Kafka's The Trial Free Essay Sample

The Trial asks the question “are we in control?” The novel was published in 1926 after the death of Franz Kafka, and it’s come to be one of the most polarizing literary works of the twentieth century. Kafka’s style has introduced a new wave of writing, the term ‘Kafkaesque’ has been coined for describing his expressions of unruly bureaucracy as a conflict. The Trial has become an essential ‘Kafkaesque’ work; it tells the story of a banker, known as Josef K. (often referred to just as K,) who finds himself persecuted by the law under ambiguous charges. As his arrest is confirmed, K. is weaved into a labyrinth of a judicial system that turns out to be more complicated and overpowering than he could have conceptualized. K. fights for his innocence as much as he possibly can, but the system he’s under does nothing to accept the clear logic he tries to reason with, operating to force K. into his guilt by any measure. By the end of the story, the nightmarish force of the law takes over K.’s mind; He accepts his fate as a guilty man and is executed in the same fashion that he is arrested, unreasonably. The majority of the book takes place within confined rooms where K. is first accused, arrested, berated, judged, and finally, when he is taken outside, he’s executed. Kafka makes sure to highlight K.’s awareness of the entrances and exits within these rooms, because K. initally sees the doors as a method to escape the injustices he faces. But as each “escape” mentally beats K. down within his sentencing, it becomes clearer and clearer that the doors do not function to define the differences within spaces, rather, they dissolve the idea of controllable boundaries. No matter where he goes, K. is trapped within a ubiquitous force that uses it’s lack of physical boundaries to break it’s defendant’s mental liminal control. In The Trial, Franz Kafka uses doors to symbolize Josef K.’s imprisoned fate within the justice system, thus implying that the novel’s government authority has the ultimate control over its people’s autonomy.  

At the beginning of the novel, Franz Kafka depicts K.’s arrest through police that invade his bedroom and an inspector that has let himself into his room, establishing a lack of boundaries that K. now has. The book begins with K. alone in his room, waiting to get breakfast from his landlady, until, “There was immediately a knock at the door and a man entered. He had never seen the man in this house before.[...] “Who are you?” asked K., sitting half upright in his bed. The man, however, ignored the question as if his arrival simply had to be accepted.” (2) As K.’s house is invaded before the book can properly start, the mention of his door is important. The fact that the officer can just walk in so casually suggests that he operates under the idea that the law is entitled to K.’s private life. It’s an unreasonable beginning, but the immediate rejection of the basic functions of privacy suggests a sinister power that is heald by K.’s prosecutors. He is escorted into his living room, where he finds an inspector and typist waiting to meet with him. K. thinks to himself that he has the option to leave: “Perhaps, if he opened the door of the next room or even the front door, the two of them would not dare to stand in his way, perhaps that would be the simplest way to settle the whole thing, by bringing it to a head. But maybe they would grab him, and if he were thrown down on the ground he would lose all the advantage he [...] had over them.”(10) K. finds himself unable to leave his arrest, even with the event being unprofessional and cruel. After his home is unreasonably invaded, K. begins to understand that the authorities have an upper hand that he must learn to fit into. He is unsure if he would get hurt if he tries to leave, but on a deeper level, K. might understand that leaving his arrest is futile. If the door into his property does not protect him, leaving that door will not do the same. As the first chapter closes, K. is left alone to return to his work and to prepare for an upcoming hearing in the justice system’s courthouse. The accusation plagues his mind, as his physical boundaries now “broken” by his arrest.

Several times in the novel, K. finds himself lost in the Courthouse building with halls of doorways while searching for a specific place, exemplifying the frustrating mental confinement he begins to experience while navigating his trial and revealing the deliberately confusing judiciary’s method of entrapment. Following K.’s disgruntled arrest, he is given vague information about where his first court hearing with “Lanz the joiner” will occur. He follows the order as best as he can, coming to a strange building on the date he was told. Upon entering the premises, he finds,“[...]almost all the doors were left open and children ran in and out. Most of them were small, one-windowed rooms[...]. In every room, the beds were still in use by people who were ill, or still asleep, or people stretched out on them in their clothes. K. knocked at the flats where the doors were closed and asked whether Lanz the joiner lived there.[...] K. eventually had to give up asking if he did not want to be led all round from floor to floor in this way.”(44) The lineup of small, dimly-lit rooms is described as almost prison-like, especially considering that it’s a lawful building. Each doorway houses tired and ill residents with lives that are on display to one another, and K. is allowed to observe the worn-down residents through the open doors, that serve no boundary function. Though he eventually is led to the Courtroom, K. spends hours roaming these exhaustive halls of open doors before he can get the chance to defend himself. Later on, K. meets a Court Usher who refuses to help him with his defense but escorts him around the offices within the same Court building. As the Usher will not answer his basic questions, only going on about the structure of the building and introducing K. to the residents that live within the confined, one-windowed rooms from before. The Usher reveals to K. that “they are the accused, everyone [residents] you see here has been accused.”(76)  K begins to feel unsafe, as he understands his fate is no different from the fatigued residents. He decides to leave, feeling the weight of his situation sink in, so he asks: “what is the way to the exit?” “You haven’t got lost, have you?” asked the usher in amazement, “you go down this way to the corner, then right down the corridor straight ahead as far as the door.” “Come with me,” said K., “show me the way, I’ll miss it, there are so many different ways here.” “It’s the only way there is,” said the usher, who had now started to sound quite reproachful, “I can’t go back with you again, I’ve got to hand in my report, and I’ve already lost a lot of time because of you as it is.” (79) As established before, the building they are in is nearly impossible to navigate and the amount of doors that lead to different rooms are indistinguishable from the exit that allows one to truly leave the building. The Usher was fine with introducing K. to the residents as he toured the building, those stuck in the process between guilty and innocent. But, the Usher will not guide K. to that true exit, though he explicitly understands the Courthouse’s confusing miriad of doors/doorways and halls. By telling K. that there is only one way to an exit, and that it’s just a “door” he directly contradicts what he knows to be true about the building. So, with that contradiction from a high-up law official, it likely suggests that he is attempting to trick K.’s sense of an actual exit to be fluid with the countless other rooms. By the amount of other ‘accused’ tenants, it implys the path to aquittal is deliberatley fluid with the path to guilt and prolonged accusation. The Usher, working under the oppressive judiciary, wants to confuse K. within the system of housing to fufill the takeover of K.’s mental liberty.