The Penal Colony and A Report to an Academy

My reaction to reading "The Penal Colony" by Franz Kafka was that I felt that the story was very disturbing. The reason I felt that way because at the end of the story the explorer is forced to execute one of the officers in the jail. The method of execution that was used on the officer required crushing the his skull with a harrow. This really surprised me because the other Kafka stories that I read did not end this gory. I was surprised that the explorer's presence in the jail made the inmates revolt against the officers. I had a hard time following the story because there was very little dialogue. It was very repetitive with the officer speaking all the time about the old governor. I found it a little boring at times.

My reaction to reading "A Report to an Academy" by Franz Kafka was that it was a very weird story. The story looked like it was written in a letter format with the beginning saying "Gentlemen of the academy", which was similar to the "dear" part of a letter. In the story,  the narrator is speaking to a group of scientists about his life as a former ape. In the story the ape used to live in Africa until he  was captured by a group of hunters and brought back to Europe. The ape then began to develop human like qualities by observing the people around him. In the apes address to the scientists, the ape is able to speak like a normal human being. This  reminded me of the "Planet of the Apes" movies in which the apes behave just like humans. This is another bizarre story in which animals have strange characteristics and it appears to be a pattern in a lot of Kafka's stories. However I found this story a lot more interesting than "The Penal Colony" and enjoyed the concept a lot more. The idea that an ape can take on human characteristics is scary, but at the same time may be possible.