As we're all still reeling from the Paris attack and all of its implications Dave and I have been talking about human behavior and how we just don't get it sometimes.Last week, while we were traveling through Germany, I found this book of famous German stories. I read two of the stories, both essentially about human behavior.
The first was Flagman Thiel, written by Gehart Hauptmann in 1887. In 1912 Hauptmann received the Nobel Prize for literature. Flagman Thiel is one of the most widely read German stories of all time.
Supposedly about the deadening effects of routine and denial, it's the story of a weak, poor man in a boring job who goes berserk and kills his wife and baby.
The other is The Penal Colony, a famous story written by Franz Kafka in 1919. If you know anything about Kafka you know he was not a fun guy. Anyway, the narrative centers on a "machine," that is said to be one of the most brilliant symbols in modern literature.
An officer is in charge of an intricate machine that is the means of torture and execution in the penal colony. It's a ghastly, horrible thing but the officer is meticulous in describing it and its various abilities to torture and kill. He is so proud of it that, in the end, he puts himself in it to experience what it can do.
Why am I thinking of "The Penal Colony" today? Because Kafka did a good job of helping us to know that human beings are, and have always been, capable of unspeakable acts.
It also helps me, today, in light of the suffering and death caused in the most beautiful city in the world last night, to think about the kind of human being I want to be.
***
