Kafka's statement

‘A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us’
-Franz Kafka




The moment I saw Kafka’s statement, several ideas popped inside my head about what the statement means. But I think the most precise idea to the real meaning of the statement in that the ‘frozen sea’ is our frozen or stunned imagination, and the ‘ice axe’ refers to the tool that can defrost it. The human brain develops only when it’s used. Imagination and knowledge from books are a shortcut to fuel our brain.
Before I read the ‘Warriors saga,’ I didn’t even see a page of an object called ‘book.’ After my’ soulmate’ (or my BEST friend) MinHee started to read this book, I started to have some interest in it. She had that book in her hand the whole time. If I asked, “Do you like me or the book?” She would have said, “Book.” The book cover’s background was dark, and it kind of gave me a feeling that my imagination or knowledge about books was like that. But, the cats on the cover seemed to move and wander around with their shimmering pelt, brightening their pitch-black surroundings. Maybe that’s why I was attracted to this book. It was mirroring my imagination. It’s dark, but there is light. It’s dark, but there’s hope. Hope for me to become creative and improve my imagination. I started to read the book. One book was over 400 pages, and there were total 6 books in the saga. Astonishingly, Park Yoon Jo, a girl that didn’t even read a single book in a year, finished the whole saga in 4 days. After that unbelievable (?) event happened, I became a humorous kid. I started to say out things that normal people couldn’t ‘imagine’. I broke the frozen sea within me.