![]() ![]() Insight and death go hand in hand, and transfiguration is the reward of those undergoing torture.Īs for the punishment, or torture, however, even the simplicity and precision with which the remarkable "machine" operates cannot convince us that it is justifiable. ![]() ![]() Yet there is also a philosophical meaning to this cult of pain. A moment that might tempt one to get under the Harrow oneself." This is Kafka at his masochistic best. In this story, pain is a major precondition for comprehending one's sins: nobody can decipher the Designer's writing except he who has reached the halfway mark of his ordeal. It was especially Dostoevsky's preoccupation with the interaction between guilt, suffering, and redemption which fascinated Kafka. In his Parerga und Paralipomena, Schopenhauer suggested that it might be helpful to look at the world as a penal colony, and Dostoevsky, whom Kafka re-read in 1914, supplied Kafka with many punishment fantasies. Schopenhauer and Dostoevsky are the two most likely spiritual mentors of this story. ![]()
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