Write a more scholarly assessment of Kafka (more scholarly than the personal reflection you offered). You should begin by selecting one of the scholarly articles below that seems relatively interesting and accessible. Note that all of these articles are written for scholars by scholars, so they are not easy reading. You should aim to get the main idea of what the article is about and what claim the author is making in the article. (We will be going over how to do this in class.)
Once you have a good sense of what the article you have chosen says, you will need to think about how to engage with it. This will mean thinking about the work or works by Kafka that are discussed and thinking through how what the scholar says affects your own interpretation of these works. You may want to sketch out some notes about the chief points you think are interesting in the works, and notes about how the scholarly article changes, affects, or deepens those chief points.
Your resulting paper should begin with a general account of the relevant work or works by Kafka: this might be called “setting the stage”, or giving the reader the relevant background for the discussion that is to follow. This account might be 2-3 pages. Then you should offer an account of the scholarly article – what it focuses on, what it says, how it complicates or explains what is being said in Kafka’s text, the cultural background it provides, and so on. This should take another 2-3 pages. Then finally, you should reflect on the issue. Perhaps you have disagreements with the scholar, or perhaps you agree, and would like to extend the discussion further by raising additional questions or problems. Perhaps the overall discussion leads you to think of today’s society, or problems humans generally face in their lives. You might think of it this way: suppose the scholar calls you up, excited that you have read their article, and wants to talk with you about your reaction. What would you say?
Remember that your job is not to offer a simple reaction: “Really thoughtful. Liked it a lot. Good job, scholar!” Rather, your job is to enter into a conversation with the material you have so carefully laid out.
The paper should be about 8 pages or 2000 words.