires to, he becomes aware of the hypocrisies and imperfections that accompany it. Similarly, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis focuses on the ostracized life of Gregor Samsa who continuously seeks the approval of his family, but somehow always ends up letting them down. Ivan Ilyich in Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Gregor Samsa in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis both experience extreme alienation from their families, and thereby shed light on the nightmarish quality of their existence.
Justice and judgement, where does it stand? Well, in the 1960’s that was rather scarce. When the book had been written there were rather large issues/problems of racism and judgement toward people with colored skin. Harper Lee being the small couple to a few people who weren’t raised a racist, like the way others were supposed to be raised, she strongly believed that discriminating against another person based off of the color of their skin was wrong and she wanted her point across about her views and opinions with it, thus creating the book to kill A Mockingbird. Many people had their opinions of it, others being outraged because of their beliefs, but even so it became a very popular novel and received several awards, including the movie that came out a year after the release of the book in 1961 and became a huge hit, like the novel.
Franz Kafka, b. Prague, Bohemia (then belonging to Austria), July 3, 1883, d. June 3, 1924, has come to be one of the most influential writers of this century. Virtually unknown during his lifetime, the works of Kafka have since been recognized as symbolizing modern man's anxiety-ridden and grotesque alienation in an unintelligible, hostile, or indifferent world. Kafka came from a middle-class Jewish family and grew up in the shadow of his domineering shopkeeper father, who impressed Kafka as an awesome patriarch. The feeling of impotence, even in his rebellion, was a syndrome that became a pervasive theme in his fiction. Kafka did well in the prestigious German high school in Prague and went on to receive a law degree in 1906. This allowed him to secure a livelihood that gave him time for writing, which he regarded as the essence--both blessing and curse--of his life. He soon found a position in the semipublic Workers' Accident Insurance institution, where he remained a loyal and successful employee until--beginning in 1917-- tuberculosis forced him to take repeated sick leaves and finally, in 1922, to retire. Kafka spent half his time after 1917 in sanatoriums and health resorts, his tuberculosis of the lungs finally spreading to the larynx.
James Hogg’s novel Confessions is told through two distinct narratives. The first narrative and the second narrative represent the main character, Wringham differently. In doing this, Hogg illustrates that the narrator’s viewpoints have no authority. The first narrative represents Wringham as a “devilish-looking youth” who constantly tries to provoke an altercation with George (Hogg 20). He harasses George to the point that none of George’s friends will spend time with him (30). Wringham is one-dimensionally evil. In the second narrative, Wringham as a character becomes much more complex. Though he is committing wicked acts, his justifications poses the question of whether or not Wringham is as sinister as presented in the first narrative.
The extensive descriptions of Mrs. Dalloway’s inner thoughts and observations reveals Woolf’s “stream of consciousness” writing style, which emphasizes the complexity of Clarissa’s existential crisis. She also alludes to Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, further revealing her preoccupation with death as she quotes lines from a funeral song. She reads these lines while shopping in the commotion and joy of the streets of London, which juxtaposes with her internal conflicts regarding death. Shakespeare, a motif in the book, represents hope and solace for Mrs. Dalloway, as his lines form Cymbeline talk about the comforts found in death. From the beginning of the book, Mrs. Dalloway has shown a fear for death and experiences multiple existential crises, so her connection with Shakespeare is her way of dealing with the horrors of death. The multiple layers to this passage, including the irony, juxtaposition, and allusion, reveal Woolf’s complex writing style, which demonstrates that death is constantly present in people’s minds, affecting their everyday
Edgar Allan Poe uses the theme of the clouded judgment of a psychotic individual to further develop his short story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” In the beginning of this piece, the persona constantly tries to insist he has a sound mind by creating excuses for any demonstrations of insanity in his behavior. After he is finished with affirming his supposed sanity, the narrator begins to tell the reader a story in an attempt to provide his audience with an example of how mentally healthy he believes himself to be. However, the story the persona discusses is riddled with tons of logical fallacies, which provides evidence towards the claim the narrator is indeed insane, not sane as he thinks himself as. An example of the persona’s twisted reasoning
The Metamorphosis is one of seventeen works Kafka had published. The rest of his manuscripts he ordered to be destroyed when he died. The Metamorphosis published in 1915 is a popular work that is interesting to say the least and everything readers have come to expect from Franz Kafka. The story takes a look at humanity and the lack there of. Isolation also plays a role in the overall theme of the story. Analysis of Gregor’s character reveals an inner version of Kafka, his emotions and vulnerabilities in this twisted tale.
By the time I finished The Trial I had undergone a total revision of my perception of Kafka's use of the absurd. At first I was hampered by the excessive use of erroneous alliteration and was unable to decipher the motivation behind such baseless inconsistencies, but by the conclusion of the novel I was struck with Kafka's ingenious exposé of the true paradoxical correlation between sagacity and the utterly absurd. Through tact and literary manipulation the deliverance of such a transformation was truly articulated and implied in as such away as to completely envelop and situate Kafka's audience in the trials and tribulations of Herr.K's tragic experience, the affect being that of direct relation and therefore uniting the illogicality of the absurd with the irony that was twisted from the absurd.