UWM Libraries' Book Lovers Short Story Club discussion

Hey Everyone!

Another week brings another short story! This week it is the famously grim story of a penal colony written by Franz Kafka. for discussion this week I thought I would attempt to broaden our discussion by just asking people to post any thoughts, questions, etc... that you might have on this material. Personally, while I found this reading compelling, it might be to dark for my taste. What does everyone else think?

https://www.kafka-online.info/in-the-...

Lastly, the poll for next week will select our last story for this fun little online book club. I decided that instead of picking new materials we could pick from popular stories from our previous polls that were not the chosen story for that week. So, if there was a popular story you voted for but was beaten out by a different story then now is your chance to have your voice be heard

The link is broken.

Laura wrote: "The link is broken."

Sorry about that Laura! Does this one work?

http://www.arts.uwaterloo.ca/~raha/79...

My analysis in one sentence: Religious devotion to any system is extraordinarily dangerous, but humans have the power to overcome injustice if we can learn to think for ourselves.

I found the comments about the Traveller being from the West and Europe interesting; it is not explicitly stated that this island colony is in the East, but the emphasis on the Traveller's difference of opinion being from a "European way of seeing things" indicates that the island is in the East. Would this be colonialism we're seeing?

In response to Andrew, I see this as a parallelism with our current predicament; people have become so infatuated with Capitalism that it has reached religious status, and now people are more interested in upholding traditional beliefs than accepting the idea that a new system is necessary.

Interesting comments! I agree with Laura's analysis that there does seem to be theme and even a critique of colonialism. I think what struck me was not just was the device horrific, but so the entire concept of a "penal colony" it is hard for me to separate my personal perspectives and what Kafka's themes are; however, I will say that he does not write a shining endorsement of the penal colony concept.

I don't think there was any reference to the location of the island. I understand and agree with the point about it not being in the West because of the "European way of seeing things." My impression and thoughts were that the island is not intended to be in any specific location.

Completely agree that it is representative of current day capitalism, which isn't capitalism in the Ayn Rand understanding of the system. It amazes me the number of people who are excited to get a stimulus check and then in the next breath denounce someone as socialist. It makes me think of the famous picture of a guy protesting Obamacare with a sign that said, "Keep socialism out of medicare" or something like that.

I once went to a museum exhibit in Portugal that was "Instruments of Torture" and the device here made me think of some of those things. A lot of those devices were still being used as recently as the early 20th century. Insane.