The Trial (Everyman's Library) Book

It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary

Nothing speaks a more profound truth than a pristine metaphor…

Funny, us, worming through the world ascribing meaning, logic and order to the dumb, blind forces of void. It's all one can do to maintain sanity in the absurd reality of existence, but what is it worth? Are we trees in gale force winds fighting back with fists we do not possess? Is life the love of a cold, cruel former lover bating us on while only concerned with themselves? What use is logic in an illogical prison where the opinion of the masses reigns supreme? Franz Kafka's The Trial is the world we all live in, unlocked through layers of allegory to expose the beast hidden from plain sight. On the surface it is an exquisite examination of bureaucracy and bourgeoisie with a Law system so complex and far-reaching that even key members are unable to unravel it's complicated clockwork. However, this story of a trial'one that never occurs other than an arrest and a solitary conference that goes nowhere'over an unmentioned crime serves as a brutal allegory for our existence within a judgemental societal paradigm under the watch of a God who dishes out hellfire to the guilty. This is a world where man's noose is only a doorway. The Trial is not for the faint of heart or fragile psyche yet, while the bleakness is laid on thick, it is also permeated with a marvelous sense of humor and a fluid prose that keeps the pages flipping and the reading hours pushing forward towards dawn. This is a dark comedy of the human comedy, full of the freeing chortles of gallow humor. Kafka's nightmarish vision is the heartbeat of our own existence, chronicling the frustrations of futility when applying logic to the reality of the absurd, yet factual, nature of life.

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.

This memorable opening line is the perfect establishing shot for Kafka's, and Joseph K.'s, world. One can be sure of their innocence, yet fall to the blade all the same. The most startling and accurate portrayal of mankind is found when K. goes to visit the painter in the slums and finds ...a disgusting, steaming yellow fluid poured forth, before which a rat fled into the nearby sewer. At the bottom of the steps a small child was lying face down on the ground, crying, but it could hardly be heard above the noise coming from a sheet metal shop… We, humanity, are prostrate and bawling in a toxic wasteland, unloved and ignored by the absent parents. Not even passersby stop to help the child, or are even away, for the noise of industry drowns it out. This is a world where corporations are 'people' and actual lives are thrown to the gutter for 'the good of the company', where soulless abstract money-making concepts are given a higher priority than our own shared flesh-and-blood. The worst part is that we accept this. We tow the party line, we uphold something meaningless and only given power by our collective acceptance. 'You may object that it is not a trial at all,' says K. to the courtroom, 'you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such.' These are not political opinions I am presenting, just the fact that much of our society, economy and political structure exists only because we recognize it as so and prescribe meaning to something inherently meaningless.

Children, such as the child crying in a pool of yellow filth, are a key motif in the novel. Their parents are never apparent and they run like wild animals. The gaggle of young girls outside the painters apartment perfectly reflect the wild masses of ignorance, defying respect for privacy and barging into places they aren't wanted, needed or even should be simply because they can. One girl is described as hunchbacked and not yet an adult, yet full of sexuality which she asserts over K. 'Neither her youth nor her deformity had prevented her early corruption.' These girls, we are told, also belong to the court, another place where the persona is depicted more like beast than man, preying on those around them with their lusts. Take, for example, the student in the attic courtroom who asserts his dominance over the married women through his power. He, too, is slightly deformed with bow-legs that call to mind classic depictions of Satan with his animalistic torso and hoofed feet, and bushy red beard like something from nature and not urban society. He also snaps at K.'s hand with his teeth in defense, like a dog(Like a dog' is the final line of dialogue in the novel, concerning a violent and abrupt execution. Seemingly we are nothing above the beasts of the world.), which isn't how one would expect an educated man of the Law to respond. Even all the textbooks are actually just pornography, the court filled with carnal desires instead of logic and learned reasoning.

This is the force of nature K, and all of us, fight against when attempting to address our condition with logic. We are nothing but dogs pit into a dogfight of which we had no free will in being placed. K. is a free-thinker drown by the obdurate glare of the masses, condemned for something unknown and never given an opportunity to prove innocence. They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves. How like our world today where we accept opinions without wondering the qualifications; internet slander or a simple viral meme can destroy a life or an idea simply because it is funny even if it isn't rooted in reality. K. is all of us, K. is the everyman, K. is us faced with the world around us. A world where trying to go up against it will only lead to frustration and futility. Through all his proceedings, all his legal advice, nothing is learned. Lawyers and confidants only seem to discuss the workings of the trial and court system; the more we learn, the less we understand. The system is so complicated that it stalemates itself, and it seems almost pointless to investigate. Is there purpose in assessing our lives, our condition in the world? Not if we address it with logic. This is futility. But, perhaps, if we assess it on it's own terms, then even if our fate is still sealed we can glean a bit of insight.

That is why this story is presented as an allegory. The Trial is not a story about the Law or bureaucracy despite the outward appearance. This is society as a whole and pushes towards a religious allegory that is difficult to swallow. K. is told that even if he is acquitted, he may return home to be arrested again. Our reputation is unshakable and even when you prove your innocence over slander, people will still hold it against you. The word 'allegedly' is wonderfully damning in this way. K. hears that there is legend of lawyers getting clients fully acquitted, but no proof of this exists. Nobody even knows who these lawyers are. There is also higher courts, higher judges that nobody knows the name of that also seem to exist only in legend. These unseen, unknowable eyes of justice are like the eyes of God. One may be acquitted amongst their peers, but their soul goes to a higher court that will rule the final verdict. 'Can't you see two steps in front of you,' the Priest shrieks at K., chastising him for his inability to look beyond his assumptions of the world and his logic. He proceeds with a parable that summarizes K.'s, and everyone's, fate in the world in which a man is denied entrance into the halls of the Law. He waits his whole life, pestering the gatekeeper. Moments before his death of old age, the gatekeeper reveals that the entrance was meant solely for him, then closes the gates. The perfect expression of futility. K. protests that the man was deceived, yet the Priest argues that deception is not in the story. What we have is the absurd, K. wishing to assess his trial through due-process and logical reasoning, but failing to see that such verdicts are beyond that. I always snatched at the world with twenty hands, and not for a very laudable motive, either. That was wrong, and am I to show now that not even a year's trial has taught me anything? His fate was already decided, and his efforts are in vain. It should come as no surprise, then, that K. is so suffocated in the stifling air of the court houses. Who wouldn't feel faint and overcome with illness when beleaguered by the absurd where no assertion of innocence matters?

The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you came and it dismisses you when you go.

The painter shows K. a portrait of a judge, depicted above his own post (the portrait a gift to a woman'yet another example of the abuse of power for carnal desire), but the most striking image is that of Justice. Justice is painted with winged feet, in motion at the request of the court, to also represent Victory. Yet the real horror is revealed when K. discovers the blending creates an image more akin to the God of The Hunt. We have a court system, a religious system, a moral system, that is more concerned with victory than actual justice, and seeks out prey for sport. We are all victims to this system, a system that is self-sustaining, 'too big to fail', and incorporates everyone. Nobody is safe from the system, and nobody is not a part of it. K. is the sacrificial victim of all of us, his death and futility a parable of our own endeavors in this, and the next, life. Kafka's The Trial is just as important today as when it was written. It is a book that will leave you gasping for air, and thankful for it.

5/5

'One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the dispositions of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery - since everything interlocked - and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless.'