education and conformity

There is a large tendency among poor teachers to let students deny responsibility instead of accept consequences for their actions. Those who teach with with the opposite goal in mind encourage individual growth. The idea that success is defined as earning a high-powered job is something that schools and society are also inserting into the goals of students. If multiple people are inclined to achieve the same goal, and they're encouraged to grow individually, they will tend to grow in the same way. They will all try to be better than the rest in the same fields of study, they will be encouraged to conform while growing as individuals. Those who don't mature in the same way as the rest will fall behind in the quest for the same goal. So to give a person freedom by trusting them with the accountability of their own actions, causes them to conform to the expectations put on them by their society-imposed goal.

two questions on Kafka

I'm answering questions 1 and 4 in Jago on page 977.

1) The story opens, "When Gregor Samsa awoke in his bed one morning from unquiet dreams, he found himself transformed into an enormous insect." When you first read those lines, did you find them humorous? When did you begin to understand the serious intent, or did the fantastic or surreal situation make it difficult for you to take the story seriously?

I read those lines entirely seriously. The fact that Gregor is a bug didn't startle me because, although his reaction was extremely unreasonable, I knew exactly what the novel was about before reading it. It also doesn't help that most characters in novels are more like caricatures than they are like actual people, so Gregor's lack of shock didn't surprise me. I knew that Kafka was painting a portrait of a man whose most important trait was illustrated by his under-reaction to his metamorphosis. The story was serious from the very first word.

4) Among Gregor's responses to his transformation, we see anxiety, frustration, and surprise, but not shock. Why doesn't Kafka present Gregor as being horrified by the discovery that he is an insect?

Kafka establishes Gregor's unusual bug-like personality immediately. Instead of focusing on the obvious fact that GREGOR IS A BUG, instead he focuses on things that no logical person would focus on in that situation, such as his inability to go to work that day (just the way that the reader would expect a bug to react to a grave situation, nonsensical). Gregor's mind is so preoccupied with everything but his own well-being that he can't focus for even one instant on the clear and present danger that he is in. This is why Kafka neglects Gregor's shock reaction. If Gregor reacted in the same way that a normal person would react, the reader would assume that Gregor is also a normal person and the character of Gregor is meant to illustrate more than just a story, it's meant to exaggerate certain characteristics in the hopes of making some comment on the self-destructive tendencies of over-conforming, just like in Gregor's case.

group discussion dynamic

In discussing conformity, the least interesting aspect was the discussion about conformity. In fact, the most interesting thing to observe was the dynamic between four men discussing an issue that they didn't necessarily agree on. Generally when people know they're being watched, they try to behave in the way they're asked to behave or in order to give good impressions to people. That didn't happen with this group, instead the only thing that happened was the development of a courtroom type situation of all things. Hear me out, this analogy might get weird. Brian is the witness, Jeff is the examiner, Ravi is the judge, Eddie is the jury. So as soon as Brian took the stand, he made an assertion. That assertion was immediately challenged by Jeff, who was trying to create reasonable doubt in the mind of the jury (Eddie). Ravi will come into play soon, I promise. So Jeff continued his line of questioning, while Brian defended his logic (fairly well in my opinion), and Eddie was charged with deciding whether Brian can be trusted or not. So every once in a while Jeff will ask a question that itself was questionable, meaning that Jeff said something that was a little illogical, and Ravi steps in to clarify that Brian has grounds to disregard the question. Isn't that way more interesting than conformity! By choosing to start the discussion, Brian pitted himself in a battle to save the reliability of his point of view. Eddie is still in deliberation, but I expect the verdict to read thusly, "I the man of the jury find the defendant Brian Daneshgar... still reliable."

Marlow id a biased narrator

In Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, the idea of restraint is explored in depth. Marlow spends much of his time throughout the narrative wrestling with his own ideas of what he thinks is restraint and what he thinks is indulgence. When psychoanalyzing the narrative using ideas put forth by Dr. Freud, Frederick R. Karl makes it clear that both the id and the superego strongly influence Marlow throughout his journey. Marlow's narrative becomes fragmented as he travels up river, deeper into an area where the superego has no presence. In the deep areas of the jungle, Marlow struggles to maintain the standards of his superego. When Marlow is recalling parts of his journey where he is struggling to fight off his id, his language becomes difficult to understand. These areas of the narrative are where Marlow's id becomes visible through the fragmented text. The reader disagrees with Marlow in these sections of the narrative because Marlow's personal bias is included with Marlow's id in these sections.

the Heart of Darkness's symbols: dream vs reality

In Marlow's narrative, he paints a picture of the Africans that crew the steam boat as scary, mob-like cannibals. In reality we know from a modern perspective that the African crew can function as a literary symbol that represents the picturesque practice of restraint. After being virtually enslaved, subjugated, beaten, and starved, the Africans that crew Marlow's steam boat are able to restrain themselves from mutinying. From Marlow's point of view, we see that the sequence of events can appear to be much more dream-like than the reality of them. So from Marlow's dream-like perception the Africans represent fear and looming danger. The clash between the dream interpretation of the African crew and the reality based interpretation of the African crew are a great example for a psychoanalytical assessment of Heart of Darkness because of the large gap between what Marlow sees, which could be considered the id, and what the reader sees, which is considered the ego.

Conrad discussion question #6

The blind woman is supposed to be justice who is carrying a torch instead of the scales of justice. By carrying the torch, she is bringing light to the darkness of the jungle but is unable to see the light that she brings because of her blindfold. She is blind to the light that she has brought and because of the sinister shadow that is cast on her face, she is unaware of its unflattering quality. The light's sinister shadow is symbolic for the violence and immoral practices of the "light bringers."

Conrad discussion question #2

Marlow wants to recognize that darkness has existed on the map for ages, and is not a new phenomenon. Even the industrial center of the world (which was arguably Brittain at the time the novel was written) was nothing more than a frightening blank on the map thousands of years ago. Maybe Marlow means to warn his friends and crew members against prejudice and excessive fear of the jungle that he will be narrating for them.