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Post by Marshall on Oct 23, 2013 4:45:20 GMT
One of the reasons DFW disapproves of simply telling children they have a self is because they can stop there. This is the concept that self is something you find and discover, not already have. I would agree with Kafka's lesson that the struggle is part of being human and cannot be escaped. In Siddhartha, his journey goes on for so long, it becomes an essential facet of his being he only surmounts towards the end of his life. The final step towards enlightenment for him was letting go of the desire to become enlightened.
It doesn't seem to ridiculous to posit that the positions put forward by Hesse and FW aren't actually opposed. For both are dynamic. If we possess self from birth, then couldn't discovering more about it be what FW is describing?
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Post by emwolfram on Oct 23, 2013 4:57:05 GMT
As children we are taught that "self is something you just have." This statement rings true. We are told that we are the owners of our self. That this "self" is something we have had our whole lives and does not need to be discovered.
In Siddhartha Self was discovered at the end of his journey when he had reached enlightenment. Hesse writes, “What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.” In Hesse's definition of self it can only be found when one is not looking. Though simple this statement reveals the underlying complexity of Siddhartha's journey. His journey is not a reflection of his self. It is just the path he blindly wander until one day he "finds" instead of "seeks." Upon finding this enlightenment and understand of Self, bam Siddhartha is done. He reached the destination.
DFW's interpretation of Kafka's idea of self is conveyed in my favorite line of the article:"That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home." To Kafka the discovery of self is not a final destination but rather a culmination of the journey towards finding self. We do not simply posses a self. We grow one as we endlessly search for self. It is within the journey and the search that Self is found.
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Post by danyhong55 on Oct 23, 2013 5:02:40 GMT
This is what I wrote about the self when we discussed about Siddhartha's version
What I understood from reading Siddhartha is that the self if ever present, but we must first find it. It seems as if Hesse is trying to get us to realize that the self is a state of being following the school of thought mostly defined by the paradigm, "Cogito ergo sum." Siddhartha must cognitively and deliberately search for the self, nirvana and enlightenment. What is important is that searching for the self implies the self is already there. But to find the self, we must have a metaphysical realization that the self exists, and perhaps, an interpretation of the self that Hesse presents could perhaps state that the realization of the existence of a self marks the beginning of the self. But even if the self exists, it seems as if we must work for it. Siddhartha spent most of his life searching for it. Certainly, we do not just have "self."
DFW makes the point that us American children are trained to think that we inherently possess a "self." My qualm with his statement is one which I had with discussions in class and on the forum. I've even mentioned it on my previous blog post. What constitutes a self? DFW makes a seemingly profound statement about the self, yet there is no substance behind it. Without proper definitions, communication goes awry. Someone, like us American students, may think that the self is one thing, while perhaps a more learned philosopher may define it as something entirely different. DFW only spends a few lines describing what the self is, My greatest assumption of the selfhood that DFW portrays is that the self is something you must make for yourself. The passage contains the personal creation of our self, our lives. We "struggle to establish a human self." It is not given to us; it is not something we just have; and especially it is not something we must find. Instead, what we make of life and what we make life out to be becomes our self. The similarity between DFW's and Hesse's trains of thought seems to be the prerequisite of a metaphysical cognitive skill in order to have a self. That's about it.
While Hesse emphasizes the search of the self, it is implied that it is there without human intervention. Siddhartha lives his life trying not to create an identity, but to find one. Whereas, according to DFW, Kafka portrays the self as something that is made. DFW seems to imply that the self is something we create, and we create alone. However, in Metamorphosis, Gregor's identity is partially given by his corporeal form (physical limitations, appearance, etc.) and his interpersonal relationships with other people. Though Gregor, throughout his life, remains almost the same, his self is radically different. He is very accommodating for his whole life: working to send his sister to music school, hiding from his sister to avoid showing her his grotesque form, and most of all, dying to let his family move on. This is his personal contribution to his self, but how he is treated and what he can and cannot do change who he is. When he turns into the beast, he becomes a burdensome and unemployed. And when he was normal, he was complacent with his life and who he was, but now, he cannot find contentment even though he is, in essence, the same person on the inside. The major difference between self in Metamorphosis and Siddhartha is that Siddhartha finds a previously existing, never changing self, whereas Gregor's self changes during the story and is made.
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Post by coreybrown on Oct 23, 2013 5:03:24 GMT
I agree that they're not opposite or "drastically different" from each other. Both the Siddhartha and Kafka self-approaches involve a journey, while the meaning of that journey in terms of self is different. In Siddhartha, the journey or Samsara is the path towards enlightenment. Siddhartha seeks to understand his Self and understand Om and follows a complicated twisting journey through many extremes before finding it. While the end result, enlightenment, may be portrayed as separate from the journey, it is not completely. The Samsara leading up to Nirvana is extremely important and is what defines ones Self and their achievement of enlightenment.
In The Metamorphosis, on the sort of other hand, Gregor's Self exits within him prior to his change. It's the summation of all of his experiences and struggles he's been through (keeping his dependent family sustained through a tough job) and he clings to it with everything he's got, despite his new bug appearance. After his change, he makes effort after effort to maintain that Self that he has worked so long and hard for (trying to go to work, walking upright, even suffering pain/injury). Slowly, however, his family begins to make changes that strip that Self away. They take his furniture away and can barely stand to look at him, but somehow still put up with him. As his human Self begins to be stripped, it's not quite gone entirely until the very end. Gregor, surrounded by filth, finally realizes (upon hearing his family's struggle) the burden he has caused and subsequently passes away. Additionally, in these very last pages, Kafka no longer refers to Gregor's family as such. They are no longer "His mother," "His father," or "His sister." They are now simply: "Mr. and Mrs. Samsa and their daughter." In other words, Kafka's Self is something that we build through our life's journey in our attempts to find it. And even then, that Self which you have lovingly built can be stripped away with a simple metamorphosis. While Siddhartha does not seem to agree with that last part, I think the Self that comes out of his story is one that is built through a journey towards finding the Self and Nirvana. In that way, they are a bit similar, while not the same.
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Post by gracepark on Oct 23, 2013 5:04:36 GMT
Self. It’s honestly such an ambiguous concept. We explored one aspect of what it means in Hesse’s “Siddhartha” but now we’re left with a completely different – if not a polar opposite – definition of what self is in Kafka’s short story with the help of critic David Foster Wallace. In an attempt to understand where these two authors were coming from, I did a bit of research on Hesse, Kafka, and Wallace. And to my surprise, my predictions about each author were more or less correct. According to a letter to her husband, Hesse’s mother explained that her son was a headstrong individual with an unbelievable strength, a powerful self will, and an astonishing mind. The fight against his tyrannical temperament shaped him into being someone noble and magnificent. When Hesse visited India, he was introduced to the idea of theosophy, a belief in the systems of esoteric philosophy that focuses on seeking direct knowledge of being and nature. Of course, it wasn’t until many years after that he published “Siddhartha” in 1922, which he clearly exemplified his love for India and the Buddhist philosophy and religious beliefs that had influenced his earlier life. After having survived WWII, Hesse spent the last 20 years writing essays and short stories that reflected his lifelong regret of not pursuing a talent for idleness. Kafka, on the other hand, was on the other end of the spectrum. He feared that people would find his mentally and physically repulsive. People have described him to have a quiet and cool demeanor with a dry sense of humor. There has even been some suspicion of Kafka having possessed a schizoid personality disorder which is basically a disorder characterized by little or lack of interest in social relationships which frequently lead to a solitary lifestyle run on secretiveness, emotional coldness, and indifference. Those who are affected by SPD are known to demonstrate a rich and exclusively internal fantasy world (hence the possible reason for Kafka’s fantastical story, “The Metamorphosis.”) Wallace also exhibited a dark history when it was revealed that the extraordinary writer hung himself from years of depression. Obviously it’s a common understanding that personal beliefs are shaped by personal experiences and influences. And that is clearly portrayed through all these famous authors and their ideas about self. Hesse absorbed himself with this idea of theosophy and the philosophy of Buddhism, and through this, influenced a counterculture movement that revolved the idea of a self that could be realized through the understanding of the unity of the universe and the resonating sound of “om.” Kafka, on the contrary, portrays a darker theme that is explicitly explored through Wallace. And through the article written by the latter, we get the idea that humans are bound to the ultimate horrific struggle of trying to find self. They’re completely different ideas but both extremely captivating in their own ways. Kafka explores this idea in a fantastical way through Gregor – the human cockroach. Just reading the ending of both “The Metamorphosis” and “Siddhartha” gives you a taste of what the story is like. Hesse ends his book with a promising picture of Govinda potentially finding the ultimate revelation of self and the ability to remove oneself from it to melt into the surroundings. Yet in Kafka’s story, we’re left with the main character dead and the family moving on like nothing really happened. And what we’re left with is two polar viewpoints of what self is: is it an infrangible center of the universe or is a fantastically intangible perspective that serves no other purpose than mirroring man’s horrific and futile efforts to find self?
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Post by sammywong on Oct 23, 2013 5:17:58 GMT
All this self talk made me think of the baby Mr.Parris posted a picture of in class. On the forum that same day, he asked if this same exact baby had a self. I responded that the potential of self was laid out, but as not much time has passed between no life and life in the baby, self is not fully formed. In some aspect, I would argue that Hesse's self and Kafka's self are the exact same thing. Siddhartha realizes that no matter what he does, he is himself. He has self when from the beginning of study, middle of gambling, to the end of river observing. Kafka would argue, according to DFW, that the process of attaining self is yourself. Aren't these the same exact explanations?! Or is my brain not correctly functioning at 10 pm, which wouldn't be a surprise. Siddhartha's self, we have to realize, includes his journey. He is a murderer. He is a saint. He is a scholar. He harbors all wrongs and all rights that he has commit, will commit, and can commit. Does Gregor have a self before he is transformed into a coach roach? I would feel "judgey" for just assuming he didn't. Though the short story abruptly begins the moment Gregor is a bug, does that mean the beginning of his self search started from that point on as well? It isn't the happiest thought that Gregor's self includes his bug thoughts and actions, but I do believe it does. I also do believe that his self consists of whatever the heck happened to him before the part of his life we read begins. Siddhartha realizes, and is enlightened by, the simple revelation that self is whatever you make it to be. Kafka does not touch upon this revelation in Metamorphosis. But according to DFW, Kafka's "humorous" point to the story is that, morbidly, Gregor's self consists of this random misfortune of him turning into a bug. The journey, people. The journey is the self.
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Post by robertxu on Oct 23, 2013 5:20:20 GMT
This touches on a portrayal of "selfhood" that is drastically different than the one put forth by Hesse in Siddhartha. Examine not only what these two different versions of "selfhood" are, but also how each author goes about getting his points about the nature of self across.
The difference between Kafka's view of "selfhood" and Hesse's is that Kafka believes that selfhood is dynamic, while Hesse believes selfhood to be static and inherent. Wallace writes about Kafka, "That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home". Kafka believes that the journey contains the self, while Hesse sees the journey as a means to an end. Gregor's metamorphosis into a cockroach is a physical and spiritual change. A cockroach is a good metaphor for Gregor's self: he is marginalized by both his parents and his boss. The only difference is that Gregor practices self-denial at the beginning of the novel. Gregor thinks to himself, "Well, there's hope yet; as soon as I've saved enough money to pay back what my parents owe to him...Then I'll cut myself completely free" (Kafka 319). Being a cockroach shows what his parents and employer really think of him through their largely indifferent, hurtful responses to him. All of the negative reactions and events Gregor experiences during his time spent trying to return to his old self reveal his true self (immobile, weak, marginalized).
Siddhartha, on the other hand, only sees the journey as a means to an end. Siddhartha states, “Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish” (Hesse 142). In other words knowledge/wisdom about the anything significant (self-included) is inherent. Siddhartha says about his time spent pursuing vice, "it was necessary for [him] to sin...and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, compare it with some kind of desired imaginary word, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it" (Hesse 144). Basically, Siddhartha believes he was in tune with his self all along and simply went on the journey so he could take a step back and view the world more objectively and achieve enlightenment.
Kafka gets his point about self-across through the interactions between Gregor and other characters. His mistreatment by his parents/sister (when they decide on disowning him at the end), his employer (who fires him) and the three travelers help him realize that no one really cares about him. Hesse gets his point across through Siddhartha's revelations/epiphanies, all of which are intuitive. Siddhartha's learns his most important lessons by simply studying the river. His interactions with other characters only makes him realize that he should stop trying to learn from others and instead trust in his own natural senses.
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Post by hannahlewman on Oct 23, 2013 5:25:38 GMT
I'm a cliche addict so I'll be using some lovely little truisms to get my point across here.
From what I can tell, DFW is saying that Kafka is saying "it's the journey not the destination. Or rather, there is no destination so the closest thing you'll get to a destination is a journey," with the "destination" being this elusive self and the journey being the struggle to find or define oneself.
Hesse on the other hand basically says "man you have got to check out this destination. It is the best. You probably have to do terrible stuff to get to this destination, like there's a layover at that one really awful airport, but boy is that destination worth it," once again with the "destination" being the self and the journey being the struggle to find oneself.
To put this in a more Siddhartha-centered context, it's the difference between samsara and nirvana. Hesse is all about that nirvana, but Kafka realizes that you can't really have unadulterated nirvana because the quest for nirvana means your life is going to be pretty well-defined by a constant state of samsara.
Now, I hate to seem pessimistic, but I can't help but think that there's some truth to what Kafka is saying. I mean, is it really realistic to believe that the "self" is just sitting there in a cryogenic tank, waiting to be unlocked if you simply put in the correct password (OM_pass)? Wouldn't there mere process of removing the shrink wrap from the "self" shake up the identity enough to change it somehow. Doesn't samsara have some sort of impact on the state of the self once one finds nirvana? According to Kafka, yes, and I must concur. It just makes sense. When you go on a journey, the trip changes you so that by the time you reach the destination (or don't reach the destination, depending on whether or not it is even possible to find a fully formed "self"), you are a different person than the one who originally set out on the journey.
To summarize this in a simple thesis: Kafka is a smart dude and Hesse is an optimistic dude, as proven by these clichés and travel metaphors.
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Post by allegra on Oct 23, 2013 5:38:30 GMT
Authors seem to continually struggle with the journey people must go through to find themselves. This is seen in many novels such as The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson, Imaginary Enemy by Julie Gonzalez and even Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss. It appears to be an incredibly human journey to find humanity that has many different paths.
DFW, I feel, is arguing about the idea that once a person delves into the struggle to find themselves, they find their humanity wrapped in that struggle. This is to say that the defining factor of humanity is the struggle to find the self within humanity. One of my favorite pictures on the internet is one by Angel Boligan that depicts a maze with a child at one end and the grim reaper waiting at the other. What really gets me about this artwork is the idea that even if the maze is solved right, death is still certain. In the same way that the maze represents the journey of life, I feel the struggle is in some ways a distraction from the inevitability of death. The fact that humanity can recognize death means that we also recognize the limited amount of time in which we have to solve our own internal puzzles. The humor that is being pointed out by DFW has to do with the idea that the less Gregor tries to find humanity in himself, the less human he becomes. This idea is wholly different from the idea in Siddhartha that uses the endpoint as the home and the journey as just that- a journey. In Siddhartha, the end point is as certain as death and the journey leads to finding of self. The idea of an endpoint being the self means that the journey is not the self, but what DFW is arguing is that the endpoint is death and the journey is the self.
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Post by racheladele on Oct 23, 2013 5:42:11 GMT
I agree with people who have posted before me about still not being able to give an exact definition to the word “self.” Personally, I find Hesse’s “self” and Wallace’s “self” to be somewhat similar, with the main difference being that Hesse takes it one step further. The self described by Wallace means being an individual, through striving to be one. He notes that we all want to be unique, and in collectively wanting this, we become the same again. The self in Siddhartha comes after we are that individual. It is the choices made and paths chosen by a person that make up their life and who they are. As a poor analogy (not an example) of these definitions, in Metamorphosis, Gregor’s mind is his Hesse self (because he makes his choices and lives by the ideas that are constant before and after transformation) and his bug body as his DFW self (because in the story, even though he may not have striven to achieve the cockroach form, it is what makes him an individual). Thinking back to our debate about whether or not a baby has a self, DFW would say definitely not. By my standards, babies do not have Hesse self or a DFW self. The baby does not know who he is. He (likely) has no qualities that make him different from the majority of babies. Also, he has done nothing to try to initiate either of those things. I like what Corey said about both definitions requiring a journey, because both authors point out the development that is required to attain a “self.” Many people have mentioned DFW’s statement, “Our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home,” and this further justifies the idea of the necessary journey and the continuous, perpetual development of the self.
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Post by yongkim on Oct 23, 2013 6:06:55 GMT
Hesse and Kafka portray self in a different way; however, they both express relevant and valid points about their view on self in Siddhartha and The Metamorphosis.
To Siddhartha, self is some sort of an achievement or a culmination of different life experiences. In order to express the important of self-indulgence, Hesse states, "It is a good thing to experience everything oneself, he thought. As a child I learned that pleasures of the world and riches were not good. I have known it for a long time, but I have only just experienced it. Now I know it not only with my intellect, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach" (80). Siddhartha believes he can achieve enlightenment through singular events and experiences. In the beginning of the book, he becomes a member of the Samanas, a group of ascetics who believe in deprivation, and is ultimately discontented with the poor life he is forced to live as a Samana. Toward the end of the book, Siddhartha experiences the wealth and greed as a rich man. Through self-indulgence, Siddhartha is able to encounter the highs and lows in life and ascertain that self is not achieved through those experiences. Ultimately, Hesse reveals that self is achieved through the journey.
On the contrary, I believe that Kafka, within The Metamorphosis, is implying that self is the journey itself. Wallace eloquently states this idea when he says, "That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home." Gregor attempts to uncover the idea of self as he struggles to live a normal life as a cockroach. Is human Gregor the same as cockroach Gregor? Through their actions of disgust and discomfort, the family seems to treat Gregor as some sort of alien though, as cliche as it sounds, Gregor (on the inside) is still the same. Since the family is not able to accept this assertion, Gregor has difficulty finding himself. He attempts to please his family, but Gregor is eventually rejected and dies in order to rid his family of the burden of keeping him around. While on his search of self, Gregor failed to notice that the struggle for his family's acceptance was what defined his self.
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Post by Anna M. on Oct 23, 2013 6:09:07 GMT
Hesse's Self: Found after experiencing pain and struggle. Wallace's Kafka's Self: Created and exists in pain and struggle.
Hesse puts forth in Siddhartha the idea that self is found when you aren't searching for it. Siddhartha couldn't escape his self, so he tried to find it. On his journey to find his self he ends up a rich man who gambles, drinks, and so on. From this point of the book, his search to find self has failed. Siddhartha becomes closer to his self when he wanders to the riverside where he experiences OM. He becomes even closer to his self when he endures pain after Kamala dies. He becomes EVEN closer when his son leaves. Hesse's "path to self" is not a journey but more of a wandering-- one can't find self at the end of a quest or when they are in search of it. Siddhartha, like everyone, can only find self and be truly at "Om" or "Peace" or "enlightenment" or "_______" when they let life continue without the need to control or change the course of events. No one can change the course of OM. Siddhartha found that his self is really part of the whole, but his part was also the entire thing at the same time... I think. Knowing that he is part of OM, Siddhartha is able to realize that the good and bad is not a true dichotomy and therefore he is able to reach a place where he does not suffer.
Kafka's/Wallace's self is different because it is found in the journey while Hesse's belief is that self can't be found when looking for self. When someone searches for their self, that search involves a struggle. In struggling so hard to find self, that struggle becomes a part of the person's self and therefore the journey becomes the self, according to Wallace's quote in the prompt. In trying so hard to somehow convey his self to his family, Gregor becomes a struggle to the family. His struggle becomes the struggle of others and soon it seems impossible that Gregor can have a happy life where he isn't somehow struggling. Even if he survived his bug-life, even if he somehow became human again, he would always suffer from his experience. If Gregor had questioned what had happened to him, if he looked for answers, his self at the end of the story would be much different from the one it is when he dies. Therefore, Kafka's idea of self is of one's where self is created and exists in pain and struggle.
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Post by amysohlberg on Oct 23, 2013 6:43:23 GMT
Going off of DFW's description, Hesse's self seems much easier than Kafka's. According to Hesse, the self is inherent in an object. It doesn't need to strive to be defined, but has to rather struggle to uncover its true self. For Hesse, the struggle for understanding self is disconnected from the definition of self. Siddhartha explains this as he contemplates a stone: "'This stone is stone; it is also animal, God and Buddha. I do not respect and love it because it was one thing and will become something else, but because it has already long been everything and always is everything'" (145). Siddhartha's explanation also defines a "self" that is not very individual. According to Hesse, true self is the same for all things and is all things--but that doesn't make it easy to understand. Our constant struggle must be to look past the material world to understand the "self" of an object on a spiritual, united level.
Kafka's ideas on self are a little more slippery. Gregor's transformation shows that maybe self isn't just the wonderful thoughts and feelings that lie within us. If it was, Gregor's family would eventually be able to overcome their revulsion to accept their son trapped within the insect, but they never do. Gregor is also transformed by the physical metamorphosis. He becomes nervous, afraid and unsociable. He finds comfort in crawling on walls. Kafka creates a vision of self that is hopelessly tangled in a web of factors, so deeply intertwined that it is impossible to siphon off a clear and defined "self". As DFW said, "the horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle". Kafka would argue that "self" isn't a definite object. It is constantly being shaped and remolded by the desperate fight to understand itself.
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Post by jessicapollard on Oct 23, 2013 7:15:44 GMT
As much as I'd like to drop the daily high school life and hit the open roads with my hip jade Buddha necklace (thanks Allegra!) in an attempt to find myself, it's probably much more likely I'm going to spend the rest of my days trying to make sense of the moderately mundane life which I've confined myself to.
The sort of elaborate journey in which 'self' is expected to be the final result comes off as a little elitist to me. Yes, I'm happy that Siddartha found something in emptying himself and allowing the world to flow into him, but that's just probably not going to happen to everyone. In Siddartha , self the ending punctuation of the story and it also appears to be widely inaccessible. Many argue that enlightenment as discussed in this novel is relative and that not everyone's self is going to look like Siddartha's picturesque absence of selfishness, but the journey to get there is interpreted as near-impossible and lifelong. What are we without ourselves and yet according to Hesse it can take decades to find that.
In Metamorphosis , Kafka takes on a less idyllic view of self and tells it like it is. Identity is the endless search for it and how we go about searching for ourselves. Perhaps Kafka's "self" is less true to the meaning, but it is certainly easier to swallow in terms of daily life.
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Post by chrisb on Oct 23, 2013 7:42:56 GMT
Nothing goes better with Hesse and Kafka than quantum mechanics. That’s what I’ll be discussing today.
Hesse, although brilliant in some respects, is still back on the early side of quantum mechanics. For many years, studying the behavior of photons was one of the most difficult tasks in the field of physics. Thousands of scientists wanted know whether photons behaved as particles or as waves – but how could we expect accurate results if we were blasting millions of photons at the experiment in order to observe the results. The only way to produce true results was by stripping scientists of their ability to observe, thus stripping the experiment of its purpose.
Hesse’s science is no different. The true self is there somewhere, inherent in each human. But understanding the self is not an achievable goal as long as you are looking for it. The focus on the destination prevents one from arriving at the destination, much like the photons used for observation prevent us from observing the behavior of other photons.
On the other hand, Kafka’s work lies on the cutting-edge of science. Although quantum physics is no walk in the park nowadays, modern measuring techniques allow scientists to measure particle trajectory using a certain type of quartz. We no longer affect the experiment with our presence, and nothing prevents us from watching. This is the science of Kafka’s concept of the self. There’s no inherent, perfect self that we should be waiting for. Rather, we can have front row seats as we watch the self transform. Perhaps, into an enormous bug.
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