great works in literature II 2850 kta 2:55-4:35— Shades of Truth . . .

1. The Myth of Sysiphus focuses on human’s life as on an absurd struggle between a desire to have a meaningful life and a cold reality. According to that worldview, the climax of a journey is the choice between suicide or life. In the Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, protagonist chose suicide. Was Bartleby’s death an acceptance to meaningless of the life or he died from his destructive lifestyle?
2. Surrealism is a connection between a dream and reality in one art or literary work. Franz Kafka in his book Metamorphosis built a dream-like reality. Unbelievable events are happening one after another but seems real and normal to every single person from the book. What is the purpose of dreams in the metamorphosis of Georg?

1: In Franz Kafka’s “The Journey,” Georg is ravaged by the four of the five stages of grief, but fails to complete the last stage – acceptance – which ultimately drives him to suicide.
2: In Franz Kafka’s “The Journey,” Georg can be seen as a representation of Aristotle’s tragic hero, who evokes pity, and reverses his fortune from good to bad through an error in judgment.

1. In Franz Kafka’s “The Metamorphasis”, Kafka intimates that there are clear limitations to familial sympathy. How do the experiences in Kafka’s personal life affect the way in which Georg’s family reacted to his transformation?
2. In Herman Melville’s “Bartbelby”, there are many ways of interpreting who the plot centers around and the type of hero the protagonist in fact was (Traditional Hero, Satanic hero, or Anti-Hero). Specifically with regards to altruism and charity, who was the protagonist, and what type of heroism did they display?

1) In “The Judgment”, Georg is very absorbed by the interactions he has with his father and the environment around him, with the belief that that is his reality. Is Georg in a position similar to the prisoner in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, why or why not?
2) Do you think Gregor Samsa completed the Heroic Journey at the end of the story? Why or why not?

1. Georg in Kafka’s “The Judgement” has many unique interactions with his father, how can those actions/reactions relate to the five stages of grief? If more than one, name and give an example explaining how that relates to one another.
2. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, a prisoner escapes the cave (fake reality) and sees a new reality. How can this be linked to Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis” in relations of Gregor’s transformation of a vermin, his new reality?

1. During the interaction between father and son in The Judgment by Franz Kafka, what leads you to believe that Georg’s “friend” is real or is not real? If the “friend” is not an actual person, then what is he? Use two or more quotes from the text to defend your argument.
2. In Joseph Campbell’s Heroic Journey there is a Call to Adventure, Refusal of the Call as well as a Crossing the Threshold. Which stage do you believe Georg from The Judgment by Franz Kafka is in and why? Also explain why you don’t think he has reached one of the three stages listed, support both of your claims with evidence from the text.

-Vyonna Etheleau

1. Do you think the father in Kafka’s “The Judgement” acts reasonably? Can his father be regarded as the judge of this judgement? or it is Georg himself?

2. In Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”. Can the death of Gregor be regarded as a suicide? At last who is saved? Gregor’s family? Gregor? or both?

Zeyu.

1. Within Herman Melville’s text, Bartleby the Scrivener, we see Bartleby through the narrators eye’s go through different phases as the story progresses. Could these phases relate to the five stages of grief?
2. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, gives us as insight as to what Sisyphus must be feeling as he goes through his struggle knowing that it will get him nowhere, however Camus proposes that once Sisyphus’s acknowledges that his struggle will never end, the power it has over him ceases to exist.  Compare this to Herman Melville’s text, Bartleby the Scrivener, do you think that Bartleby could be compared to Sisyphus as he acknowledged the mundane, repetitive, pointless lives we as human beings have in our lives?

1. In Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, we see Gregor’s family reacting in many different ways to his transformation. Through their varied reactions, how can we find a relation to the five stages of grief?
2. Plato’s theory as shown in Allegory of the Cave, we find someone who breaks out of a dark lifestyle after discovering the truth. In Herman Melville’s “Bartleby: The Scrivener”, can Bartleby be seen as the one who breaks away after discovering the truth?

1. In reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Kafka’s “The Metamorphosis”, while the “real” shadows on the wall are not real, what makes Gregor’s surreal state of being real to his family?  Develop a thesis analyzing the defining factors that make up Gregor’s family’s reality and create a contrast between his family’s defining factors of reality and that of the prisoners’.  A good starting point can originate from relating the prisoners’ unwillingness to break the thin wall of the safe and ordinary world in order to accept change versus their belief in the authenticity of shadows on the wall.

2. One of Aristotle’s ideas about the tragic hero relates to the concept that the misfortune of the hero is not wholly deserved and that the punishment given exceeds his or her crime. To what extent is this true in the text Journey to the West in regards to Monkey?  Was his punishment solely the five hundred years of solitude that he had spent under the mountain or was there more to it?  Were all the punishments given to him justifiable?

-Chi Zhang