Kafka and The Order of the Phoenix

[Peggy]

No: HPFGUIDX 125657


Some other list members had posted a bit more about Umbridge and that 
nasty quill of hers, and that set my mind wandering a bit.  I thought 
I remembered, and finally tracked down, what the quill reminded me of.

I'm not a literary type, but I do read this, that, and the other 
thing, and I finally realized where I'd read about a similar device. 
Not to mention the trial scene in the beginning of OOtP.  

Franz Kafka's "The Trial" is more harrowing than Harry's trip in 
front of the Wizengamot, and the implement that I'm sure led to the 
invention of the quill is the Harrow in "The Penal Colony."  In 
Kafka's work, the machine is an instrument of capital punishment--it 
cuts the text of the broken commandment in to the prisoner's flesh 
until he dies. This is not reading for the faint of heart or the weak 
of stomach.

I'm not implying that JKR "stole" the idea, or any such thing.  I'm 
suggesting literary cross-fertilization here.  She might not even 
have remembered exactly where the idea of cutting the "sin" into the 
flesh of the victim came from herself, at the time she wrote it.  I'd 
bet a nickel that she's read that story, and, like me, remembered 
something about a machine that wrote on the flesh of a captive, but 
may not have remembered exactly where.

So, any takes on this?

Peg