Blog Post #1
Group 1 (Arnold-Hudson)
Due 1/19 by 10pm.
Prompt:
In David Foster Wallace’s 1999 essay “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness From Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed,” Wallace asserts:
[…]great short stories and great jokes have a lot in common. Both depend on what communications theorists sometimes call exformation, which is a certain quantity of vital information removed from but evoked by a communication in such a way as to cause a kind of explosion of associative connections within the recipient. This is probably why the effect of both short stories and jokes often feels sudden and percussive, like the venting of a long-stuck valve. It’s not for nothing that Kafka spoke of literature as “a hatchet with which we chop at the frozen seas inside us.” Nor is it an accident that the technical achievement of great short stories is often called compression—for both the pressure and the release are already inside the reader. What Kafka seems able to do better than just about anyone else is orchestrate the pressure’s increase in such a way that it becomes intolerable at the precise instant it is released (61).
With this in mind, analyze the role humor plays in “In the Penal Colony” and “The Hunger Artist.” Granted, this is a difficult task I’ve set in front of you, but it should be rewarding. As Wallace reminds us further, the difficulty of understanding comedy and Kafka might just be that:
[…] the particular kind of funniness Kafka deploys is deeply alien to students whose neural resonances are American. The fact is that Kafka’s humor has almost none of the particular forms and codes of contemporary US amusement. There’s no recursive wordplay or verbal stunt-pilotry, little in the way of wisecracks or mordant lampoon. There is no body-function humor in Kafka, nor sexual entendre, nor stylized attempts to rebel by offending convention […] There are none of the ba-bing-ba-bang reversals of modern sitcoms; nor are there precocious children or profane grandparents or cynically insurgent coworkers. Perhaps most alien of all, Kafka’s authority figures are never just hollow buffoons to be ridiculed, but are always absurd and scary and sad all at once (62-3).
By the end of this course, you’ll be able to comment quite intelligently on the relation between jokes and short stories on a larger scale, but let’s keep these posts to Kafka. Oh, and for those of you thinking, “These stories were funny?!” humor is but one aspect of Kafka’s writing, and one that doesn’t get enough attention if you ask me. We’ll discuss many other aspects of these stories in class.
Robert Ballenger:
ReplyDeleteIn “The Penal Colony” and “A Hunger Artist”, both by Franz Kafka, the gloomy characters portrayed get what they have coming. In “The Penal Colony” the overall setting seems dark and mysterious and much the same can be said for “A Hunger Artist”. Kafka uses vivid detail to describe the intricate machinery and parts to the large machine that has tortured and inevitably killed many condemned men. He goes so far as to describe it that, though as detailed as it was, I couldn’t really picture it in my head.
The humor I could pull from “The Penal Colony” was of more irony than anything. The only man that still supported it’s use, the Officer, as a way of execution ends up being “murdered” by it after he realized that it no longer had any use in this new society where the inhumanity of torture is unaccepted. After freeing the condemned man from the machine, the Officer took his place hoping to experience the machine himself once and for all. Ironically enough, the machine breaks down with him strapped in and gives him a much more “inhumane” suffering than ever before. It’s not a stretch to say that the Officer got what he deserved.
In “A Hunger Artist” I was somewhat disturbed to learn of this man’s profession. It seems to me to be more of a lifestyle and less of a profession to be exact. This “artist” fasts for incredibly long periods of time for the amusement of people to watch him merely starve. The hunger artist seems slightly more than sad to see his “art” a dying talent. In a new growing society people no longer want to see someone locked in a cage starving. In the end he tries to outdo himself and starve the longest ever and ends up starving himself to death. I feel like he had that one coming to him considering the circumstances.
Society’s new ever-growing conscience on what’s humane affected both the Officer’s machine usage and the hunger artist’s profession. It seems to me to be the work of Karma. What comes around, goes around.
Emily Avery
ReplyDeleteIn "The Penal Colony" the main form of humor comes from irony. The officer strongly believes in the spiritual transformation of this "apparatus", yet when he himself is strapped to the machine it falls apart and breaks, killing him before he can recive this transformation in which he so strongly believed. It's also ironic how the machine breaks when told to "be just" when the whole nature of the device was in fact, unjust.
I also found it a bit humorous at the very end when the explorer seems to be in a bit of a hurry to get the hell away from the colony, after finding out that they viewed the old commandant as a joke, leaving behind everyone he encountered. When the newly freed condemned man and the soldier try to follow him on the boat he fends them off with some rope to make sure he takes his leave without the comapny of these colonists. I kind of felt like I could relate to the explorer, who seemed to be confused and truly horrified at what he'd seen and didn't know what else to do but flee. As the reader, I also didn't quite know what to make of the whole scene, feeling like an outsider to these people's crazy way of life.
In "A Hunger Artist" I also picked up on a bit of irony. I found it funny how the people watching the artist to make sure he didn't cheat, were butchers.
Aside from that, the humor displayed in this story was a lot darker than in "The Penal Colony." The panther that replaced the artist when he eventually died showed great contrast between the two. The artist fasted simply because he could not find any food that he liked, and because of it was lifeless and weak. The panther that comes in is full of life and power, and eats the food that he likes. This contrast is increased when the panther starts recieving so much attention, something that the hunger artist literally died trying to get.
Humor from the first short story, “In the Penal Colony” most directly stems from the officer. “Authority figures” in kafka’s short story were described as “absurd and scary and sad all at once” in our writing prompt. This description completely fits the officer. He definitely had an absurd appreciation for a device and punishment that were outdated and inhumane. Most readers more than likely follow a similar form of thinking of fair punishment to that of the traveller who was clearly uncomfortable with the device and procedures of this foreign land. He was so uncomfortable he contemplated trying to intervene in the process and save this man whom he has never met and had no relation to. Before the traveller could act on this the officer once again shows his absurdity by hatching a long drawn out plan involving the traveller. The humor here is he assumes the traveller well suddenly help him save this horrific procedure. Unfortunately for the officer the exact opposite is true, in fact seeing the machine and learning of it in person has made the traveller mentally denounce the machine and the process surrounding it. Being denied help from the traveller causes the officer to commit one final absurdity, using the machine on himself. The reader could tell throughout the story that the officer was sad that the ways of old were dying. This sadness drove the officer to the absurd state we find him in the story.
ReplyDelete“A Hunger Artist” has slightly more direct humor. It stems from the people who watch the hunger artist to make sure he is not secretly given food. It’s crazy that these people would go to such lengths to stop food from getting to a man who was so devoted to fasting. This is a man who got frustrated because he wasn’t allowed to fast for longer than 40 days yet he was constantly being accused of being a “con”. Humor can also be found from the fact that the only reason this man did what so many of his peers could not was not completely due to will power but mostly because he couldn’t “find a food which tasted good”. The very thing that people marveled at about this man was only due to something so simple. The fact that fasting was even called an “art” can be found humorous to some people.
Leah Bourgeois
ReplyDeleteIn Kafka’s “The Penal Colony” and “A Hunger Artist”, I found the humor mainly in the form of irony.
The humor in “The Penal Colony” first came to me when the officer was so impressed with his own apparatus and the traveller, who he was explaining it to, could care less. Also I found humor when the officer was, once again, trying to explain the apparatus to the traveller and at the same time the solider and the condemned man were fighting over the rice pudding. The irony of this story doesn’t come into play until after the traveller confesses to the officer how he does not agree that the apparatus is humane.
The officer was trying to slyly get the traveller to inform the commandant of what he, the officer, wanted not what the traveller actually felt. When the officer realized that his way of life was soon to come to an end, he decided to submit himself to the “artistry” of the apparatus. The ironic part was when the apparatus began its work, it malfunctioned and brutally murdered the officer who was so proud of its way of execution.
In “A Hunger Artist”, the only humor I found in this story was ironic. It was ironic that the people who were set to guard the artist were butchers. It was also ironic that one set of the guards would purposely sit away from the artist because they suspected that is when he would sneak some food in. Also an ironic part was, the people who were so fascinated with his fasting, still had no faith that he was actually fasting. The artist eventually died trying to prove just that and was ironically replaced with a young, hungry panther who drew and enormous crowd, which, in fact, the artist could never accomplish.
Kafka uses humor in his short stories to express the irony in trying so hard to impress people. In both stories all the main characters wanted was for people, the people of their communities’, to understand and respect what they believed in. The officer wanted the new commandant to approve of his beliefs in execution, once he realized that was futile, he submitted himself to death by the apparatus he so desperately wanted accepted. The hunger artist wanted his audience to believe that he wasn’t cheating and that he fasted to prove that it could be done, not just for the publicity. He as well died of trying to be accepted. In the end, I believe that Kafka’s use of humor was to show the lengths that people will go to be accepted.
James Bowie
ReplyDeleteThe Role of humor in Kafka
The role of humor in Kafka’s stories in the Penal colony and Hunger artist is Irony. The humor plays an underlying hidden part in Kafka’s stories. In the penal colony there was an instance of blatant humor when the condemned man puts back on the clothes that had been cut off him down the middle of his back. Kafka describes the soldier watching this and laughing at him, which produces a pretty funny scene if you picture it in your head. This blatant humor is not the main humor of Kafka’s stories it’s the hidden Irony. In the penal colony the officer describes his machine ecstatically in great detail to the traveler. The officer boast how magnificent the machine is and how it precisely inscribes the condemned mans punishment on him like art. How it’s a 12-hour long process and hundreds used to gather and watch the machine inscribe its victims. The officer is constantly looking over the machines fine parts to ensure it works and tells the travel one small part that doesn’t work could break the machine. Once the officer lets the condemned man free he decides to commit suicide using his machine for the last time. So this is it right we finally get to see the machine magnificently inscribe someone to death. They strap the officer in and the machine starts is 12-hour process. But of course the machine breaks down and crudely stabs the officer to death in the most un magnificent manner. Very ironic because the officer who seemed to almost worship the machine and its process of killing people gets on it and it breaks down and totally skips the elaborate inscribing process and crudely stabs him to death.
Vanessa Hernandez
ReplyDeleteWhile reading “In the Penal Colony” I thought there were a lot of funny moments between the officer and the traveler. The officer is introduced and known for only showing emotion toward his death machine and the old commandant. But when the traveler questioned the officer about the condemned man’s sentence, I thought it was very funny how the condemned man did not even know his sentence as well as his funny gestures and his trying to understand the conversations between the traveler and the officer.
The humor in “A Hunger Artist” did not affect me the same way “In the Penal Colony” did. The mental image of a man who had his ribs stick out prominently, and his bony little arms didn’t amuse me. I wasn’t really seeing Kafka’s humor until the very end when I pieced everything together. I found it to be really ironic, and then I could laugh at this old man’s stubbornness. The hunger artist thought he couldn’t do anything, but fast. The officer just wanted to be admired for his ideas toward his execution device. Both of their needs for attention seem intentional by Kafka. Everyone strives for attention at some point, but the price can be extreme if it’s not handled right.
Sarah Brumfield
ReplyDeleteThe humor in Kafka’s writing is very hard to see from the modern American point of view but can still be deciphered. In “The Penal Colony” I feel that humor comes from the Officer getting what he deserves. Who does not feel at least a little bit of relief or enjoyment when the bad guy gets what he deserves? The Officer finds the machine beautiful and magnificent and almost seems honored to have this machine take his life.
Even though it came across as very dark and depressing, I can see the humor when the Officers beloved machine severely malfunctions as it kills him. He puts so much time in effort into the machine that you expect the outcome to be perfect, when the opposite actually happens. The machine falls apart and completely destroys the Officer’s body instead of writing “be just”. The fact that “be just” was not written on the officer is also humorous because the Officer seems to be the definition of “just”.
The humor in “A Hunger Artist” was harder for me to see. After I read it over several times, though, I did find a few things. Butchers watching the hunger artist to make sure he does not eat? That is obvious irony. Butchers are perceived to be fat happy people who always have plenty to eat because that’s half of what they do for a living. While on the other hand, the hunger artist eats nothing and is excessively thin and very depressed. I also found it humorous that the Hunger Artists goes to the circus after he loses so much of his audience. To me, I see the circus as just a huge joke. Why go to the circus if you want to be taken seriously? I go to the circus to laugh, not to understand things deeply. And the panther! The Panther got exactly what the Hunger Artist wanted by eating and staying strong and proud, the very opposite of what the Artist did.
In the short stories, “In the Penal Colony” and “The Hunger Artist” Kafka uses many literary devices to strike the readers interest and attention. One of these devices, strangely enough, is humor. Not a funny humor but a dark analytic humor. Throughout the story “In the Penal Colony,” the Officer is the main foundation for humor. His character is very disciplined as he shows the Traveler an apparatus in which he is very proud, ironic because the machine is inhumane and disgusting. The machine is designed to basically torture an individual to death who is being punished, and as the Officer is describing the functions of the machine the man being punished is simply standing there unaware of the bleak future awaiting him. The Officer becomes irritated when interrupted while describing the contraption because he is terribly anticipating watching it boom into action; he even stops to marvel at the cotton wool lining that the Condemned man will be lying on. This is humorous because in the end, he himself is the one that is forced to lie and endure the torture in the machine he has admired and worked so hard to keep in working condition.
ReplyDeleteIn the story “The Hunger Artist,” Kafka uses a more direct approach to express humor. The story is about a man who lives his life as a Hunger Artist, starving himself for forty days in the public eye for what seems attention and fame. Soon, society becomes bored and uninterested in the fact that this man can fast for forty days so he loses popularity. However, he continues fasting, not only for forty days but endlessly it seems even though the crowds of interest have vanished. In the end, it is discovered that the man never did this for the fame and fortune but because he simply never found a satisfying food.
In both of Kafka’s short stories, “The Penal Colony” and “A Hunger Artist,” there seems to be cast an overbearing sense of gloom and imminent disaster. Personally, I find it ironic that in our prompt we are instructed to find humor in such a bleak collection of words.
ReplyDeleteIn “The Penal Colony,” there were elements of humor in the form of both absurdity and irony. The Officer in the story put great stock into this apparatus used to torture, maim, and eventually kill men condemned for crimes they most likely did not even commit. His absolute adoration of this object of execution was exaggerated to the point of ludicrousness. Not only was his obsession with the machine ridiculous, but his passion for the former Commandant nearly exceeded the level of hero worship. The irony of the story was displayed most obviously in two ways. The first being that this machine that he so meticulously and immaculately cared for ultimately breaks into pieces as he is trying to carry out his own sentence. The second of which is that after fighting to persuade the Traveler of its intricately ingenious inscribing process, the only sentence the Traveler gets to see carried out ends in an uncouth massacre, utterly besmirching the almost fantastical reputation of the machine.
In “The Hunger Artist” I find the most ironic thing to be that throughout the story Kafka gives the reader a whole air of the hunger artist’s keen sagacity into the ritual of fasting. He fasts for forty days and wants to go on, to prove himself, to force the bystanders to understand what he was doing. When he joins the circus, he fasts for an undetermined amount of time that Kafka alludes to being quite longer than forty days. Again, he is proving to himself and to the menial amount of spectators just how good he is at what he does. In the end of the story, however, there is no hidden meaning to his fasting, there is no greater achievement, and there is no higher learning. The hunger artist could simply not find a food that incited the hunger inside of him.
I like Emily's phrase: "dark analytic humor." We'll discuss dark humor (and "black humor") tomorrow, but I'm interested in how the term "analytic" plays. I'm going to ask you to clarify this tomorrow during discussion.
ReplyDeleteI also like Kelli's throwing the term "absurdity" in the mix.
ReplyDeleteJordan Bloodsworth
ReplyDeleteAfter reading “In the Penal Colony” and “A Hunger Artist,” I felt more intrigued by Kafka’s odd sense of dark humor. Though “In the Penal Colony” included more of this humor through out the story, the reader is still able to pick up on it while reading “A Hunger Artist.” The officer in “The Penal Colony” displayed majority of this humor. To me, his personality was quite odd and overbearing. I think Kafka wrote up this character perfectly in relation to the machine and sick humor. In “A Hunger Artist,” the artist himself displayed the humor. If it were scaring the spectators by rattling the cage or a normal and subtler style, this odd humor was again displayed.
Another key to the two stories was irony. The main irony was the officer dying on his own machine with which he enjoyed killing people. For this to swing around and turn on him is truly ironic. Also, I found it ironic that three butchers guarded the hunger artist’s cage. Having three men who constantly deal with food to be guarding the cage of a man fasting is just funny. In the end, we learn that it was so easy for him to fast because he didn’t like any food. To me that made his whole show a scam, but that could be Kafka showing some more dark humor.
Nicholas Filardo
ReplyDeleteIn reading “The Penal Colony” and “A Hunger Artist” one might not catch much from either story but the feeling of sorrow. At a second glance, however, evidence of Kafka’s dark sense of humor arises. “The Penal Colony” sets out with a man condemned to death by a certain apparatus, but he does not know of his punishment or reason for it. A traveler is present to witness the punishment and deliver his opinion to the current commandant. The punishment was to have the phrase “Be just!” inscribed into his body by needles until death. This is a cruel punishment/execution for any possible crime, but the officer assures the traveler it has been done this way for many years under the old commandant. As the event begins to unfold, the officer decides to release the condemned man. The officer chooses to put himself to death using the machine because no one shares his opinion on the judicial system. This is where Kafka uses irony to create humor in the situation; the machine begins to fall apart gear by gear, and the needles used to spray water into the wounds to clear them failed as well as the machine’s turning mechanism to flip the body over so it would not continuously carve into the same place. Of course, the machine would fail as he attempts to use it on himself.
“A Hunger Artist” tells the story of a man who sees fasting as an “art” and it is his profession. He exhibits himself during fasting periods all over the world. He wishes to break the limit of forty days set by his manger. He eventually does so with the circus he joins but only because he was forgotten. The crowd discovers him among the pile of straw and he reveals the reason for fasting most of his life: he could not find a food that he fancied. Really? Out of all the possible dishes in the world he likes nothing? This is a tragedy in itself. Just add some time and it will become a comedy.
Sonda Brown:
ReplyDeletePerhaps on the most gruesome level of all, Kafka’s intent to humor his audience in the tale, “In the Penal Colony,” and his personal style of comicality and absurd satire came off as mere irony and surprise to me. At many instances, I found his work quite amusing especially through the role of the Officer and his need to feel to be involved so heavily in the indictment of the poor Condemned Man. The very first thing I found amusing was the actual process of how the apparatus worked. I mean, what type of punishment, that’s legitimately equivalent to any crime, stamps “Honour Your Superiors” on you when you’ve broken a law. I would argue that this absurdness goes totally against today’s judicial practices for deterring and mitigating crime. This seems to be more of a humiliation issue rather than “let’s punish the criminal.” Another, maybe subtle, detail I found quite amusing was: who wants to eat warm rice pudding when undergoing such an inhumane form of capital punishment? To me, that’s like offering someone a lollipop that’s scheduled for electrocution death penalty. Really. The element of surprise came in when true justice was served—the officer is essentially killed by his seemingly more cherished possession, the apparatus. Wow! This wasn’t supposed to happen…or was it.
Maybe using a different type style to evoke humor, Kafka’s “The Hungry Artist” is too another collection of funniness. The Hunger Artist whom, for forty days, starved himself merely for that public attention and awareness. After paying so much attention, the public’s eye gets lazy. So what happens? He loses that fame and prominence he once held which only causes him to fast more relentlessly. The humor comes into play when we, the audience, develops the understanding that the hunger artist had no alternative objective or motive to his fasting, he just simply could not find a rational mindset outside of starving and eventually dying because of his need for that special attention he once had. Is it really that serious, Kafka?