On a recent visit to the Great Wall of China, I was reminded of a short story by Kafka which is an allegorical account about the building of this monumental barrier whose purpose, supposedly, was to keep out the ‘barbarians from the North’. In Kafka’s story, the construction of the Wall had begun many years previously. Generations of workers, men and women, had toiled to build the barricade. Situated in a remote region, they formed a community cut off from contact from the rest of the world. Born on the construction site, the members of this isolated population grew into adulthood, reached old age, and died there, being replaced by their children, and their children after them.
The Messengers
Every now and then, generally after a gap of a generation or two, a messenger from the outside world would reach them on horseback. These infrequent messengers claimed to be part of a long relay chain through which the orders of the emperor, sitting in his palace in the distant imperial city, reached them. So far away was the emperor and his palace, that no single messenger could traverse the distance between the capital city and the site of the Wall. The imperial commands had to be relayed through a series of couriers.
The commands were never in writing, but always oral. The workers on the Wall had no assurance as to whether the self-proclaimed messenger was in fact in the employ of the emperor or an imposter. Even if he were not an imposter, the orally issued orders, passed on from mouth to mouth, could easily have got hopelessly garbled in transit. Furthermore, the distance that the messengers had to travel was so great, and took so much time to cover, that the emperor who had issued the latest set of orders may well be dead, replaced by a successor who could well want something entirely different from what his predecessor had in mind.
Getting It Right
What were the workers on the Wall to do? Unquestioningly obey the instructions given to them by the latest messenger, even if they contradicted all previous commands? Ignore all commands and follow their own inclinations in pursuing their lifelong task, even at the risk of inviting imperial retribution if not on themselves then on their descendants? There were no ready-made and reliable answers to these and other questions. The only reality the workers knew was that of the Wall, and that it had to be built. Or did it? What if on that immeasurably distant throne now sat an emperor who required that the Wall no longer be built, that instead it be demolished? What then?
As in the case of the other questions, there was no answer to this. So the workers continued to do what they’d always done: carry on building the Wall, following the instructions given to them by the messengers, and hoping that they were doing the right thing. If indeed there were a right thing, as opposed to a wrong thing, to do in their self-enclosed universe.
Interpreting Kafka
Kafka’s parable about the Wall, like his other writings, has been interpreted to imply the inscrutability of the powers that shape our existence. Who are we? What are we doing here and why? What is the purpose and meaning of everything, if at all there are such things as purpose and meaning?
Every now and then, messengers in the form of messiahs, godmen, saints, gurus, come to us with instructions from an infinitely far-off Emperor telling us what we should do, and why. Like Kafka’s workers, we are given no assurances about the authenticity or otherwise of these messengers. We do not know if an Emperor exists, or if he does, that he is aware of us and of our insignificant doings.
Like Kafka’s workers we are left with a lot of unanswerable questions. And a job at hand, to build each our own Wall: to lead our lives as best we can, taking full responsibility for what we do. We can’t pass the buck for our mistakes — the wrongs that we do to ourselves and to each other — to a messenger, or an Emperor who may or may not be real.
The only thing that’s real is the next decision to make, the next block of stone you place on the Wall. Careful now. Don’t drop it. On your own toes, or on mine.
