The Trial

Read from Wednesday July 13th to Monday, July 18th.

The Trial, by Franz Kafka.  One of his most famous pieces, it was unfortunately left unfinished before his untimely death.  Kafka was not recognized for his genius during his life, and only became famous posthumously.  The Trial was an interesting story about the perversity of the law.  It is frustrating to read, and not much actually happens during the course of the short novel, and much of it is redundant, but that was the point that Kafka was trying to make.

It is the story about a young banker named Josef K.  K., who lives alone and is moderately successful, one day wakes up to find two police officers in his apartment.  They have to come to arrest him.  K. does not believe it at first, thinking that it might be a joke.  However, the officers and their supervisor process K. in a neighbor's apartment, and then he is released to go about his day.  What crime did he commit? He is not told, and it is never revealed.

K. returns to his job, flummoxed of course, and he has conversations with his landlady and a neighbor.  They both act as if it is no big deal.  A shame of course, but something that happens often to people for no particular reason.  Then K. is summoned for his first examination.  Seeing nothing else to do, he goes searching for the court, and finds it in an old apartment building.  There is a large courtroom with many old men arguing amongst themselves.  K. enters, interrupts the examining judge, and makes his case for himself that he is wrongly accused and is in fact a model citizen.

Pleased with himself, unfortunately the trial still goes on against him.  K. visits court offices in the attic of the building, and he is visited by his uncle from the country.  The uncle forces K. to get a lawyer, and he brings him to an old friend, Mr. Huld.  He is pretentious and full of talk and bluster, and he claims that he is the best at these types of cases.  But it is going to take a long time, and lots of documents, and even then the best hope that you have is just having your case postponed for a later date.  K. also meets Leni, the maid servant of Huld, and they have an affair, but later he learns that she is only attracted to the accused, desperate men who visit the lawyer.

K. is very frustrated by now with the whole process.  He is impatient, and stressed, and he is falling behind his competitors at the bank.  K. has conversations with the court painter, who explains some of the court processes, and the different types of lawyers.  He also talks with a dilapidated businessman who has been in trial for five years, and has subsequently lost his business trying to defend himself.  He has five lawyers, and none of them know about the others.  K. resolves to ditch his own lawyer, Huld, and find a new one, but when he goes to do that, Huld shows off the power he has over another client, in an effort to impress K. apparently (this chapter is left unfinished). 

Finally, K. thinks he is going to a cathedral to meet a bank client, but instead he has a long conversation with the priest.  The priest tells the following fable : "A man from the country seeks the law and wishes to gain entry to the law through a doorway. The doorkeeper tells the man that he cannot go through at the present time. The man asks if he can ever go through, and the doorkeeper says that is possible. The man waits by the door for years, bribing the doorkeeper with everything he has. The doorkeeper accepts the bribes, but tells the man that he accepts them "so that you do not think you have failed to do anything." The man waits at the door until he is about to die. Right before his death, he asks the doorkeeper why even though everyone seeks the law, no one else has come in all the years. The doorkeeper answers "No one else could ever be admitted here, since this gate was made only for you. I am now going to shut it."

K. is confused from the fable, as it implies that his situation is hopeless.  And the fable prepares the reader for an unfortunate ending.  On the eve of his thirtieth birthday, K. is summoned by two men, led through the streets on their arms and into a field, where he is beheaded, "like a dog."  K. goes peacefully and knowingly to his death, because finally the trial has finished.  A powerful ending, it is appropriate for the existential absurdity of the entire story.  We are helpless before the Law, selected at random, and a meaningless cog in the system.  Three and a half out of five stars