Brain Pain discussion

This discussion covers the story, The Great Wall of China


And now for something completely different*…

First response – this could have been written by anyone, meaning that it is difficult to identify what we would normally expect from Kafka.

Second response – the narrator seems rather politically astute for a peasant from a remote province, but his insight into the country’s relation to the empire is intriguing.




* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvKIW...

I felt there were seeds of Calvino, and Borges, and Kafka's own Castle here, yet I was overall disappointed in the result. It seems a little clumsier than the other works, and as thee put it (Jim), "...could have been written by..." okay, generic. Rough sketch.

Besides being an astute peasant, does it not also seem that the author is several hundred years old?

Zadignose wrote: "I felt there were seeds of Calvino, and Borges, and Kafka's own Castle here, yet I was overall disappointed in the result. It seems a little clumsier than the other works, and as thee put it (Jim),..."

The collection I pulled these stories from includes many manuscripts that were not published during his lifetime. I suspect that he might have tweaked this story a bit if he had decided to have it published.

I did very much enjoy the idea that the empire was so big, and the emperor so mysterious that the peasants in outlying areas couldn't say for sure which emperor was alive and which were from past history.

I connected to some degree when it reached the point where people laughed at the stories of current violence, imagining them to be part of some distant history, concluding with "So eager are our people to obliterate the present." The reason this seemed relatable is because I see how I and others also insulate ourselves from tragic news even when it's being reported in the moment. For me, that which is distant enough seems more like an incident of history than anything that could personally impact me.

This one does seem different from K.'s usual voice, but there are parts that do have his strangely inappropriate rationality:

"But how can a wall protect if it is not a continuous structure? Not only can such a wall not protect, but what there is of it is in perpetual danger. These blocks of wall left standing in deserted regions could be easily pulled down again and again by the nomads, especially as these tribes, rendered apprehensive by the building operations, kept changing their encampments with incredible rapidity, like locusts, and so perhaps had a better general view of the progress of the wall than we, the builders."

What this story makes me think of, or wonder, is why the hell he wrote it. It's not about the Great Wall of China any more than Amerika is about America. It seems that clues might lie in where it diverges from fact most sharply, or where we get that understated Kafkaesque exaggeration:

"Almost every educated man of our time was a mason by profession and infallible in the matter of laying foundations."

Of course we don't get any details on the problems a well-run society would have with this widespread specialization in the same field.

I usually resist taking Kafka's short stories as parables or allegories whose elements have a one-to-one correlation with some real-world thing being referred to or illuminated, but I think this one is more tempting in this regard, and even seems to ask for it. What are we to make of this:

"...I believe that the high command has existed from all eternity, and the decision to build the wall likewise. Unwitting peoples of the north, who imagined they were the cause of it! Honest, unwitting Emperor, who imagined he decreed it! We builders of the wall know that it was not so and hold our tongues."

Do we think that the high command and the Emperor have convinced the people of this (at the cost of some of their own credibility), or is this the end result of such a long-term project sinking so deeply into culture that it becomes an unquestioned given like religion or society itself, carrying on with an inertia that deals irrelevance to even its individual wielders of power, dwarfed by the size of the people and the momentum of history?

"The Empire is immortal, but the Emperor himself totters and falls from his throne, yes, whole dynasties sink in the end and breathe their last in one death rattle. Of these struggles and sufferings the people will never know, like tardy arrivals, like strangers in a city, they stand at the end of some densely thronged side street peacefully munching the food they have brought with them, while far away in front, in the Market square at the heart of the city, the execution of their ruler is proceeding."

Do you not get the idea that he's talking about something besides Empire and Emperors?

Gregsamsa wrote: "What this story makes me think of, or wonder, is why the hell he wrote it. I"

I had the same reaction to reading it. First, "this doesn't sound like Kafka" (except, as you noted, for the gaps-in-the-wall discussion). Then, "what the hell is the point of this?" Finally, "well, ok, why did he bother to write it, or I bother to read it?"

Maybe I should give it a second, closer read. Not sure it's warranted, though.

"who imagined they were the cause of it! Honest, unwitting Emperor, who imagined he decreed it! We builders of the wall know that it was not so and hold our tongues." To me, this is a Taoist remark on the same level as when Tolstoy, in "War and Peace" discusses Napoleon's idea that it is he who is controlling the invasion of Russia, whereas, Tolstoy says, he is like a child riding in a carriage with pretend reins, thinking he is guiding it.

Gregsamsa wrote: "Do you not get the idea that he's talking about something besides Empire and Emperors?..."

At the simplest level, I read it as the idea of a society being formed and held together by opposing a common enemy and acting as a group to defend against that enemy. Like the war on drugs, the war on terror, this week's blue light special war, etc...

The descriptions of the emperor, as a specific person, rather than as a symbolic entity, reminded me of a janitor I knew in San Francisco. We said hello everyday in the lobby of the high-rise building I worked in. The building was placed under new management, so I asked her in passing what she though about the new managers. Her response was, "I've been working here 21 years and this is the sixth time there's been new managers. They're pretty much all the same and I never miss them when they're replaced with new ones." Similar to the attitude held by the villagers - life goes no matter who is on the throne...

omg I can't believe you made me remember blue light specials!

Gregsamsa wrote: "omg I can't believe you made me remember blue light specials!"

sorry!!