How many times do we chafe against the repetition/Straining against the fate/Measured out in coffee breaks
–Neil Peart
Seems the game I’ve played has made you strong/
When the game is over I won’t walk out the loser/
I know I’ll walk out of here again/
I know someday I’ll walk out of here again/But now I’m trapped
—Bruce Springsteen
A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul. –Franz Kafka
There’s a guy I used to work with who is attending college and can’t stand his English and humanities courses. Now, truth be told, he works as a radio engineer, so he’s more of a gear-head than anything else. But, as he was struggling with The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, he vented to me about how completely idiotic the story was and how he just hates his class right now. I was stunned. I was introduced to the writing of Franz Kafka in my freshman year of college and I loved his work! I read The Trial, The Metamorphosis, and The Castle and was just fascinated by the bizarre world Kafka’s characters lived in. As I learned more about Kafka and some of what he was writing about (i.e., the absurdity of modernity), the more I liked him. When you’re a teen/young adult just out of high school, the sense of liberation one feels when starting the adult phase of life is pretty amazing. For your entire life, you’ve been under the larger and smaller forces of control (i.e., parents, teachers, school, etc), but there’s a brief moment when it all feels like the world really is yours. Possibilities abound, and it seems whatever dreams you had lying dormant are now, well, possible.
But…Once choices are made, and you’re headed down your new-found path, there are traps along the way that can confuse, torment, frustrate, and anger you. It could be work, it could be relationships, it could be the norms of society. Whatever the case, these things are woven into the fabric of the world we live in and sometimes they become the most absurd things. Kafka was addressing many of these things in his work, and it just resonated with me.
For my young co-worker, however, Kafka frustrated him so much that he said he tore the book in two and tossed it in the garbage after completing his class. When he told me what he had done, I quipped that the Nazis were big on destroying books as well. Seems that the whole trapped thing has a two-edged sword quality to it.
Ml
May 30, 2007 at 11:46 amWow, isn’t it interesting how something like that hit you in such a positive way and someone else in a very negative manner. I guess it’s different ways of looking at life and how you relate.
I don’t think I’ve ever torn a book in two (maybe I’m not strong enough to do that 😉 ), but I have thrown several across a room in disgust.
Py Korry
May 30, 2007 at 12:47 pmI was shocked to hear that he ripped a book in two and tossed it. But you’re right about how subjective books can be for people.
Malchus
May 30, 2007 at 4:10 pmNice post, Ted. I was listening to “Kentucky Avenue” by Tom Waits as I read this and the combination of Kafka, the theme of your post and Waits gravely reflection on childhood made me think of a close friend of mine who passed away a couple of years ago. He was a big Kafka fan (Waits and Springsteen, too) when we read it in high school and he struggled greatly with the many traps that caught him in his life. Finally, he got sick of struggling to be free and he just gave up.
When we were younger, he was the only kid I knew who owned a copy of the “We Are The World” LP, on which Bruce’s stellar cover of the song first appeared.
Thanks.
S
Lalapunci
May 30, 2007 at 4:17 pmWhen I was in college, I didn’t like my philosophy and my humanities courses. I didn’t like psychology either. I was a logical thinker, and more of a physical scientist. Now that I have a quarter century of life behind me I have come to appreciate those courses. Yes, I did read the stuff and remembered them. Some people just take more time than others to appreciate these writings. Ripping the book in two and throwing it in the trash can is extreme.
J
May 30, 2007 at 7:26 pmI read The Metamorphoses the first time in HS, and my Philosophy teacher was just a jerk…yet other classes did well with him…just bad chemistry in our class. So I didn’t really ENJOY or get much from some really great stuff, like Kafka and Camus…because I was always feeling defensive, because he would call us “pizza face”, “cockroach”, and things like that. I think he was frustrated, trying to draw us out of our silent sullen selves, and instead, he just locked us in there.
And even then, I never would have considered ripping the book in half. I just put it away, and read it again on my own, and LOVED it.
J
May 30, 2007 at 7:30 pmAnd just to show what an odd world we live in, I googled my old teacher, and came up with this page: http://members.aol.com/stetsonenglish/dokey.htm
What’s interesting to me, is that his daughter wrote for Buffy (also Charmed and Angel, but I don’t care about those). Life is full of delicious twists and disturbing turns, isn’t it?
Gina
June 1, 2007 at 8:26 amYou know, the only author I feel that way about is James Joyce, who I truly just don’t get. I muddled through “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” but “Ulysses” made me want to rip my hair out. But, I NEVER would have ripped it in two and thrown it away.
Kids theses days… 😉
J
June 1, 2007 at 10:22 amGina, have you ever tried “The Dead”? (Also Joyce) It’s one of the bests short stories EVER. Starts out kind of slow…they didn’t have TV back then…but it’s a beautiful story of love and marriage and loss. Check it out. 🙂