Raised in Orange, Jennifer Clarke spent her childhood on the varied landscapes of Southeast Texas. The performing and fine arts became her focus in youth and remain so today. She worked as a researcher and writer in the legal field for more than a decade until dedicating herself to education. Being a classroom teacher was one of the most rewarding and difficult positions she ever had, and it lead her to support education, justice, and community activism.
For Volume 3:1, Clarke contributed an original critical essay on Franz Kafka's
The Trial titled "
Abandoning Human: The Proliferation of Indifference
in Kafka’s The Trial." Here's the abstract:
While this unfinished novel has been studied from several perspectives including religious and bureaucratic, a running thematic element throughout the novel is indifference. Kafka creates a world, through setting and his use of characterization that is murky and surreal. K. is arrested, condemned, and never truly heard, but then again, no indication of what he should be saying is clarified because his charges are never explained. K. stumbles through a labyrinth of confusing and debilitating processes and never gains insight into his own situation. Through the character of Joseph K., paralleled by a court system that is void of compassion, Kafka reveals that apathy infects humanity, and failure to actively reject indifference can bring about devastation. The author portrays the inhuman through images of disfigured characters, filth, and dehumanizing circumstances revealing the true nature of a failing humanity. Self-preservation and self-interest are the top priorities for many of the characters, and there are no qualms about using and even destroying others to secure the self; however the characters lack the most important aspect of self-preservation—self-reflection, and so no progress can truly be made. This aspect of human nature is not new, and has not changed. Kafka’s insights into the world around him during a very dark time in human history are perhaps depicted in this novel and are no less relevant today.
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Read Clarke's essay in full --
Synesthesia Literary Journal Volume 3:1
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