Franz Kafka

Birth/Youth

Kafka was born into a middle class, Jewish family. He was born July 3, 1883 in Prague.  He had five siblings, three younger sisters and his two younger brothers that died before reaching age 2. His dad was a successful shopkeeper and Kafka grew up in his shadow. He did very well in school and when on the Charles University of Prague.

Prague

Adult Life

After receiving a law degree from Charles University Kafka when on to be hired by Italian insurance company. Kafka didn't like work for the Italian insurance company because they forced him to work long hours which left no time for his writing. Therefore after a year he resigned from the insurance company and found work at the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute where he worked until his retirement due to tuberculosis in 1922. He had many relationships and was engaged to be married many times but he never married. 

Influence 

Kafka greatly influenced the writing sphere with his works about the human condition. His short story, Metamorphosis, which is about a human turning into an insect inspired many science fiction authors. Constantly seeking his father's approval and his host of mental disorders inspired Kafka to write the beautifully, twisted stories that he did.

Death

Kafka died of tuberculosis on June 3, 1924 in a sanatorium near Vienna. Before his death he asked his best friend, Max Brod, to destroy all of his unpublished works but Max instead published Kafka's works after he had died. After his death, Kafka was buried next to his mother and father in Prague which is ironic because Kafka's moral body must spend an eternity with the one person he despise the most.  

 Kafka's Father

Kafka's Mother

What Dreams May Come

What Dreams May Come is a beautifully depressing film about how far one man will go to save his soulmate from hell. This film has a lot of parallels to Dante's Inferno such as the mere existents of hell. Before Dante wrote the Divine Comedy people knew that there was this magical place that you when if you were evil but no one really knew what it would look like. Then Dante came along and made the lovely burn-fire-for-eternity-surrounded-by-nothing-but-darkness hell that we know and fear today. Another similarity between Inferno and What Dreams May Come was that suicides go to hell. The church considered committing suicide a sin but didn't nessairy believe that people who committed suicide when to hell. Yet Dante, who thought everyone was going in was in hell, thought that suicides belong in hell. Even though his character in Inferno feels bad that they are in hell and doesn't think that they deserve it. Apparently Dante's character in the Divine Comedy is a lot more compassionate than Dante himself. But since What Dreams May Come was partially based off of Inferno the soulmate, Annie, ended up in hell.

In What Dreams May Come the husband, Chris, must go through the gates of hell to get his wife, Annie. When he gets to the gates of hell he see a group go people waving blank flags. This is limbo in Dante's Inferno, limbo is the first section in hell. Yet in Inferno it is after you pass through the gates of hell not before. The hell in What Dreams May Come is also quite different than hell in Inferno because in Dante's hell everyone get the same punishment for the same sin. But in the hell in the film, Annie creates her own punishment. In Inferno all the people who committed suicide are turned into trees and ripped apart by harpies day in and day out. In What Dreams May Come Annie (who committed suicide) is in this dark, depressing house, all alone, being sad. Back to similarities, when Chris is at the gates of hell his guide, Ian who is pretending to be Albert, points out a boat that guards the gate. The boat is named Cerberus who is the three-headed dog that guards the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno and in Greek mythology. Therefore parts of What Dreams May Come was based on Dante's Inferno.

This Week in Hell

So this week we traveled through Cantos 19-32 of Dante's Inferno. Though it is called the Divine Comedy, I fail to see the comedy in people being tortured for human mistakes. Maybe people in the thirteen hundreds just had really perverse senses of humour, "Hahaha, look at that poor guy being rained fire upon because he stood up against the all-mighty Church!" Yep, sounds like a barrel of laughs. But thanks to the all-mighty inter-web I have discovered that Divine Comedy was a lost in translation thing because comedy in Dante's time meant that the poem was of a serious topic. So basically the exact opposite of what comedy means to us in 2014. Anyway, as I was saying, we saw presentations from cantos 19-32 which is the rest of Malebolge to the beginning of the 9th circle.  All the presentations have been very good and I'm really jealous of all of the visuals because I can't paint, draw, sketch, trace, etc. Also everyone has really awesome reaction pictures most likely because that is one of the only slides that you don't have to put a serious picture on. I personally used Beaker from the Muppets because it was adorable and he always looks distraught and surprised which is a hilariously true combination for Dante's Inferno.

The interesting thing about the Inferno is that Dante had to think up all of the punishments for the sinners. Though he might have been extremely self-centered, Dante was a maliciously evil genius. Like with canto 23, where the sinners who were hypocrites had to wear cowls lined with lead but the outside was gold. So like hypocrites the cowls were perfect on the outside but horrible within. But Dante had think of punishments that were insanely horrible but befitting to the crime and it wasn't like there was a magical guidebook, "Horrible Punishments for Every Level of Hell!". Canto 24 was interesting because it was thieves being attack constantly by snakes. It's like Battle Royale except that one side is a powerless to do anything but suffer a horrible, painful death every time they regenerate. Canto 27 was fun because it included a bunch of Greek people that I actually knew instead of having a bunch of random Italian guys that Dante hates. Canto 28 was a tad bit gory and quite sad because a lot of revengeful girls are going to that section of hell. Rumors are started daily to split "couples" apart because it's "too much effort" to wait for a high school relationship to implode on it's own. Moving on to the cheery 29th canto where alchemists are punished for figuring out how chemicals and other science works to make everyone's life better in the longer run. Also if God didn't want them to falsify metals then he should of made them harder to falsify. So that is a brief summary/commentary on cantos 19-32.

Malebolge

My canto is XVIII which is the first pit and second pit of Malebolge. In my lovely slice of hell I have panders and flatters, which basically have to do with people seducing women or selling them for their own means. It's definitely a interesting canto with very unique punishments. Such as being forced to run back and forth in a pit for all of eternity all the while horned demons whip you if you don't run or get within reach. Or if running isn't your style you could sit in a pit of human waste… for all of eternity. The sins themselves have a certain level of awkwardness about them because panders are people who sell women into prostitution. Therefore this project so far has been very informative even though I wish I could delete the majority of that information from my memory.

It's very eyeopening to read this epic poem because some of the sins are so obvious wrong that it leaves you wondering how anyone could lack morals to that severity. Like with my canto, in the first pit Dante talks with a man who's there because he sold his sister to a marquis. Then the man goes on to say how many people there was in the pit with him. I know that this was written in the middle ages, but did people really have to taught that selling their family members into prostitution is a sin? Also seducing people to gain your own means is just a really bad thing to do. The people in my canto really deserve the punishment that has been given to them.

Hell

Hell for me does exist because it saves me from holding grudges against people. So if someone does something complete and morally wrong, hell is a nice backup in case that karma fails to get around to the person. My church also believes in hell but it's rarely ever mentioned.

To get into my hell you would have to treat another person poorly and not feel remorse for your actions. So if you repeat the same mistake over and over again even if you do feel remorse you are still going to hell. Also you also have to know what you are doing is wrong because everyone doesn't know everything. An example being that constantly discriminate against a person even though you know that that person is your equal then you are going to hell. If you take advantage of helpless such as nature and animals, even though they cannot talk doesn't mean they are less than a person. I really don't care about adulterators because less than 3% of mammals are monogamous and so the idea being with one partner for life is more society's idea of a relationship than nature's. The last way that you can get into my hell is that if you left the world in worst or the same shape as it was when you were born. I really don't care what type or how big of impact you made on the world as long as it's positive. If a person is too self-centered to look around and see the ills of the world and other people then they deserve to go to hell. That it how a person ends up in my hell.

Now for the punishment >:)  People who treat other people badly repeatedly will be put a total white room with no doors or windows. They will not be able to talk/make sound, sleep or feel anything. So the person won't be able to feel hunger, pain, happiness or anything that makes them human. So they will be able to move around this white room as they please yet no matter how far they walk in one direction they will never run into the wall even though they can see it in the distance. I chose this punishment because they will feel lonely and helpless just like their victims. If someone kill another person then as a punishment they will have to live the victim's family's heartbreak over murder again and again until they were truly sorry. Over all the punishment would match the sin or crime committed.

To go to my hell you would start your jounray on a tightly packed elevator that plays the most annoying music possible. The elevator slowly descends into hell and the closer it get to hell the more the lights dim until you are in complete darkness. When the elevator stops and the doors cheerfully ding open you gaze upon hell. Which happens to be a meadow with happy sunflowers and prancing kittens. Of course you are shocked because you thought that hell would be this dark place with a devil and a pitchfork. So you race forward towards to lush grass and warm sunshine only to find that it's made of mist, an illusion. From there you fall towards the place were you will punished until you redeem yourself and rise to the heavens.

People can escape my hell because I believe that people can change for the better. If a person repented their crimes that they committed in their moral life then they would be forgiven and sent to heaven. Yet if a person in complete apathetic to the damage that they caused in the moral world then they will stay in hell until they have changed. Everyone would be able to leave my hell if they changed because every person makes mistakes. Also it doesn't seem just that for  a poor lifestyle choice you are condemned to hell for all of eternity. So therefore anyone can leave my hell if they deserve to get out.

The symbol that represents my hell the best is a sandwich. No I don't hate sandwiches it just works. The reason being is that on your elevator ride to hell you are dreading going because you think about the fires of damnation and all of that lovely stuff. So that dread that you feel is the bread of my hell sandwich because I have never met a person who really likes the bread of a sandwich. When you order a sandwich you order it for the filling not the bread. Anyway when the elevator doors open you see a happy meadow with sunflowers and prancing kittens so you feel relieved and happy. Therefore the end of the elevator ride is the middle, meaty part of the sandwich. Then when you run towards and realize that it's a illusion and fall into the fires of hell. That last part is the bread again. See it's a sandwich of dread, hope and then dread again so maybe it's more like pie…

Now for who is in my hell. There's not really any particular person I would put in my hell just types of people. I guess some people from congress because they care more for their pride then the people they represent and they lie through their teeth so down in the fires of eternal damnation they go. Also any people like them who is a complete fake so I guess there goes most of Hollywood into my hell.  It's hard to figure out who belongs in your hell because it doesn't seem fair to pass judgment on people before they are dead. If a person is still living they have time to turn their life around but if they're dead then it was quite obvious that they can do nothing about their action. Yet for some reason it's almost taboo to speak ill of the dead so therefore it's almost impossible to name people who belong in my hell.  

Catastrophe

Catastrophe is the point in the tragic hero's downfall where everything just falls apart. So there's a hero just being awesome (or so they think) and being a jerk to one or more people. Then all of a sudden the rug to yanked from under their feet and they find themselves sprawled on the ground. While all their former "friends" are mentally and physically distancing themselves from the fallen "hero" or they are bawling over the loss of the hero. In my mind there are two types of tragic heroes. One type is the actually tragic hero where the audience is deeply saddened by the fall of the hero. The hero might of been arrogant but they really didn't deserve the fate they were given. The other type is the one where the "hero" was extremely arrogant and did deserve their fate. The audience still feels sorry for the latter type of tragic hero but at the same time they knew it was bound to happen at some point. 

Sadly or luckily, however you want to look at it, the tragic hero that my group studied was the tragic hero who was a complete jerk and deserved his fate. It probably didn't help that our film was from the "villain's" point of view so the hero was extreme jerk to gain sympathy and get the audience on the villain's side. One of the things that the tragic hero project has taught me is that when a tragic hero falls it's not only the hero that get severely impacted. In Oedipus Rex when Oedipus finds out the truth about what he has caused his mother/wife commits suicide and since since his children were interbred they will live as outcasts for the rest of their days. So not only did Oedipus become blind and exiled he also caused the death of his mother/wife and the social shunning of his children. In the film my group studied, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, when our hero tries to kill the villain he ends up being throw across a room, experiencing pain for the first time in his life and killing his girlfriend. Also since he was the hero of the city and he is now unable to protect it, the villain has free reign of the city. So the hero ended up kill his girlfriend and basically handed over control of the city to a villain. When a hero falls everything around thing around them falls too. 

Tourists and Drinking Water

This week was normal as far as weeks go it wasn't exciting but it wasn't dull either. I mean it snowed which is pretty.... normal for winter but still it's snow. Which this late in winter is pretty much just a pain besides the fact that it's pretty and supplies us with drinking water and tourists. Yes, I know it's a weird combination but it's true so whatever argument you are making in your head against it is invalid and futile. Because you will never defeat me MWHAHAHAHA! Where was I? Oh yes, the week, this week in LA (language arts not the city in California) we learned more about the tragic Greek play Oedipus Rex and started learning about the traits of tragic heroes. So that was fun.... and slightly depressing.

On a personal/ partially academic note I'm competing at FBLA districts this Friday which should be fun and insanely terrifying at the same time. The reason being is that I'm competing in a live event for the first time and that event is Client Services. Which is basically where you are given a company that you work for and then you go in front of a group of judges that complain about your "company's" product, services, ethics, etc. Then you are suppose to fix the imaginary problems that your judges created. It's a great competition for some people because all you really have to do is charm the judges into liking you. Unluckily for me I have never really master the whole "charm" thing but luckily the speech/conversation thing is suppose to be over the phone so if worst comes to worst I can always start listing off phone menu language options "Press 1 for Icelandic, press 2 for Latin, press 3 for Piglatin...".  I have to talk for 5 minutes so I bet a could come up/ make up enough languages for 5 minutes. I definitely won't win if I go for the phone menu option but life isn't all about winning. At the very least I and possibly the judges would get a good laugh out of it, it's too bad that they don't award points for creatively. So that's was/ is my week. Here's a funny picture about customer service for enduring my rant.