The Trial - Kafka

Josef K. is not a portrait of Kafka. He is, rather, a type—the modern professional man who suppresses his private life in his devotion to his work.

KAFKA never produced a final version of The Trial

Kafka’s friend Max Brod was the one that published the book for Kafka

Mono-perspectival Narration: The story is told almost entirely through Josef K.’s perspective. This creates a sense of entrapment and confinement, as the reader only knows what K. knows and feels his same confusion regarding the court

The Novel -

When K woke up and saw the stranger in his room, he was lowkey calm about it.

A beaurocratic nightmare.

the system verses the person story

we are using Robertsons analysis of the legal system in place in Kafka’s lifetime.

the trail is more so about who you are than what you did. it;s about an internal state, not an external crime.

K is a modern professional that works a senior position at a bank, a procurest, 30yrs unmarried and lives in a boarding house, supress his private life for his job, treats the landlady with arrogance and neediness, Fran Burba.

the people that come to arrest him, are eating K’s breakfast, they are just underlings. FRanz and Wal

they interrogate K in a makeshift office in his neighbours bedroom, physically altering the place for a legal procedure, it signifies that the court doesn’t have its on space and invades your space it takes over your private sphere.

Cominer - always has a creepy smile.

The court invites his coworkers to watch(his humiliation), it blurs the lines between his private life and professional reputation.

K is treating this seriously, asking for ID’s and all the guards just laugh at him.

The Literary and Legal Trad -

K is expecting one legal system but finds himself in another. Inquisitorial vs. Adversarial Systems:

the adverseral system(two sides fighting it out, prosecution and defence fighting out on equal footing in front of a just judge and public and you know the charge) and the inquisitorial procedure, it was common in the continental Europe, especially in Austrian empires before the reforms (the government does things in secrecy, the court is the investigator, the accused has no rifght to see the evidence being used against them).

So when K begins to demand for answers to his questions about the case, he thinks that he is able to make use of his legal right. But he is not even considered/taken seriously by the low levelled guards talk about the higher levelled ones.

The Atmosphere for this book is very stifling. the air quality itself is not the best.

When he is summoned for his first hearing, he is greeted by a swamp into a crowded attic, and physically he can’t bear it, he starts to break down and gets dizzy and sea sick. the air in the ourt office is described as “heavy, hot and unbreathable“ so law literally consumes all the air in the riim.

The Lumber room Scene - K complain about the first two guys to the court, and then a few days later he is at his bank, and sees a junk room, a lumber room with the two guys ()and a thrasher there at his workplace. The theme of Ubequity, of the court being everywhere, even to the point of penetrating his workspace.) Even the next day, they are still there, it is like a tim loop and is even suggested that this traill could be happening at another dimension simuktaneously, but it doesn’t follow the law of physichs. K can’t seem to get a way from the court.

K’s relationship with women. He seems to think of women as tools to be used, he calls them helpers.

Forline Burcler

Otta Weiner the controversial and troublesome mysogynistic philosopher with no respect for women, classified women as mothers or whores, who had no rational thoughts, and Kafka was aware of the behaviour. (he was from Vienna)

And you can see that influence in the was Kafka treats women, in calculated desire and intent. That seducing them will suddenly help him with his court case.

Lenny the (lawyers nurse k) is the one with the physical defect, the webbed hand, the claw which K calls a pretty claw, And Lenny is attracted to K because he is accused, she only likes accused men. This connects the whole legal system to something animalistic and perverse.

The nature of Guilt - The law itself, the Why.

The debate that was happening in Legal circles around the time.

On one side we have the German legal code influenced by the philosopher Emmanuel Kant. It was act based, as an autonomous individual who committed a crime you will be punished for the action of committting that crime.

But Kafka was trained in Prague under the Austrian legal code, which was much more focused on the criminal type and evil intent, if you harboured the intent or thought about it, the law was intersted in you. The Law is attracted by Guilt.

Your own internal guilt lures the law in, and K as a cold individual that has abandoned humanity has lured the law in, he has even abandoned his mother, and treats his niece as a stranger. The Austrian tradition will deem him guilty for this, even if he hasn’t broken a single law

This all feels deeply personal to Kafka too. This connects to FB(Felice Bursner). In the Manuscript she is mentioned as Kafka’s fiance in real life, and they also had a trail of their own. in 1914 she and her friends confronted Kafka in a hotel room in Berlin and grilled him about his hesitation to marry Felice, his coldness, his obsession with writing. kafka called it the court of law, he felt humilated and went home to start writing the Trail.

So in a way the book is a nightmare version of a bad breakup talk, its a nightmare version of a man who knows he’s not built for normal life, for marriage, faily and children and he is guilty about this, K’s guilt is Kafka’s guilt.

He goes to two people for help, the lawyeer and the painter.

Dr. Hold, the lawyer is the embodiment of the old system, he is sick live in an old house and demands total submission from his clients. and the best way to understand him is to look at his other client, Lock. Lock used to be a successful business man like K but is now is a shell, he practically lives in the lawyers house, Hold treats him like a pet, he is basically the lawyers dog.

It shows that to survive the system, you have to dehumanize yourself, you have to give up all your dignity, and K see’s this and says no he doesnt want to end up like lock/block.

And then goes to TetRelly the court painter, the contrast is big, Hold is in this dark dusty mansion and Teterelly is in this tiny baking hot attic, surrounded by a gang of teenegae girls whio harrases anyone who comes by.

but TRelly is more useful and gives us the most concrete details in the book of how the court works, He tells three options for acquittals: - real acquittals(you are innicent the files are destroyed and you are free forever) but it is does not exist in practice, it is a legend. -Apparant acquittals(a temporary fix, you get acquited, you go free but the files arent destroyed and go back to the archives so you could be rearrested at anytime). - Pretraction(you keep the case going forever, just at the lowest level of the court, you attened hearings, you brin=be judges you file pettitons) so the choice is live in constant flear if rearrest or live forever in the case.

And Trelly does a good job potraying this in his painting, a gloomy landscape called sunset in the heap, and sells it multiple times to K, its mass produced art and a great metaphor, the acquittals look defferent on the surface but underneath they are all the same hopeless realities. there is no individual justice just like there is no different art in that attic.

The Cathedral. K is to meet an Italian business contact, but the guy never shows up, and now he is just wndering around the massive cathedral and the atmosphere is back to being heavy, and he has this little pocket tourch/flashlight that barely cuts throught the darkness, which symbolises modern technology, the flashlight being useless against the ancient spiritual darness of the law. And then he is called by the prison chaplain on a pulpit “Joseph K“, and he answers for the first time”yes, here I am” he accepts the summons and chaplain reprimands him, he basically calls K blind, he says “can’t you see even two steps infornt of of you“. And then tells him the parable before the law.

So a man from the country comes to the law, there is a door keeper, the door keeper says you can’t enter now, so the man waits for days then years, he bribes the door keeper, he ages, he shrinks and the dooe keeper just stands there, big and imposing, and finakky the man in dying, he says, eveyrone strives fro the law, how come no one else in all these years has come to the door? and the door keeper screams the punchline to his dying ear, this door was intended only for you, i am now going to shut it. it is the ultimate paradox, the system was designed for the individual, it is structurally impossible for the individual to enter. It suggests that the law is personal, knows your name and makes a door just for you, but it also complete;y inaccessible, you could spnd your whole life waiting for permission to live and you will die waiting, and it leads us inexplicaly to the end, the execution.

It’s K’s 31'st birthday, exactly one year from the arrest. Two men come for him and K calls them “Tenners“ because they look like old plump opera singers, and theres no fight left in him, he just goes with them, and shame of the scene is palpable, they strip him of his coats, they prop him up against a stone, they pass a knife back and forth over his head, they are hesitating because they want hime to commit suicide, to do the courts job fro them, that would be the finak submission, but he cant do it, he lacks the strength so they stab him. And his final words are “like a dog“, it was as if the shame of it must outlive him, it connects right back to Block the lawyers dog, again the system didn't juist kill him, it dehumanized him, the human part of him was destroyed long before the knife touched him.

One last atmosphere to note, the windows. through out the book people were always watching, During the arrest, the old people from across the street were watching from their window. When K is in the court offices, people from the tenament are looking down, it creates this penautican vibe, there is no privacy, you are always being judged. Which relates back to guilt by intent (mens rea). if your internal character is on trail then every moment of your life is evident, you are never not being watched.

• Genre - A modernist Parable not a realistic, legal drama

• Legal tradition, the conflict, Autrian guilt by intent verse German guilt by action based law

• There is no real acquittal, there is only apparent acquittal or protraction, the trail is a circle not aline.

• the ending, the shame outlives the man, the system kills the dignity before it kills the body.

• the dark humour, it is a tragedy but also a comedy of beaurocracy. the incompetence of the guards, the vanity of the judges.

• the court is described to be eubequitous, and attracted by guilt, but is it real, or a projection of Kafka’s self judgement, did he arest himself because he knew deep down he was wasting his life.

Important Characters

• Josef K.: A 30-year-old senior accountant at a bank. He is arrogant, obsessed with his professional status, and initially treats his trial as a "piece of business".

• Fräulein Bürstner (F.B.): A typist in K.’s boarding house. Kafka used the initials of his real-life fiancée, Felice Bauer, for this character. K. assaults her sexually, and her presence at the end of the novel makes K. feel that further resistance to his execution is pointless.

• Dr. Huld (The Lawyer): A bedridden, "poor man’s lawyer" who uses his "personal contacts" with low-level officials to drag out cases without ever reaching an actual acquittal.

• Leni: The lawyer’s nurse who has a "physical defect"—webbing between her fingers that K. calls a "pretty claw". She is portrayed as a temptress who finds all defendants attractive.

• Titorelli: A court painter who inherited his position from his father. He explains that there are only three possibilities for a trial: genuine acquittal (which only exists in legends), apparent acquittal, and protraction (dragging the case out indefinitely).

• Block: A corn merchant whose trial has lasted five years. He is completely broken by the system, acting like the lawyer's "dog" and even crawling on his knees.

• The Prison Chaplain: Meets K. in a cathedral and tells him the "Before the Law" parable. He warns K. that "the proceedings gradually turn into the verdict".