A Country Doctor: Short Prose for my Father by Franz Kafka

 A Country Doctor is a little-known collection of short stories by the incredible Kafka.  Each word compels you to read the next.  These short stories are the book form of an Escher painting.

Unlike Kafka's other story collections, I could not find an interpretation for what all of the stories meant on the internet.  I'm just not smart enough to figure it out for more than a couple of them, and if you know the meaning behind the one about jackals and Arabs, please comment.

Contemplation by Franz Kafka

Contemplation is a collection of short stories.  I almost wouldn't even call them short stories.  If they were short stories, they would at least last a few pages.  The majority are under a page and a few are even a single paragraph.  "The Trees" in particular is only four short sentences that are loaded with repetition.  Naturally, even the tiny ones are soaked in symbolism.

The stories are consistently written in the same tone as the one in the Beatles' song "A Day in the Life".  The mundane and the surreal are mixed, often at the last sentence.  Sometimes, the story makes no sense without the symbolism, as in "The Wish to be and Indian", where a Native American is portrayed riding a horse that slowly disappears.  Others are fun and the symbolism is easy to miss, like in "Children on a Country Road", which might not actually represent anything. 

In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka

A traveler is visiting a foreign island, and has been invited to an execution.  The officer who runs the execution machine is extremely enthusiastic about it.  He tells the traveler all about how the machine operates: strapped and unable to scream, a harrow-like device scratches words into their back that designate the crime.  The gashes get gradually deeper until the person gets stuck through the back and dies.  Around six hours in, the experience becomes religious for the prisoner.  The officer decides who gets executed without any trial, and the general feeling is that anybody who is accused gets put on the machine.  He is following the ways of the old commandant, who everybody loved in his time, but who the officer is now the sole supporter of.  The new commandant is against the machine's use.  The officer is ashamed about how the machine, once gleaming, is now falling apart, and it is getting harder and harder to find replacement parts for things that wear out.  The traveler has to decide whether to keep the machine and perhaps return it to its former glory or to do away with the machine entirely.  It's a no-brainer, of course: get rid of the monstrous torture device.  In the hopes of getting a religious epiphany, the officer puts himself on the machine for its last run, with the message "be just" and the help of the former condemned man.  The machine breaks down and kills him before he can have the religious experience.  The traveler then goes to a tea house to visit the grave of the old commandant.  It says on the tombstone that the old commandant will someday return, which makes the others in the tea house smile and laugh.  The traveler leaves, and the soldier and the condemned man desperately try to follow him.

Let's start with the message of "Be Just".  The old commandant is quite obviously is representation of the God of the old testament.  The officer bases his policies of being able to just pick who is guilty from the old commandant, and the number of followers the old commandant had in his day and the number of people that used to show up to the executions hints that the old commandant was always right when he chose the guilty.  The officer, lacking the wisdom or omniscience of the old commandant, picks those who have committed only minor crimes just to see the machine in action.  "Be Just" was the final command.  As the officer went longer and longer under the new commandant's rule, fewer and fewer people showed up and the machine was seen by the public as more and more barbaric, which suggests that the officer's aim has been steadily growing wayward.  The final command of "Be Just" was, as far as I can see, put there by an old commandant who knew that it would be eventually used on the officer.  The machine was designed to collapse at "Be Just".

The other thing that intrigued me was how the condemned man and the soldier tried to follow the traveler off the island.  It's interesting how he insists to see the grave and then leaves shortly after he sees the people smile and laugh at it.  Then the officer and the condemned man try desperately to follow him off the island.  The condemned man might have had a good reason, as the traveler saved his life, but the officer really didn't have that strong of a case.  The traveler might just have some relationship to the old commandant, though he is obviously not the old commandant's new form because he was ignorant of the workings of the torture machine.

The Metamorphosis

I've been wanting to read this one for a long time.  It's a book that I've heard much about, and I have before read its famous first line.  The Metamorphosis is beautiful and thought-provoking.  Even as he tries his hardest to make his ppresence better for his family, he becomes more and more something they would be happier without.  Shortly after his death, they happily buy a new apartment.  When he tries to keep his human nature, he doesthe things that disgust his family the most.  This dark tale s a must-read.