A Report to an Academy

A Report to an Academy is a story by Franz Kafka. Following the initial report in 1917 in the journal The Jew she appeared in 1920 as part of the band A Country Doctor.

The former monkey named Rotpeter puts an academy, a report on his incarnation, which can be understood as a history of forced assimilation and as an educational satire. However, the subject of the report is not, as desired by the Academy, the memory of the äffische past life, but the description of the adjustment process.

Summary

Captured from a hunting expedition of the Hagenbeck, held for months in a depressing small cage on a steamer, the monkey is looking for a way out. He recognized the man in because he wants to be as " untouched " as they are obvious. Seemingly he learns meaningful gestures and speech. He biggest problems to drink liquor. No one tells him that this is not certainly a necessary part of being human. He also learns that with the greatest effort. He repeatedly stressed that he only therefore mimics man because he seeks a way out, but not because he hopes for freedom.

He strives to work in vaudeville, and has thereby " barely increasing success ." His life is successful between banquets, scientific societies and social get-together. He has achieved what he wanted to achieve and he certifies itself, the average is a European.

The Grenzgängertum between man and animal, he was evidently in a virtuoso. Not as two other beings in its environment. His first trainer, with whom he as " reckless " learns itself is almost apish and must temporarily to a mental hospital. The small halbdressierte chimpanzee, in which he " can prosper according to species of ape " it has the madness of tangled trained animal in the look he can not stand.

Background

In September 1908 and in April 1909 there was in a Prague nightclub performances of a trained chimpanzee named " Consul Peter '. It stands to reason that Kafka has it taken suggestions for this story. He has worked intensively with the rest of Brehm's Animal Life questions and behavioral research and social Darwinism.

Elsa Brod, the wife of Max Brod on December 19, 1917 presented the work in the Prague club of Jewish women and girls with great success. Since then, the story often of reciters was - included in its program - particularly impressive Klaus Kammer's television appearance in 1963.

To the Report to an Academy still exist several small fragments. There's a bizarre encounter between a narrator with Rotpeters impresario, a conversation with a visitor Rotpeters and the beginning of a letter of the ( gone crazy at times) first Rotpeter - teacher.

Form

The human ape has the authorial narrator of this story, but he overlooks the incredible facets of his Incarnation and comments on them. Significantly, this I but the memories are no longer accessible to the youth; they are displaced. This reflects the Traumatic his violent abduction from the original state reflects. Overall, does not the experiencing, but the narrative and reflective I to the fore in the narrative. Because the story is mainly focused on evaluation and judgment, and indeed from a higher vantage point quite, because the horizon Rotpeters includes animal and human, natural instinct and mental discipline, freedom and social organization.

Rotpeters annotations affect not only its own history, but also the image that make the man from himself.

A particularly detailed Geschehnisdarstellung applies the alcohol episode, yes it seems to be the culmination of the dramatic presentation with great suspense. This long period is like a cinematic montage exchange between teacher and student äffischem.

Text analysis and interpretation approaches

Rotpeters report can be read as a parable of evolution of man and his ever individual socialization, because what experienced the monkey, can be applied to the entire species of Homo sapiens. Kafka accounted for the lot of man with a melancholy undertone as a - if not entirely - sad achievement and one on the whole acceptable compromise. At the same time he brings out to satirical attacks that bring down the people from the high horse of his own glory.

The basic motive is the almost manic learning (at times with five teachers at the same time ) as a way out of a hopeless situation under denial of innate needs. Prerequisite for this was the forgetting and the reversal of the usual perspective.

Is noteworthy, however, that the monkey in spite of all efforts of learning but by his physical appearance unchanged - the fur - at first glance just continues to be a monkey. In terms of its appearance, the yes most clearly classifies him in the category of ape, he has never expressed or sought the desire for human appearance.

So it may well be seen in its direct surroundings almost as an equal people as the leader of the Hagenbeck 's hunting expedition, has emptied the Rotpeter already some bottle of red wine. For the public in the guise of journalists who contemptuously called Rotpeter greyhounds, but he remains a trained monkey who let down his pants to show his fur and his scars. So he has indeed acquired the intellectual knowledge of the people, but ultimately it lacks the feeling for the appropriate interpersonal skills and for it contains great effect by appearances.

You can see the story as a travesty assimilation process and also as a satire on the Western history of civilization. Above all, the story points to the adjustment pressure under which the Jewish people stood centuries, in order to survive. Max Brod has emphasized this interpretation.

References to other Kafka stories

Ultimately the goal of the Incarnation is not reached, although the protagonist himself does not seem aware of his. Rotpeter is it. Than figure comparable to the failing animal figures from Investigations of a Dog or Construction There is also a reference to Kafka story The Metamorphosis, where the character Gregor Samsa overnight in an animal, that transforms a beetle. To this end, however, no special effort was required. Rather, you could interpret that unobtrusively poor - existence of the Samsa has pulled this transformation by itself. The oversized efforts of the monkey, however, have access to a sphere and cultured in a saturiertes life permits under denial of one's roots.

Quotes

• High Lords of the Academy! You do me the honor to invite me to submit a report to the Academy about my past life äffisches.
• Your Affentum, gentlemen, unless you have something like this behind you, you can not be further than mine is from me.
• Ah, one learns when one has; you learn, if you want a way out; you learn ruthless. [ ... ] This progress! This penetration of the knowledge -rays from all sides into the waking brain! I do not deny: it made ​​me happy.
• Overviews I mean development and its previous target, so I accuse neither, nor am I satisfied. [ ... ] On the whole, I have certainly achieved what I wanted to achieve.

Reception

• Sudau ( p.177 f ) cancels a special circumstance out: The whole Heaven's Gate - at the mouse Small fable the excessive breadth of the world - purrs along. The mouse is no way out, only fatal outcome; the monkey is in fact the self-chosen "way out". This Rotpeter is in Kafka's work as almost unique: A hero who does not perish; a hero, who knows exactly what he wants, and this reached it! However, he has to " this great feeling of freedom on all sides " forgotten.

• Wies ( p.91 ) points out that the report foreshadows the 1930 resulting font The discomfort in the culture of Sigmund Freud, which is an accounting of civilizational progress and setbacks.
• Kindler's Lexicon (p. 27) states that the report is deeply rooted in the history of science situation of the time - Description of Brehm's Animal Life, Darwin's theory of evolution, contemporary vaudeville events.

Text output

• Franz Kafka: All narratives. Edited by Paul Raabe, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1970, ISBN 3- 596-21078 -X.
• Franz Kafka: The narratives. Original version. Edited by Roger Hermes, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt / Main 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3.

Secondary literature

• Eberhard Rohse: hominisation as humanisation? The figure of the monkey as an anthropological challenge in works of literature since Charles Darwin - Wilhelm Raabe, Wilhelm Busch, Franz Kafka, Aldous Huxley. In: General Studies. Lectures on human and animal, Vol 6, University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. M. & H. Schaper, Alfeld -Hannover 1989, p 22-56 ( especially pp. 47-50: Between Evolution and dressage: hominisation as " forward gepeitsche development " - Franz Kafka ). ISBN 3-7944-0158-1
• Peter- André Alt: Franz Kafka: The eternal Son. A biography. Munich: C. H. Beck 2005. ISBN 3-406-53441-4
• Juliane Blank: A Country Doctor. Small narratives " In: . Manfred Engel, Bernd aurochs (ed.): Kafka manual. Life - Work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2010, pp. 218-240, esp 233-236. ISBN 978-3-476-02167-0
• Wiebrecht Ries: Kafka on the introduction. Hamburg: Junius Verlag 1993 ISBN 3-88506-886-9.
• Wendelin Schmidt- Dengler, Norbert Winkler ( ed.): The diversity in Kafka's life and work Vitalis 2005 ISBN 3-89919-066-1
• Reiner Stach: Kafka The years of knowledge. Frankfurt / Main: S. Fischer Verlag 2008 ISBN 978-3-10-075119-5.
• Ralf Sudau Franz Kafka: Short prose / stories 2007 ISBN 978-3-12-922637-7
• Christian Ferrara: "Words from the cage " from Kafka's " A Report to an Academy ". Grin Verlag 2007, ISBN 978-3-638-79502-9.
• Bettina von Jagow and Oliver Year in Kafka -Handbuch life -works effect 2008 Cambridge University Press ISBN 978-3-525-20852-6
• Joachim Unseld Franz Kafka A writer Joachim Unseld life Carl Hanser Verlag 1982 ISBN 3-446-13568-5 Ln