Inbetween A Rock And A Hardplace

Imagine waking up one morning and realizing you are different from the night before. Different in a competently different way than normal. You are a bug. A huge cockroach to be exact. This happens to a man named Gregor Samsa, in Kafka's Metamorphosis. Gregor wakes up one morning and he has been transformed into a huge creepy crawly bug. His first thoughts aren't, "huh, maybe I should freak out and get help or something." No, his first thoughts are, "man my job is taxing to my body and how much I sleep. I have so much stress catching the trains everywhere, and I should be getting to work soon." He then sees his little tiny squirming legs. Yet again-instead of freaking out and making noise until someone came to his aid, he tries to figure out a way to get out of bed and get to work as fast as possible because he overslept. To him, this transformation is only a minor problem in getting to the things that need to be done. He is so transfixed on his work that he has turned into the monster that we see in someone who will work, over everything else. He has a job. He needs to pay back his parent's dept, and he is looking out for them even though they have a maid sucking even more money out of their household. They have gotten themselves into this mess, and they have their child have a sucky job for 20 years to pay for their wasting of dough. Gregor is a really nice guy to take up this burden from his parents, but he is going mad with his job.

I noticed that Gregor's room resembles a lot of interesting things by itself. First of all, when he first wakes up he is described as being in a very rectangle- almost cage shaped bed. He is then described as being in a bland, also rectangle shaped room. He is surrounded by a door on three sides of his room, and then a window pointing to the sad gray world. He is literally locking in on 3 sides, and has a depressing view on the last side. His room is his cage. Another metaphorical thing in his room is his only picture frame. Instead of having a picture of his family, or a girlfriend, or just a friend in general, he has the women that comes in the frame as advertisement. Just from this little piece of info, you know Gregor is an incredibly lonely man. If you have no significant memory with family or ANYONE, you have problems and need to get out more. This just adds to the fact that he spends too much of his time working. If Gregor could just get his head out of his job for one minute, none of this would have happened! The moral of this story is: don't spend so much time working; love yourself and you will never be as helpless as a bug.

Understanding Franz Kafka

Kafka was born in Prague, Czech Republic, back on July 3rd of 1883. He had a stressful relationship with both his parents. His dad was a very opinionated clothes retailer who often took over the household, while his mom was a devoted homemaker who didn't have the intellectual skills to understand Kafka's dreams of being a professional writer.

Kafka got his first real job at an insurance company. He hated his new job from the very beginning, and only lasted about a year there before quitting and getting a job at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia. He was quite the player and was described as a womanizer a lot of the time. He got engaged twice to Dora Diamant but never actually got married. 

Kafka is normally seen as Jewish, with his writing resembling Jewish Folk Lore. He is still known today as quite influential and helpful to our understanding and skill of literature. Most of his works were about his own life in some way or another. His most famous peace is Metamorphosis. After his death, a lot of his other works were published, but he wasn't super known while he was alive.

In 1917, Kafka contracted tuberculosis right as he started working on writing again. After leaving his work in Prague to go visit his little sister in a Bohemian Village called Ottla. Once he went back to Prague he got influenza in 1919 and his health started deteriorating from there. In 1922 he quit his job because of his health, and went back to his parents house. In 1924, Kafka went to the Kierling Sanatorium and died there because of his two sicknesses. 

"Franz Kafka - Biography." Franz Kafka. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar. 2014-http://www.egs.edu/library/franz-              kafka/biography/.
"Franz Kafka Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 17 Mar. 2014-                                      http://www.biography.com/people/franz-kafka-9359401.

What Dreams May Come

So this week we watched a movie called What Dreams May Come. This movie was sort of like how Dante's Inferno goes, but it's not quite there. It deals with a lot of emotional pain and how the brain thinks, while Dante's Inferno deals with the body being taken with the soul to the afterlife, and the body being punished physically. This movie was really well made, and had a lot of the same aspects that Dante's Inferno did, but was still amazingly different, and had an entirely different story-line too. In Dante's Inferno, there was a lot of color patterns found in each canto. Red being the fire cantos, and blue being the further down iced over cantos. In this movie, there was also tons of color schemes. Every time a person was about to die, or had just died, there was purple everywhere to indicate death. At the very beginning of the movie, the character named "Annie" is wearing a red dress, with white underneath. She waves the red around like a flag, showing innocence as the white is exposed. Slightly later, both their kids die. It changes times and has a four year skip right after. It then shows the wife (Annie) in all black, with her hair cut, and she looks completely different, and quite fierce. This is to show loss of innocence and how she has changed emotionally since the loss of loved ones. This reminds me of Dante's Inferno because in canto 32, Dante literally attacks a soul, showing how much he has been through on his journey, and what he has seen. He has lost his innocence from this voyage.

I also noticed the role water plays in What Dreams May Come. The very first scene is of Annie and Chris (the husband) bumping into each other's boats on accident in a lake. This is the very beginning of their love story, and shortly after they get married, it shows them kissing in the rain as they shoot each other with hoses. At first water plays a very happy and relaxing role, but as the movie gets going, worse and worse things start to happen when it is raining. Chris himself dies in a car accident while it is raining on a highway. Shortly after his death, he constantly recalls a memory with his son in the forest messing around while it rains. He has a serious talk with him and how he struggles. This is a key component because his son is opening up to his dad, in a way we have never seen in this movie until now. What Dreams May Come and Dante's Inferno have so much alike, and both have a very cool and intriguing story of the afterlife.

Dante And His Kra Kra Mind!

So over the last week I have watched, in awe, all of the other canto's up to mine, which I presented today. I was canto 32 and it went well of course, because I'm such a bawler. I really loved all of the other canto's, but one stood out to me. The girl who did the suicide tree canto did it crazy well, and I actually learned what happens in that canto. We also had to make a visual, which she rocked the socks off of. There is a picture portraying her canto below. Anyways, I learned how this canto works, and how each tree is actually a human, plus the tree person gets to stare at their hanging dead body for the rest of eternity! How fabulous! I also really liked canto 31, which is where all the dead giants dwell. They aren't really punished, but they do get constricted with huge chains depending on what they did in life. Two of them tried to climb mount Olympus and start a war with the gods, but they were only nine years old, so they were quickly killed by Apollo, and are now constricted super tight in hell with the rest of the sinners. Pride is the downfall of too many stories.

I am actually embarrassed and proud of myself at the same time right now. I did my whole canto project in one day. The day before it was due. It took a crazy long time and really really sucked to sit at my computer area for nine hours. It really did teach me something about procrastinating though: only procrastinate whole projects if you can actually get them done in less than a day. I shall forever be weary when I get a big project and have to smash it all out in one Sunday like I did with this one. From this whole project I gained so much knowledge on Dante's Inferno, and would be happy to study Purgatory and Paradise at some point later on because of the good experience I had with this. 

Dante's Inferno

So, this Thursday we started working on Dante's Inferno, and the basics of how it works. We haven't started reading or anything, but we made up our own personal version of hell, which is in an earlier post. We had a four day weekend last week, and I have looked up Dante's Inferno a little to see what we are doing. I learned that the whole thing is a poem, and is written in vernacular language (common speech of the people of this time). I also found this picture and some like which are rather intriguing. 

I find it kind of confusing why "Treachery" and "Fraud" are at the bottom of everything, while killing people is only 3rd to last. I find murder rather terrible myself, quite worse that lying or stealing. I find it kind of scary being Atheist for one reason: if there is a hell, I sure am going straight there! I obviously don't believe in hell, I mean, if it only exists if I believe in it, then why believe in it? Why not only have a Heaven where I will go when I die? Then I don't have to always be depressed if I make a mistake, I can still be happy that Heaven is for me after-death. Luckily neither of those do exist in my mind, so I'm all good! Dante will probably have something on heaven or whatever, so I am excited to start reading.

My Hell

Hell is a place for people who have committed crimes against humanity. It is for sucky people who have done terrible things to other people. There are 6 layers; 1 being the least terrible punishment, 6 being inescapable and only for people who deserve worse.

1) To get into my hell, you have to do anything terribly cruel like murder, stealing from the needy, being a jerk constantly, etc. All around, if you are a bad person, and completely mean to, you are going to hell.

2) Like in Dante's Inferno, there are different layers in my hell, depending on how bad your crime was. The very worst crimes (mass murder) go to an incredibly hot environment with terrifying animals everywhere, but you can't protect yourself. They will bite you and rip you apart until you die, but you get re-birthed/healed every day at sunset. The people who did minor offences [arrogance to a whole class of people (sexism/racism)] go to a bloody body of water with no land. They will have to swim and stay afloat or they will drown over and over again until they get the strength to swim again.


3) My hell looks different at every layer. One layer for overly rich people who do nothing good for society is a table full of their favorite foods, but they are paralyzed with never ending hunger.


4) Anyone in layers 1-4 can get out whenever they have learned their lesson. Those in the last layer of hell can never get out no matter how hard they try. The 5th layer is where it takes hundreds of years to get out, but is still doable. In the 5th layer, the offender has to go through a trial with the person they have done wrong to. If that person sees them fit to leave hell, then they will be released to purgatory.

5) A symbol to represent my entire hell would be this female and male symbol. This is because everyone starts out as a baby. We are all born innocent and pure, but we choose to be good or bad. No matter the gender or race, we are all born the same way and anything could happen from there. People who choose the harder, selfless way of life will have a better after-life and those who are selfish and evil their entire life will spend some time in hell.


6) People in my hell: anyone who tries to force their religion upon me, saying that every other religion is completely wrong. These people make me so angry and I honestly just want them all to just go to hell. Also, anyone who commits a murder, rapes, pillages the poor, is greedy their whole life, is going to my hell to swelter away in the most terrible ways.

Presentation Day

So, today was the day my group had to present out movie poster on the tragic hero journey.

We did our poster on this amazing movie called Se7en. It brought every emotion mankind has from the viewer. The poster creation was awesome in the end with all the symbolism and creative little things we added (fingerprints and oh so much blood). When we were actually creating the poster, I kept thinking back to the scene in this movie where the still-alive-decaying-man was laying in his bead with all the air fresheners. It gives me the shivers every time I imagine it; it really was an ingeniously done movie. Everything to get the viewer crawling in their chair was thrown into this movie, and the amazing hubris and pride the main character has is overwhelming! The shear amount of cocky mistakes made in this video could kill a person (or 6 people; pun completely intended).

I also had to write an essay on Cause and Effect/Unity of Action. This essay was hard, time consuming, and when you read this Mrs. Cawlfield, I hope you're happy you caused so much blood and tears to be expelled. In the end I am happy we did this poster project because it let us have some relaxing time to talk and joke with our groups, while at the same time having made an extravagant, knowledge filled thing to hang on the wall. I honestly do feel that I understand the material of what makes a tragic hero's journey after these last few days of poster making and talking about the movie in depth with my groupies. I also learned what the 7 deadly sins of Christianity are, which is pretty interesting in of itself. All in all, this last week of work has been great fun and I learned a ton about film and basically just story's in general.