The Trial – A
Critical Review
As you read ‘The Trial’ by Franz
Kafka, it dawns upon you that you could very easily have been the protagonist Joseph
K. Kafka induces this fear by portraying K. as a very real character, someone with
whom you can easily relate yourself to. K. is an ambitious young banker who is
very sure of his intellectual abilities and his philosophical ideologies. He has
good manners and is righteous. When he is arrested one morning ‘without having done anything wrong’, he
handles the situation very admirably. His decisions and actions throughout the
novel seem logical and mature and reflect the good education of the man.
Even though it was set and
written in the 1910’s, The Trial feels surprisingly contemporary. The emotions of the
characters resound those of our own. The general setting of time and place make
this effect prominent. This is even more remarkable considering the fact that
Kafka probably never wanted the book to be published.
There are many facets of The
Trial that make it a modernist work. A fact that deeply disturbs the reader is
that there is no clear mention of the actual charge on K. Even K. himself does
not know the charge that has been pressed onto him. This situation is
very much similar to the suitcase in the 1994 Quentin Tarantino movie ‘Pulp Fiction’.
A large part of the story revolves around the suitcase, but its contents are
never revealed. The second aspect of the Trial that makes it a modernist novel
is that is an unfinished work as Kafka himself regarded it so. Max Brod, Kafka’s
friend who published his works after his death, mentions that there should have
been some chapters before the final one. Also, the arrangement of the chapters
in the particular order as published may not have been intended by Kafka. There
is very less to no logical connection between the episodes of the various
chapters. This feature of the novel endows it with a quality that leaves a
greater room for interpretation by the reader. This is a trademark of modernist
art where the reader’s intellectual capabilities are respected. Another feature
of modernist writing, where the style itself becomes the content, is evident in
the novel. The changes in the language over the chapters of ‘A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man’ reflect the changes in Stephen. Similarly, the length of
the paragraphs in the novel becomes extremely long, thus reflecting the interminable
legal procedures.
The narrator of the novel also
belongs to the modern period. He/she is a third person, but is not completely
omniscient. The narrator gets trapped in the mind of K. He/she never steps out
of his mind to analyse the situation, but rather accepts whatever the thoughts
of K. are. Clearly, although the narration is third person, but is never completely
free from the protagonist’s point of view.
The Trial explores the concepts
of law and comments on the condition of legal system and bureaucracy. The message
that is conveyed is that all the actions and intentions of K. are fruitless. The
court is presented as a machine that doesn’t care about the people and doesn’t have
any motive. It just moves on and on. The legal system is too complicated to be understood
by any man. The characters that help K. understand the legal system talk about
the higher advocates; but K. is unable to contact them. This serves as a
comment on the nature of legal system which is out of reach of common man. The
inconsistency and the ineffectiveness of the system is furthermore accentuated by
the description of the courthouse as a cheap chamber in a suburban locality,
and by the fact that the most helpful people in the system are those who don’t
belong to the system, like the painter. It is very depressing to comprehend
that K.’s decision of actively participation in his trial actually becomes his main
problem. The story that K. hears in the penultimate chapter represents one’s
realization after one has been through the legal procedures. These concepts and
criticisms hold true even today, thus hinting that these are not issues that
are tied to a particular time or place but are intertwined with the nature of human
law itself.
Though Kafka describes the state
of helplessness that K finds himself in through the complicated legal process,
but it is not limited only to legal issues. This comment on the helplessness of
man is a general description of the human society. K is helpless also in his
efforts to court Fraulein Burstner, his attempt to explain the triviality of
the trial to his uncle, his effort to stop the punishment of the warders who had asked for bribe while arresting him. Moreover, the conversation of K
with the warders demonstrates his helplessness that they felt in asking for bribes
due to lack of sufficient legitimate means. This episode is also a comment on
the system where the higher official taking even larger bribes are issuing
punishment for those under their subjugation for the same crime. Finally, the attitude of
K. in the last chapter surpasses the state of helplessness; it represents the
willingness to swallow the helplessness.
The Trial is no doubt a very insightful
description of human nature in general, but it also feels rather depressing and
demoralizing. This is consistent with a famous quote of Kafka: “You can hold yourself back from the
sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords
with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you
could avoid.” The book imparts a
similar understanding of the human society; you are fated to suffer, don’t try
to avoid it. If K. hadn’t tried to avoid the long proceeding of the court and
taken active participation, he perhaps would have… Read the book to find what he was fated for,
and more importantly, contemplate whether this masterpiece resonates with a
sadistic philosophy or it achieve something much more.
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