Mila's logs

Kafka’s The Great Wall of China tells a story of the construction of the Great Wall through an anonymous narrator. The wall is built in small sections, gradually aiming to be merged later to build one, long, majestic protection against the nomads of the North.

While this purpose appears logical and relevant, the narrator is also aware of the failings of the wall; how the construction of the wall could be overseen by the nomads for them to gain the upper hand. He even realizes how even though the construction began under the threat of the nomads, the leadership had planned for its creation regardless of their existence. Yet to think so in depth of these trivial matters is not his job. The orders are given, and it is up to him and many others like him to execute them. They are willing pawns in the will of the leadership, smart enough to know they lack crucial information and not enough to stop dedicating their lives to “the greater cause”.

In my interpretation of this work by Kafka, I assumed the subordinate men who were endangered to hopelessness represent the average people, people without access to the backdoors but those who aren’t satisfied laying in the scraps of society. The majority conform to society’s needs for a functioning world but cannot help but cannot help wondering sometimes, what their purpose was supposed to be. The eighth paragraph warns people to stop thinking after a certain point for it will devour one’s movement forward. They know nothing, and they shall stay knowing nothing. For the ignorance will propel them forward and continue with the work they do for the leadership, the work they know is a ruse. They do not know what they are working for.

This model of living is profoundly related to the existentialism presented by thinkers such as Sartre and Nietzsche. There is no meaning in this life, and there is no greater cause. It is made up by the leadership, which has existed far longer than the workers have. The Northern nomads―death, cannot be prevented; it will always be the overseer and have the upper hand. While the existentialist view of having no purpose and meaning is often interpreted as a depressive stance, one can also view this from a positive stance. Highlighting the beauty of the human experience, being unbound by chains of a purpose and free to live and do everything.

Our time here in the conscious state is limited, and what life brings is a temporal opportunity to create a moment in time where we were in existence. It is difficult to believe that there is something beyond this life. Flowers wilt and brown all around. Perhaps the human experience is nothing more than what it is, but like a pleasant meal, good things that come to an eventual end.