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This week we started discussing Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” – the men had read part I by themselves over the preceding week. So far there’s a general consensus that the story is weird but intriguing. Here’s Mr. Hardy’s response: “Wow! I can only imagine what it would be like to awake and be someone you were not or now seem to be. To be such a creature as an oversized rodent, a Roach. I would much rather be a butterfly or a Praying Mantus even, just not a roach. One who creep late home in the darkest hour to eat An Unwanted creature as this. The rejection from your parents, over something you had no control over. As a child being the oldest I have suffered the blame many times. Yet they always taught, expect the best never look for the worst. No one wanted to just accept the fact that Gregor was sick. For God’s Sake, come on man have a day off. To be hurt by someone who says they love you is always the worse, especially when you are working for their benefit!”

More next week….

This week we started discussing Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” – the men had read part I by themselves over the preceding week. So far there’s a general consensus that the story is weird but intriguing. Here’s Mr. Hardy’s response: “Wow! I can only imagine what it would be like to awake and be someone you were not or now seem to be. To be such a creature as an oversized rodent, a Roach. I would much rather be a butterfly or a Praying Mantus even, just not a roach. One who creep late home in the darkest hour to eat An Unwanted creature as this. The rejection from your parents, over something you had no control over. As a child being the oldest I have suffered the blame many times. Yet they always taught, expect the best never look for the worst. No one wanted to just accept the fact that Gregor was sick. For God’s Sake, come on man have a day off. To be hurt by someone who says they love you is always the worse, especially when you are working for their benefit!”

More next week….

The UK Ministry of Justice says prisoners do not have an automatic right to have books. They need incentives as part of their rehabilitation and should earn privileges, including the right to buy books from the outside the prison. Preventing parcels of books from being sent in gives prison authorities more control. “Good behavior is incentivized, and bad behavior is challenged with loss of incentives,” the government guidance document says.

See the full NY Times article here.

Today we discussed Poe’s dark tale, “A Cask of Amontillado.” The men were especially interested in the idea of being walled-up (imprisoned) as a sadistic form of punishment totally out of proportion to the original (possibly imaginary) “insult.”

Of the protagonist Montresor, Mr. Fitzgerald wrote,  “he reminds me of some DC and Baltimore killers a few of us here grew up with. They too were slick killers, and some of them were mad, but they were some smooth operators. My wife and I usually read these stories together over the phone. When we got to the third page of this one, she took flight. She didn’t want to hear any more of it and she said if I continue to read it to her she’d hang up the damn phone. She’s afraid of Mr. Edgar Allan Poe.”

Mr. Doyle wrote: “I can see where someone might kill someone then conceal the body and crime in this way, but the unspoken reality – Fortunato was buried alive. This is not just revenge, but utterly sadistic! ….”

Mr. Simpson wrote: “This is a morbid yet fascinating tale of murder….. Revenge is a powerful motivating force in some men. I know this personally from experience. But the method of this particular character of walling up his victim is exceptionally cruel.”

Next week: Kafka!

Mr. C Doyle on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell Tale Heart”:

I liked the story, wish it has been longer.  I also liked Poe, and his style of insanity. As soon as I read the line, “I loved the old man,” I knew he was going to die! It was strange how I seemed to be one step ahead of everything that was happening in the story.  No matter how careful, cautious, or patient he boasted to be, I knew somehow, someway, he would slip up and wake the old man. The beating of the old man’s heart caused him to lose his cool and throw caution to the side.  He leaped into action, killing the old man.  It felt weird that I knew (before I read) that the old man’s body would be dismembered.

There is something unusually odd about the way this story was so predictable, like I had already read it before… but I hadn’t. After his death, the manifestation of the beating of the old man’s heart was presented, as he put it, “not within my ears”.  So the question is… “If not between his ears, where did the heart beat come from!?”  Very mysterious.

Our discussion of Jekyll and Hyde turned out to be very thoughtful, even though a couple of the men were absent (ie. in lockup). This is unfortunate, because when things keep changing, when a routine is constantly broken, it can seem unreal, and anyone who experiences it that way is going to feel isolated from the community.

We started by talking about Mr. Hyde. The men were  surprised by his appearance. They thought he’d look like a werewolf, or at least have fangs or something like that, but in book he’s a normal men. Stevenson describes Hyde as “much smaller, slighter and younger” than Jekyll, who actually feels “lighter, happier in body” when he’s wearing the shape of Hyde. He may not be physically repulsive, however, but there’s something about him that gives people the creeps. “There is something wrong with his appearance; something displeasing, something downright detestable. I never saw a man I so disliked, and yet I scarce know why”, says one man who meets him. “He gives a strong feeling of deformity, although I couldn’t specify the point.” To the lawyer Mr. Utterson, “he gave an impression of deformity without any nameable malformation.”
The men also found Jekyll different to how they’d imagined him.“He seems older. Not so innocent,” said Sig. “In the movies he’s always this handsome young guy, but in the book he seems very different.” Stevenson describes Jekyll as “a large, well-made, smooth-faced man of fifty.” Later he describes himself as almost an “elderly man.” “Also, when he’s Hyde, he looks different on the outside, but he’s still Jekyll on the inside,” said Steven. “His thoughts don’t change. It’s always Jekyll’s point of view, even when he’s Hyde.” I asked them to finish the novel by next week, when I’ll be out of town. Our next class will be two weeks from now.

I’m a little behind on my postings… but here’s an update on the men’s first encounter with Stevenson’s The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. I warned the men that this short novella would be very different from the story we all think we know—that of the upright Victorian gentleman and his evil doppelgänger. Stevenson’s tale is framed as a detective story whose most prominent character in isn’t Jekyll but his lawyer, Mr. Utterson; Jekyll appears only intermittently, and never speaks for himself until the very end of the story. The book is short (it’s less than a hundred pages, and can be read easily in a single sitting), and rather different from movie versions of the story, which turn it into a simple allegory of good and evil.

I handed out copies of the book (a no-frills text costing just a dollar), and before starting to read, I asked the men about their impressions of the story from movies they’d seen, from popular culture, or from their own experiences. Most of them knew the basic outline of the tale through The Nutty Professor (the Eddie Murphy version, from 1996), though I was surprised that one man had never heard the names Jekyll and Hyde. The others knew the concept, at least. The men discussed how their personalities had changed when, before prison, they were under the influence of drink or drugs. The conversation then turned to the use of aliases. A number of the men had used different names when they were on the run.

One man told us how he stole a car and fled to California after receiving a 25-year sentence. “I felt free,” he said. “Time went by so fast. Everything was more vivid. Colors were brighter, the sun was hotter, flowers smelled better.” As a disguise, he bought an U.S. army uniform from a thrift store, hoping it would allay suspicion. One night he got pulled over by a police car, and the officer told him he’d just run through a red light. the man rolled down the window and leant his elbow on the frame, flashing his army stripes at the cop.

“I’m real sorry officer, but I’m trying to get back to the base before curfew,” he bluffed. If you write me up for a citation, I’m afraid I’ll be too late.”

To his surprise, the ruse worked. “Alright officer, go ahead,” said the cop.

The inmate was stunned—he hadn’t really expected his disguise to work. “I couldn’t believe it,” he told us. “If the cop had asked anything—where was the base, what time was the curfew was—I wouldn’t have known what to say. But he just let me go. I was driving along laughing, thrilled. I couldn’t wait to tell my buddies. But then I realized, because I was on the run, there was no one I could tell. That was pretty depressing.”