A reading use as much of the text possible, what's my grade?

Before Derrida
by Franz Kafka
Adapted by Daniel

"Before Derrida stands a doorkeeper on guard. To this doorkeeper there
comes a man from the Bananafish List who begs for admittance to Derrida.
But the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment. The
man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then, to enter later. 'It
is possible,' answers the doorkeeper, 'but not at the moment.' Since the
door leading into Derrida stands open as usual and the doorkeeper steps to
one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance. When the
doorkeeper sees that, he laughs and says: 'If you are so strongly tempted,
try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am
only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall keepers stand at every door,
one more powerful than the other. Even the third of these has an aspect
that even I cannot bear to look at.' These are difficulties which the man
from the List had not expected to meet. Derrida, he thinks should be
accessible to every man and at all times, but when he looks more closely at
the doorkeeper in his furred robe, with his huge pointed nose and long thin
Tartar beard, polo shirt and plaid pants he decides that he had better wait
until he gets permission to enter. There he sits waiting for days and
years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper
with his importunity. The doorkeeper often engages him with brief
conversation, asking him about his home, his golf score, and about other
matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men put
questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be
allowed to enter yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things
for his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of
bribing the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as
he takes each gift: 'I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have
left something undone.' During all these years the man watches the
doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and
this one seems to him the only barrier between himself and Derrida. In the
first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only
mutters to himself. He grows childish, and since in his prolonged watch he
has learned even the fleas in the doorkeeper's collar, he begs the very
fleas to help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind.
Finally his eyes grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really
darkening around him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the
darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams immortally from the
door Derrida. Now his life is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that
he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his
mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper. He
beckons the doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body.
The doorkeeper has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size
has increased very much to the man's disadvantage. 'What do you want to
know now?' asks the doorkeeper, 'you are insatiable.' 'Everyone strives to
attain Derrida,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all
these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper
perceives that man is at the end of his strength and that his hearing is
failing, so he bellows in his ear: 'No one could gain admittance through
this door, since this door was never intended for you. I am now going to
shut it, sorry, I have a tee time.'"

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Received on Mon Mar 10 18:17:05 2003