Meditation Compare and Contrast FLE

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Franz Kafka’s “Meditation” is a collection of short stories that allow the reader a glimpse into the narrators’ minds as they reflect on their life. Two of these stories are “The Wish to Be a Red Indian,” and “Rejection.” “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” uses structure, diction and symbolism to convey the narrator’s wish for physical escape and freedom. “Rejection” conveys a indecisiveness between adventure and routine through structure and diction. Both vignettes express a similar wish for escape while they use contrasting structures but similar styles.
The structure of “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” manifests the narrator’s wish for physical freedom. The majority of the vignette consists of short clauses that give the story a rhythm when it is read aloud. Repetitions of words, such as “quivering jerkily...quivering ground,” “no spurs...the spurs,” “no reins...the reins,” contribute the production of this rhythm. The repeating beat conveys a sense of rush, excitement, and freedom. Being the shortest of all of the vignettes in “Meditations,” “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” omits several pieces present in a conventional sentence. The sole sentence in “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” contains no independent clause, being merely a collection of descriptive dependent clauses. Additionally, clauses tended to omit their subjects, and parallelism between clauses is not preserved. The last section, “the land before one was smoothly shorn heath when horse’s neck and head would be already gone,” shows Kafka’s usage of unorthodox style. This diversion from conventional writing reveals narrator’s wish for escape.
The symbolism of the Red Indian further suggests a desire for freedom from restriction. The Red Indian represents a freedom from restricti...

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...al norms to convey an escape from orthodoxy. Both vignettes use symbolism and diction to convey their message of escape. Both the narrator in “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” and the woman from “Rejection” wish for escape. However, woman also desires convention besides adventure and freedom, adding to the indecisive and contradictory tone of “Rejection.”
While “The Wish to Be a Red Indian” and “Rejection” are different in structure but similar in style, they convey the same desire for escape. The two vignette seem to belong in Franz Kafka’s “Meditation” because of they have this conception of escape. After all, to meditate is to escape the physical world in order to look within oneself. Entertainment in general, including the practice of reading novels for enjoyment, is a form of escapism that allows people to relieve themselves from the banal aspects of daily life.

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