A Comparative Study On The Theme Of Violence In In The Penal Colony And Kafkat On The Shore

As one of the pioneers of western modernistic literature,Franz Kafka,an Austriannovelist, wrote the novel In the Penal Colon and Haruki Murakami, a renownedcontemporary Japanese novelist, wrote Kafka on the Shore. Both of them showedkeen interest in writing violent scenes in their works although they lived in differentsocial backgrounds and had different life experiences. In the Penal Colony has beenwidely regarded as Franz Kafka’s masterpiece and Kafka on the Shore as HarukiMurakami’s master work. Through textual analysis method and parallel comparativeliterature study method,this thesis tries to analyze the similarities and differences ofthe description skills and expression skills used to reflex violence theme in the twoworks mentioned above, thus revealing the realistic significance of the violencetheme in different times.The first chapter compares the prototype of violence theme in the twoworks,both of which convey the idea that the world is full of violence. Franz Kafkautilized Original Sin and myth to reflect the disorder of law, the supreme power thatlaw wielded over man. So man had to accept the judgment of law without knowingthe cause of sin and he had no right to defend for himself, and should be punished forthe unwarranted sin. Franz Kafka presented that law imposed tyranny on man andman had to accept it unconditionally while Haruki Murakami showed the evil in innerself by using prototype of Oedipus.Man commited evil,but his evil had alwaysbeen erased,therefore,man might commit evil without any proper reason and needn’ttake any responsibility for it. Quite different from Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakamiillustrated that the violence didn’t come from the outside law and rules but fromintangible and indescribable social forces. Violence existed everywhere and provokedman’s impulse of violence.The second chapter focuses on the similarities and differences of artisticexpression feature used in writing the violence theme in the two works from threeaspects:character image, violent intent and story structure. As for the characterimage, characters molded by Franz Kafka took on the symbol feature of violentmachines, while Haruki Murakam’s had the personalized features of approval andparticipation.As for violence intent, both of them used the rhetoric skills ofabsurdness, symbol and metaphor to describe man’s living environment under thepressure of violence. For example, Franz Kafka used execution machine to illustrate cruelty and tyranny and man’s destiny to be exiled while Haruki Murakami took acrow as a metaphor to describe the feeling of aimless wandering and destiny to beexiled for all human being and took a cabin in the woods to describe the fate that manlost himself in the process of escaping cruelty of the realistic world.As for storystructure, Franz Kafka used authentic details, fantastic and absurd plot to revealabsurd reality while Haruki Murakam used parallel structure to tell a common boy ‘slife experience and a story that all the students in the story lost their memory causedby a military army’s secret mission, thus mirroring anonymity and systematicity ofviolence.In the third chapter, the author, from the perspectives of family,society andculture, explains the underlying causes for their violence theme in their works. Bothof them tried to integrate their personal experience into their understanding of thecharacteristics of the times and human destiny in their works,and sublimated them tobe a literary theme. But Franz Kafka tended to expose a world full of flakes andhuman alienation caused by social system,while Haruki Murakami turned to revealthe apparent meaninglessness for human survival and that there existed a pursuit forhuman’s rebellious awareness about the ideal living state and regaining ego by tracingone’s memory.The conclusion part discusses their ideological value showing the authors’concerns for human survival environment. Franz Kafka described human’s numbnessand helplessness in face of the cold and heartless legal violence and indicated thatwestern civilization would be faced with a terrible future. And Haruki Murakamireflected the current social situation with co-existence of different cultures in Japan,which not only embodied the dominant character traits of violence in the newcultural context,but also the new future in search of freeing people from violencewith perseverance.