Blog Post #1 - Na Xiong

     In Franz Kafka's "Before the Law", the protagonist attempts to enter the law through a gate. The antagonist, the gatekeeper, prevents the protagonist's entry into the law. Through discussions within my group, we interpreted this story through a reader response theory because we sought to fill in, imagine and understand these circumstances that the protagonist experienced. In contrast, a stronger interpretation that can be used to critically analyze this story is through a Marxist approach in which we analyze and look at how class relationships and social economic status effect how we interpret the story.

     Correspondingly, our groups initial reaction was to critically analyze this story utilizing a reader response theory. In "Before the Law" there are many gaps within the story that we the reader have to fill in. An example of this is that in first half of the story the protagonist is a young fit man, as the story progresses we eventually realize as the reader that the protagonist has aged and a significant amount of time has passed despite the text not explicitly telling the reader this information. In addition to interpret "Before the Law", a reader response theory says we needed to read the piece as a whole rather than in parts. If "Before the Law" was read in parts, we would only see that the protagonist wasn't able to get into the gate and then if we read another part of the story separately we would again see that the protagonist wasn't able to gain entry into the gate. Instead utilizing a reader response approach, we were able to glean that when in the whole story this was a journey in which the protagonist spends his whole life trying to enter the law.  Our group also saw this story as a way to understand the process or motivation in the creation of this story.

       On the other hand,  a Marxist approach is more appropriate to analyze and read "Before the Law".  Using this approach, I saw that the interactions between  the protagonist and the antagonist as a power struggle between someone of power, a corporate CEO, and assembly line workers of the company. The protagonist's repeated entries to enter law can also be viewed as the workers attempts to climb the social economic ladder but are prevented from doing so from the higher class. In addition,  the protagonist is from the country side, and entry into the Law can equate to the migration of pheasants into larger cities to find higher paying jobs. In this case, not all pheasants can gain entry into the city. These examples help us analyze the "Before the Law" as a story of class struggle and how things are reduced to class and social economic status. Even though a Marxist approach fits the first ninety percent of the story, the ending of "Before the law in which the gatekeeper mentions that the gate is only meant for the protagonist; does not quite fit into the Marxist approach. 

        Overall, the Marxist approach is still a more useful literary theory to utilize than the reader response theory than a reader response theory. One reasoning behind this is that I believe a writer creates each character and word with a meaning beyond just the text. Utilizing a reader response theory I can only glean what is occurring in the story itself and doesn't bring any meaning as to why the story itself is unique. A reader response theory would be better to analyze how a reader from the 1900's would reaction to the story and then see how those reactions would contrast to a contemporary view. 

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