Thursday, July 27, 2017

The Disparity of Reality


An excerpt from my essay, “The Disparity of Reality”
By: Paul Stowell

The issues Kafka presents in his novel [the Metamorphosis] are certainly alive today, in a world marked by heartbreak, utter disappointment, shattered hopes and fragmentized dreams. I have found undeniable evidence for the prior claims within my own life, as I have recently become a victim to the common human tragedy that is separating ways with a significant other. Consequently, I have given way to a doleful existence for the majority of the time that has passed since the decision was made. This decision, made after over a year and a half of venturing through the undulations of life together, was an unanticipated source of dejection and misery; two responses to reality that grew in magnitude as more emotionally tolling situations surfaced in the wake of our separation. Similar to the individual brought to life within Kafka’s imaginative novella, I have suffered immensely from my own disillusionment; a disillusionment that fastened its roots onto the seemingly unshatterable friendship shared between my once significant other and I, along with my own impractical ideology that this individual, who once possessed the most prominent position in my heart, was immune to the possibility of causing me suffering. In conclusion, my own personal experience has the ability to not only showcase the verisimilitude of Kafka’s writing, but also to exist as a substantial piece of evidence further proving the common occurrence of unanticipated pain within our human reality.

5 comments:

  1. Change, though often uncomfortable and unwelcome, affords us opportunities to create from the heart. Beautifully written!

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  2. I agree with Abby; this is a meaningful way to channel your emotions. I appreciate you sharing about this difficult time for you.

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  3. Paul- I appreciate your willingness to explore and compare your emotions- and that Kafka provided a meaningful touchstone for you. Thanks for putting yourself out there.

    I have a challenge for you- if you are up to it...
    I went to a good translation of the Metamorphosis and I grabbed a few of the paragraphs in the beginning- and I ran them through a readability metric ( this is a feature you can use in your word processor in the "review" section) It scored at 7% passive language (nice and low) and was at about a 7th grade reading and comprehension level.

    I did the same thing for your powerful piece of writing- and it came out at a grade level of 17.2- meaning you have to be in grad school to "get it"

    The challenge- try to re-write this like Kafka did- using powerful and direct language (I had to look up the word verisimilitude- and it was not a type of insect like I thought- which would be Kafka esque no)

    If you are up to it, a great place to start is to take some of your existing sentences and switch them into an active voice- meaning kill all the helping verbs-

    so- "I have given way to a doleful existence" could be much more powerful as "I surrendered to a doleful existence." , "I yielded to a doleful existence."- "I endure a doleful existence."

    What did you do? not what was done by you...

    I write this in the hope that it does not make you feel like a squashed bug, rather to liberate the emotion and thought that is clearly in your writing. Best of luck.

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  4. Paul;
    I would like to thank you for sharing this powerful piece. In describing the pain of separating from a significant other , that you were able to bring this reality into great clarity to the reader. I was especially riveted to the way in which you compared the experience to that of reading Kafka novel. Could this experience of disparate Realty also contribute to a sort of metamorphosis?

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  5. Your writing is powerful. You put your feelings into words so clearly that I can feel your pain. Not to devalue your feelings, dear young man, you will have many losses in your life and your job is to learn from each one. The pain is there at seventeen and the pain is there at eighty. Some time you are the cause of the pain and other times it is life throwing its weight around.

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