Analysis Of Kundera 's The Joke

Use the guided analysis exercises within the lesson as a model for this part of the assignment.

Franz Kafka’s trademark is ridiculing his and the society’s blatant stories in subtle manner. With the help of paradigms what can be seen is that Franz Kafka’s use of humour in oddly places to clarify the asymmetry of the organized world and heightens the tension. It was also used to create even greater gaps both in scene and story line, to further stress the blackness felt in many of his stories. Studying his works it’s evident that Franz Kafka saw humor not only as a defence against the pain and anguish he felt inflicted upon him by the outside world, but also against the pain he rained upon himself. This technique was used to stress on the horrors of the big bad world. Although there have been resemblances of the protagonists’ character traits to his own self, he has brought out not only his own problems but on how people magnify and in

Many people were unhappy, but chose to live a life of ignorance in order to protect themselves from the harms of the world, and to please the authority. Montag, the protagonist, was perhaps the most unhappy of all, thinking to himself, “he was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs” (Bradbury, 9). The underlying meaning of his writing could be interpreted as a jab at communism, considering he wrote his novel in 1953 which was during the early beginnings of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Communism can be defined as a theory advocating for a culture in which all property is publicly owned and each person is given a rationed pay according to their needs. In Bradbury’s futuristic utopia, people have no privacy and everyone is brainwashed into thinking the same thing. When comparing communism with Bradbury’s society, the similarities are evident. During the Cold War, anyone associated with communism would be scrutinized and excluded from the community, because those were the people who wanted to conform under the government. Bradbury is criticizing a power force that encourages a lack of classes and his proposed solution is to let the people earn what they deserve. While Bradbury believed that people should not conform under the government rules, Bellamy most likely would have thought that communism would have been a

With that thought in mind, we are back to looking at how Arthur Koestler portrayed the character of Rubashov as a vehicle to illustrate the struggle between the ideas of the party and of the individual. The conspicuous disagreement of the Communist Party is the contention between

Communism is a “Political theory advocating class war and leading to a society which all property is publicly owned and each person works and paid according to their abilities” After world war 2 communism took over Czechoslovakia and people flocked to join the party. Not everyone was convinced that the party was what the country needed for them to gain peace. The party had lots of propaganda and were in control of peoples live therefore convincing people to join the party even if reluctant. In Under a Cruel Star, Kovaly recounts her time after the war and joining the communist party and then being shunned when her husband was convicted of a crime. She talks about how people put blind faith in a party that didn't have much scientific evidence to back up their claims. Kovaly said the most people went to the communist party because when coming back from the concentration camp they wanted to be in control of property again and they stayed because they felt helpless without the party providing services. They went from one type of totalitarian government to another kind of government that controlled everything they did. People of the time didn't realize that communism didn't benefit people who weren't in an elite class.

This political cartoon (Document 1) conveys that communism is bringing chaos to Western Europe. Western Europe was being threatened and desperately needed America’s help, thus the United States was in a race against time to save Western Europe. Both the Marshall Plan, an American initiative to assist in the rebuilding of European economies after World War II and the Truman Doctrine, a United States policy to provide aid to help foreign countries

Molly Ivins once said, “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.” She has been shown to be correct in many works, including A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. In A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens uses his position as an influential writer in Victorian London to call for change and reformation. He mindfully mocks the workings and current events of Victorian London, and he uses satire to call certain situations to light so that they will never be repeated. This can be seen through scenes in A Tale of Two Cities, where Dickens mocks the London judicial system, the French nobility, and The French Republic which formed after the revolution.

How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, written by Croatian author Slavenka Drakulic, details the daily lives of people living under communist rule. She recalls a multitude of personal experiences she has had growing up under a communist regime, and the transition from communism to democracy in the late 1980's. Drakulic seems to have a general dislike for the way the communist government treats its people, and strives to relate these feelings to the reader. She opens her book with a passage about a friend of hers who killed herself by asphyxiating on gas fumes from her oven. Shortly before that she had written an article comparing the ideology of the communist state to that of a pinball machine, "Her article, naïve as it seems today,

The satirical novel of Anthem analyzes and articulates the effects of communism. Although a good definition on paper, the actual consequences of this impure form of the original governance, as shown in Anthem, are severe. There is no opposition in this satirical society. There is no argument against the leaders. There is no resistance, no adversity.

It was interesting to see the mindset of the communists and their desire to implement equality among all citizens to eliminate conflicts. For a few days, I praised the Soviets for adopting this seemingly harmless political theory until I read about the devastating effects of communism such as eliminating incentives and growth. Learning these small details that are often concealed allowed me to appreciate and even love history. Furthermore, I believe history allows us to learn from our mistakes and create a better future. By taking advantage of this educational opportunity, I discovered the correlation between the past and the future, which I might not have before.

In the story “Harrison Bergeron”, both Socialism and Capitalism are made fun of through extended satirical references.

Were it a testimony to the rigors and cruelness of human nature, it would be crushing. As it is, it shatters our perception of man and ourselves as no other book, besides perhaps Anne Franke`s diary and the testimony of Elie Wiesl, could ever have done. The prisoners of the labor camp, as in Shukhov?s predicament, were required to behave as Soviets or face severe punishment. In an almost satirical tone Buinovsky exclaims to the squadron that ?You?re not behaving like Soviet People,? and went on saying, ?You?re not behaving like communist.? (28) This type of internal monologue clearly persuades a tone of aggravation and sarcasm directly associated to the oppression?s of communism.

From Stalin’s Cult of Personality to Khrushchev’s period of De-Stalinization, the nation of the Soviet Union was in endless disarray of what to regard as true in the sense of a socialist direction. The short story, This is Moscow Speaking, written by Yuli Daniel (Nikolai Arzhak) represents the ideology that the citizens of the USSR were constantly living in fear of the alternations of their nation’s political policies. Even more, the novella gives an explanation for the people’s desire to conform to the principles around them.

Johannes Hans Bertens identifies a description of Marxism in his work “Literary Theory: The Basics”, by inferring the idea of choice within our world is in fact an illusion and that we are much more limited by circumstance than we care to admit. He further eludes that, as we disillusion ourselves with false potential, then we ourselves are alienated from the world in which we live. This is evident within the novel when Nick states, “life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all”. The metaphor suggests naivety and arrogance within society, reminiscent of Bertens feelings, whilst further raising light to the fact that much of the

Szymborska’s poem, “Brueghel’s Two Monkeys,” starts in an odd way. The reader is thrust straight into the scene of an exam, which at first seems all too familiar. However, Szymborska surprises the reader when the voice says what she dreams about as she takes the final exam, “two monkeys, chained to the floor.” This is a very odd image and one that is not easily identifiable to the reader initially. The poem contains two meanings, first in the context of the 1956 workers' riots and student demonstrations that led to the crisis and compromise of October where Poland was taken over by Stalin. These events provide a context for the reading of the poem as a