A Battle with Invisible Enemies in Kafka's The Trail
A sudden intrusion disrupts Joseph's peaceful life and brings him in a battle of life and death. Unlike usual warfare, Joseph is combating the enemies who can neither be seen nor can fight back. Begin with the arrest and end with an execution, what judges the main character is not merely the invisible power but also the decaying law.i[i] One of the main ideas, "A Battle with Invisible Enemies," in The Trail could be applied to the situation of Joseph as it applies to the theme of the fiction. Secondly the main character's action in the novel also brings out the idea of his struggling. The theme either appears in the dialogue between Joseph K. and the inspector. Moreover, the structure is under the influence of the idea. Finally, variations of the idea show some profound implications of human society.
To Joseph K., the situation itself is a mystery. This is a story about a normal person suffers from absurd circumstances. One fine morning, an unknown person arrested K. without any reason. It suggests that "The opening of The Trail conveys a public intrusion into the private sphere as men, who seem to be state officials but turn out to be also associated with his place of work, penetrate a citizen's bedroom and arrest him."ii[ii] And it is just the beginning of series disasters. As Joseph tries to understand what actually happens, he receives only this answer, "We are not authorized to tell you that." (p. 6) In later the parts of The Trail, K. is treated as a suspect and investigated by an inspector. However, the whole process of the arrest and investigation seems to be not only illegal but also arbitrary and absurd. Even in the judgment, K. is ex...
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vii[vii] Speirs and Sandberg, 87.
viii[viii] Stanley Corngold, Franz Kafka: The Necessity of Form. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988) 248.
ix[ix] Speirs and Sandberg, 97.
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The Puritan life is based purely on sin. The Puritans believe that all people are sinners and are thus despised and hated by God. Sinners are subject to the worst punishments and suffer the worst torment. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, several characters serve as models of sinners in agony from their error. Both Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne bear the punishment of their adultery, which evidenced itself in their daughter Pearl. While Dimmesdale plagues himself with guilt and Hester lives with the brand of the scarlet "A", it is Pearl who receives the worst penalty, suffering for a sin which she did not even commit. The village where she resides associates her with the circumstances of her birth, branding her with a reputation as difficult to bear as her mother's. Although many in Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter endure the results of sin, none have punishment equal to that of little Pearl's.
The Metamorphosis is said to be one of Franz Kafka's best works of literature. It shows the difficulties of living in a modern society and the struggle for acceptance of others when in a time of need. In this novel Kafka directly reflects upon many of the negative aspects of his personal life, both mentally and physically. The relationship between Gregor and his father is in many ways similar to Franz and his father Herrman. The Metamorphosis also shows resemblance to some of Kafka's diary entries that depict him imagining his own extinction by dozens of elaborated methods. This paper will look into the text to show how this is a story about the author's personal life portrayed through his dream-like fantasies.
Angus, Douglas. Kafka's Metamorphosis and "The Beauty and the Beast" Tale. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. 53, No. 1. Jan., 1954, pp. 69-71. Print.
Kafka, Franz. The Metamorphosis. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama and Writing. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th Compact Ed. New York: Longman, 2013. 268-98. Print.
Bruce, Iris. "Elements of Jewish Folklore in Kafka's Metamorphosis." The Metamorphosis: Translation, Backgrounds and Contexts, Criticism. New York: W.W. Norton, 1996. 107-25. Print.
American children should be educated more about the psychological trauma that co-exists with foreign wars. The violence of the war spreads though the nation, having a major affect on the children. Children are more vulnerable to suffering from parental psychological problems. Since children are inherently dependent on their parents that makes them vulnerable to suffering from the same problems that they see in their parents. Studies have shown that children with parents that served in the military have a higher risk of undergoing child abuse. American children should understand the costs of war and its consequences both in the emotional effects of physical costs of war and in the financial burden that comes with physical costs.
Physiologically emotions are closely related to arousal in the nervous system. They are a kind of complex feeling which affects our behavior by changes in the psychological as well as physical surroundings. The explanation of different events is done by the process of cognition; an important feature of emotion.
Many children are born into families that are a part of a branch of the military. Parents may wonder if the constant moving and deployment will bring negative effects on a child’s development. The rigorous lifestyle of the military can have negative effects on the children’s development growing up, but the opportunity of living as a military child is a culturally diverse, socially strong, and mature development of characteristics. The military life offers many benefits for raising a child. Have a family in the military lifestyle can greatly help the children’s development of positives characteristics.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, many of the characters suffer from the tolls of sin, but none as horribly as Hester's daughter Pearl. She alone suffers from sin that is not hers, but rather that of her mother's. From the day she is conceived, Pearl is portrayed as an offspring of vice. She is introduced into the discerning, pitiless domain of the Puritan religion from inside a jail; a place untouched by light, as is the depth of her mother's sin. The austere Puritan ways punish Hester through banishment from the community and the church, simultaneously punishing Pearl in the process. This isolation leads to an unspoken detachment and animosity between her and the other Puritan children. Thus we see how Pearl is conceived through sin, and how she suffers when her mother and the community situate this deed upon her like the scarlet letter on her mother's bosom.
Updike, John. Kafka and the Metamorphosis. Literature and Its Writers: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 2nd ed. Ed. Ann Charters and Samuel Charters. Boston: Bedford, 2001 545-548.
Military kids are the ones that have it the hardest, they didn’t chose this lifestyle that they were brought into. Surprisingly, most of the time they are rather resilient. Military families are faces with numerous challenges and opportunities that help them develop diverse strengths
The Tarchanoff Response is a change in DC potential across neurones of the autonomic nervous system connected to the sensori-motor strip of the cortex. This change was found to be related to the level of cortical arousal. The emotional charge on a word, heard by a subject, would have an immediate effect on the subject's level of arousal, and cause this physiological response. Because the hands have a particularly large representation of nerve endings on the sensori-motor strip of the cortex, hand-held electrodes are ideal. As arousal increases, the "fight or flight" stress response of the autonomic nervous system comes into action, and adrenaline causes increased sweating amongst many other phenomena, but the speed of sweating response is nowhere near as instantaneous or accurate as the Tarchanoff response.
Neumann, Gerhard. "The Judgement, Letter to His Father, and the Bourgeois Family." Trans. Stanley Corngold. Reading Kafka. Ed. Mark Anderson. New York: Schocken, 1989. 215-28.
Kafka, Franz. "The Metamorphosis". The Metamorphosis. Trans. Donna Freed and Ed. George Stade. New York: Barnes and Nobles, 2003.
The mental development of a military child is effected by military life and the overall lifestyle of the family from their beliefs, morals, and spirituality. When counseling and mentoring children, challenges they endure need to be taken into consideration such as disability, deployment, and family culture. Deployments impacts children emotionally, academically, socially, and causes them to react with anger and violence. Counselors and community resources play a role in assisting military families through these significant events. Factors that affect the mental development of a military child includes but not limited to military divorces, long separations, due to extended training events or combat deployments, long work hours and parenting style. Having a child that shows signs of a serious intellectual, emotional, or physical disability can be very problematic for a military family. Children with disabilities that cause their behavior to affect their reaction to life can place a significant strain on the family dynamic. Everyone in the household will be affected by the disability and will have to receive counseling to better understand how to live a productive life.