Sunday, April 25, 2010

Here is Franz Kafka's story "The Sirens" in its entirety:
(translated by Clement Greenberg)

"These are the seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that way. It would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they knew they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful."

Notice how the first sentence defines something. The second sentence questions that defintion. The third sentence redefines it. Notice, too, how his use of "too" changes what the story appears to be about (what are the "these" if not the Sirens?).

Write your own three sentence story.

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