Intepret this metaphorical story entitled The Bridge by Franz Kafka. The author personifies the bridge with human qualities, but what causes her /his self-destruction? Why does s/he fall? What is your theory? Look for clues in Kafka’s metaphorical story that explain why the bridge fell, and if so, then what is the lesson or theme for us? What are we to learn from this?
Remember, abstain from personal pronouns like I and YOU. This is not about you; it’s about meaning that we might all consider. WE is, therefore, acceptable to use. Your reader will be impressed by those writers who incorporate quotes from the story.
Explain in 200 words (10 percent rule). Your reader will be impressed with those pieces that incorporate a quote.
I was stiff and
cold, I was a bridge, I lay over a ravine. My toes on one side, my fingers
clutching the other, I had clamped myself fast into the crumbling clay. The
tails of my coat fluttered at my sides. Far below brawled the icy trout stream.
No tourist strayed to this impassable height; the bridge was not yet traced on
any map. So I lay and waited; I could only wait. Without
falling, no bridge, once spanned, can cease to be a bridge.
It was toward evening one day—was it the first,
was it the thousandth? I cannot tell—my thoughts
were always in confusion and perpetually moving in a circle. It was toward evening in summer, the roar of the
stream had grown deeper, when I heard the sound of a human step! To
me, to me. Straighten yourself, bridge, make ready,
railless beams, to hold up the passenger entrusted to you. If his steps are
uncertain, steady them unobtrusively, but if he stumbles show what you are made
of and like a mountain god hurl him across to land.
He came, he tapped me with the iron point of his
stick, then he lifted my coattails with it and put them in order upon me. He
plunged the point of his stick into my bushy hair and let it lie there for a
long time, forgetting me no doubt while he wildly gazed around him. But then—I
was just following him in thought over mountain and valley—he jumped with both
feet on the middle of my body. I shuddered with wild pain, not knowing what was
happening. Who was it? A
child? A dream? A wayfarer? A suicide? A tempter? A destroyer? And I turned so as to see him. A
bridge to turn around! I had not yet turned quite around when I
already began to fall, I fell and in a moment I was torn and transpierced by
the sharp rocks which had always gazed up at me so peacefully from the rushing
water.
