CRITICAL ANALYSIS
In a minimum 750-word essay, compare/contrast “The Pit and The Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe and “In the Penal Colony” by Franz Kafka in terms of the different torture technologies and the legal systems they represent. Be sure to address the following questions in your analysis:
1. What symbolic dimensions do the torture technologies depicted in each story have? For instance, why do the Inquisitors try to push the protagonist/narrator into a pit in Poe’s story? Also, what could be the symbolic meaning of the pendulum torture? In Kafka’s story, why are the drawings used in the apparatus for the inscription of the sentence illegible to the human eye? Also, what could be the meaning of the apparatus’s malfunctioning at the end of the story?
2. How is the idea of injustice suggested in each story? What details, what procedures given in the stories would make us conclude that both Poe and Kafka are depicting legal systems that are fundamentally unjust? Give specific examples from the texts.
For this assignment, you are required to formulate and develop a critical thesis statement, rather than state what is evident in a text or your personal impressions about it.
Examples of inadequate thesis statements:
– “The statements of the protagonist-narrator in ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ show that he has suffered greatly in the dungeon.”
– “‘In the Penal Colony’ by Franz Kafka is a creepy story.”
– “‘In the Penal Colony’ and ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ are similar but also different in many ways.”
Example of an acceptable thesis statement:
“The variety of sensory details used in ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ reinforces the subjective experience related by the protagonist-narrator and thus contributes to the story’s atmosphere of horror.”
For further clarification about how to write a good thesis statement and build an essay based on that statement, consider the following formulae:
“X is/isn’t Y” – poor thesis statement
“X achieves Y through Z” – strong thesis statement
Furthermore, you must use at least one scholarly source (a peer-reviewed article, a scholarly book, etc.). Please do not regard this requirement as an unnecessary hassle. Especially if you have no idea how to answer the questions above, reading what expert critics have written on these works will help you immensely. If you do not know how to do research on scholarly sources, please consult the friendly librarians at Fanshawe Library–they would be more than happy to assist you with your research.
I do not wish to bother you with compliance to a specific documentation style (such as MLA or APA). If you readily know how to use any such style, use it. If you don’t, just be sure to indicate your source(s) at the end of your essay AND use page numbers, quotation marks and phrases referring to the respective author(s) in the body section of your paper, in order to distinguish between ideas and sentences that are your own, and those that come from other sources. Basically, do what I do in my lecture slides. If you need further help on this point, please let me know.
