Quote Reflection

“A book should be like an ice-axe breaking the frozen sea within us”-Franz Kafka 

    When I first read Kafka’s statement I could not understand his message. However, when I thought back to my favorite book series-Twilight written by Stephenie Meyer, and how it could be an ice axe- I understood exactly what he meant. Kafka explains our life as a prison, which is why he uses the term ‘frozen sea’. For when something is frozen there is no life, it is motionless- like reality. In reality there is no such thing as talking animals, flying, hidden treasures. Reality can freeze our imagination; block our big ideas, paralyzing us from moving forward- leaving our mind, our life immobile, cold and lifeless. Our weapons, our ‘ice-axes’, that can free us from our shackles and spark our imagination, are the books we read. However these weapons, these books, must be sharp, captivating, hooking the reader to every word. These books must be able to bring us to places we have never dreamed of- light up ideas we could never think of alone. Amazing books should bring us comfort in our saddest of days or give us a companion in our loneliest of times. Books should release us from our prison, and give us knowledge of what is beyond our iron bars, our frozen sea. Books can provide us with knowledge of what has been, what is happening, and what is to come. Knowledge that can give us power leading to a successful life. “A book should be like an ice-axe”, a powerful weapon which is able to break the hardest of ice, releasing our ideas and imagination. Kafka emphasizes this message by using a simile, ‘A book should be like an ice-axe’, and using the oxymoron, ‘frozen sea’. A frozen sea is an oxymoron because seas are constantly moving. Constantly creating waves, the way books can constantly unlock the prisons of our imagination, creating new thoughts and ideas.   

However, many that are unprivileged are unable to read books because they cannot read and they cannot afford books. That is why many of the unprivileged are frozen in their knowledge less lives, forcing them to find shelter in the cruel streets. Others have the privilege of reading some books taken away from them. Leaders- for example the Nazis found Jewish books dangerous, so they burned Jewish books to block ‘dangerous’ ideas and information from leaking out. Some deny the opportunity to read, leaving themselves frozen in reality, with different and limited knowledge and imagination. I used to be one of these people, only reading books when it was forced upon me. That was until this summer, where my brother introduced me to the Twilight series. From the very beginning to the very end Stephenie Meyer hooked me into her saga and broke the frozen sea within me. Before reading the Twilight saga I was not the superstitious type. After reading about a vampire falling in love with a mortal, it sparked up my imagination.  It made me believe the impossible. Its characters kept me company in my lonely grandmother’s house I stayed in during the summer. The series opened a drawer full of ideas inside me that was waiting to be unlocked- it melted the “frozen sea within me.” I now keep asking myself, “Can someone walking around me possibly be a vampire? Witch? Fairy? Werewolf?” Reading the Twilight saga has liberated my imagination, opening my mind to the unlimited boundaries of imagination. The Twilight saga has been the ice axe that has broken ‘the frozen sea within me.’