Kafka 's writings often reflect the inability to belong in a certain place and reflect the problems of identity. In this story, Kafka apparently tries to reflect his life experience through the ape 's life. There is a clear relation between Kafka 's life and that of the ape and it 's that neither Kafka nor the ape "belonged". They both faced conflicts of identity throughout their changing lives.
Kafka suffered a harsh, stubborn father who was never easy to please, an unsatisfying physical appearance, and problems in his community concerning his devotion to Judaism. I believe that these were reasons that greatly influenced his writing. The thought that his faith in Judaism made him an outcast in society, not having a place to belong as
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He had to put all youth memories as an ape behind him to adapt to the new environment and seek freedom. Kafka also faced this kind of problem as he realized that the way for belonging is by changing his body appearance and to decrease his faith in Judaism. Similar to the ape who tried to change his lifestyle and imitate humans in order to survive and escape.
There are several examples of symbolism in "A Report to an Academy". One of them is the ape which symbolizes fitting in to the human world. Another is the alcoholic drink which symbolizes the inability or difficulty of learning to fit in. Furthermore, the ape 's journey to the human 's world might implicate or symbolize the Jewish "Diaspora".
The ape symbolizes the aspect of belonging or "fitting in" as in the story, the ape couldn 't find anywhere as a home in the human world and he was pretending to be human to fit in and survive within the new community. The alcohol symbolizes the inability or complexity in learning to fit in as he faced trouble learning to drink alcohol like humans and took long to learn to do so. The ape 's journey symbolizes the Jewish "Diaspora" as the ape was forced to leave his home, leaving his memories, his youth behind, similar to the Jews whom were scattered from their hometowns, not finding a place to "fit
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The fate of both the ape and his mate was determined in means of the type of training and motivation to learn which determined the ape 's fate as a successful and happy fate in contrast to the chimpanzee 's fate as a failure to achieve the ape 's goals.
The ape 's aspiration for imitating humans, made him study human moves, not that he 's doing it for fun, but because he wanted to escape The Zoological Garden and perform in the Music Hall. Since the ape was a test focus, he had the priorities to learn, which led him to this successful fate. The chimpanzee, however, was only there to please the ape and hadn 't had the advantages to learn like the ape since she was half-trained because she was only there to please the