23 pages • 46 minutes read
Franz KafkaA Report to an Academy
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1917A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Delusion Versus Desire
During his captivity, Red Peter sought ways to maintain hope in spite of his dire circumstances. Although he never expected to gain true freedom, he did aim to find a “way out.” To achieve this goal, he started imitating his captors’ behavior, hoping that, by becoming human, he could escape confinement. This desire compelled him to see his captors in an unrealistically favorable light. He deluded himself into thinking that his captors were treating him with kindness; this, in turn, allowed him to maintain greater hope of finding a “way out.”
In his cage aboard the ship, Red Peter managed to achieve an inner calm that allowed him to persist. He notes, “I owe that calmness to the people on the ship” and goes on to say that his captors “are good people, in spite of everything” (4). This establishes a pattern in which he compliments his captors for their supposed benevolence. By maintaining the deluded belief that his captors were compassionate, Red Peter was more easily able to hold onto hope of a “way out.”
While trying to better imitate his captors, Red Peter struggled with learning to drink alcohol. The smell “torture[d]” him and weeks passed before he was able to “overcome [his] reaction” (5). During this struggle, one of the captors would use his lit pipe to burn Red Peter, but Red Peter rationalizes this behavior and claims that his captor was doing this in Red Peter’s best interest because they “were fighting on the same side against ape nature” (6). Even though the man was torturing him, Red Peter clung to the deluded hope that his captors would provide him the opportunity for a better life.
Civilization Versus Freedom
By attaining humanness, Red Peter becomes a member of a civilized society, but this does not mean that he, nor other citizens, are truly free. He notes, “Among human beings people all too often are deceived by freedom” (3). This quote suggests that he understands how one’s participation in society necessitates a sacrifice of individual freedom. Even when a large group of people constitutes what they deem a “free society,” they paradoxically restrict their freedom by aligning their actions with laws and mores that govern the collective whole.
Red Peter does not “demand freedom” (3). Rather, he wants a “way out” and an opportunity to live an unconfined life. He exhibits self-awareness in how he understands that he cannot attain absolute freedom. For Red Peter, it is sufficient to have a “way out,” in which he is able to pursue intellectual interests, while also enjoying simple pleasures like drinking wine and having a lover. These tangible benefits of civilization outweigh the abstract allure of being fully free.
Assimilation
For Red Peter, it is of great importance that humans regard him as a fellow person. To feel as though he is a fully assimilated member of human society, he highlights his commonalities with those who have been human since birth. After sharing an extended metaphor about his transformation from ape to human, he likens himself to the Academy members:
Speaking frankly, as much as I like choosing metaphors for these things—speaking frankly: your experience as apes, gentlemen—to the extent that you have something of that sort behind you—cannot be more distant from you than mine is from me. But it tickles at the heels of everyone who walks on earth, the small chimpanzee as well as the great Achilles (1-2).
Here, Red Peter tries to convince the audience members that, like them, he has evolved from the ape. He is now human, which should entitle him to treatment as a fully integrated member of society. However, Red Peter becomes enraged about the journalist’s claims that his “ape nature is not yet entirely repressed” (2). Red Peter’s anger arises because, in his view, the journalist has stigmatized him in a way that brands him as “other.” With his otherness emphasized, it is less likely that society will accept him as fully assimilated.
It could be reasonably argued that, in “A Letter to an Academy,” Kafka is offering commentary about how emerging European (particularly German) nationalism was increasing hostility toward immigrant populations—or any other group that was deemed “other.” By resisting the assimilation of the “other”, nationalists made it easier to dehumanize these communities. Kafka was Jewish and was concerned with rising anti-Semitism in Europe, which (after his death) manifested in the Holocaust.
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