April 2009: Kafka: The Trial

[Libra]

Discussion starts April 1st...really.

 

[beer good]

Discussion starts April 1st...really.

You should have posted that one hour and five minutes ago.

 

[Libra]

I guess I will start.I am only 50 pages in and trying to understand it.

It seems sometimes that it's unreal,a dream he is having,where he is being the judge and jury of himself and also how others percieve him.I say this because some things just don't connect.Being arrested but allowed to go on with his every day routine ,among other situations that come up later on.

 

[Libra]

You should have posted that one hour and five minutes ago.

Sorry beergood,my paying boss would not let me leave early.:whistling:

 

[Sin]

I am somewhere in the middle of the book right now.

So far - so good.
I really like his type of humor. It reminds me of the Monty Python

I am also under impression that he is his own judge and that he is creating the whole process for himself. There is a little bureaucrat in him that just doesn’t want to let him live his life.
But the question is how he got into such mind set. Did he have tough parents or something like that?
I mean generally why people are so tough on themselves. Is it society that shapes us like that?

 

[Libra]

I am somewhere in the middle of the book right now.

So far - so good.
I really like his type of humor. It reminds me of the Monty Python

I am also under impression that he is his own judge and that he is creating the whole process for himself. There is a little bureaucrat in him that just doesn’t want to let him live his life.
But the question is how he got into such mind set. Did he have tough parents or something like that?
I mean generally why people are so tough on themselves. Is it society that shapes us like that?

Talking about his humor,I found this funny but realistic also page 5,

Their certainty is possible only because of their stupidity

 

[Didi_Gogo]

I'm in the middle-ish.

I love how there is no particular place or time frame in the story. It kind of comments on the universality of the situation and the emotions that come from it.

 

[beer good]

Talking about his humor,I found this funny but realistic also page 5,

Their certainty is possible only because of their stupidity

And of course, the bigger joke is that K himself, thinking he's so much smarter, doesn't see that the joke is on him. All of Kafka's protagonists are fate's chewtoys, and if they were as clever as they themselves think, then... they'd still be royally screwed, but at least they would realise it a lot sooner.

Here's a question for those who have read both stories: If Josef K were put in the machine from In The Penal Colony, what crime would be carved into his back?

 

[Libra]

Also,about the women in the book up to now,his engagement for instance,did he really want to be engaged?He could be very obsessive at times and then very nonchalant and rude.

And of course, the bigger joke is that K himself, thinking he's so much smarter, doesn't see that the joke is on him. All of Kafka's protagonists are fate's chewtoys, and if they were as clever as they themselves think, then... they'd still be royally screwed, but at least they would realise it a lot sooner.

Here's a question for those who have read both stories: If Josef K were put in the machine from In The Penal Colony, what crime would be carved into his back?

I just found it online if anyone wants to read it and take a guess.

Spoiler

maybe just being or guilt

The Penal Colony

 

[Sin]

And of course, the bigger joke is that K himself, thinking he's so much smarter, doesn't see that the joke is on him. All of Kafka's protagonists are fate's chewtoys, and if they were as clever as they themselves think, then... they'd still be royally screwed, but at least they would realise it a lot sooner.

Here's a question for those who have read both stories: If Josef K were put in the machine from In The Penal Colony, what crime would be carved into his back?

I agree.
Obviously he is a spoiled son of a rich father. He has lived comfortably all his life and got all he ever wanted.
His biggest problem might be his vanity - he is so above all the others.

I haven’t read the Penal Colony but might try it later.

 

[Libra]

I read The Penal Colony last night. Is it considered a short story? cause it could be a good one for discussion.

 

[beer good]

I read The Penal Colony last night. Is it considered a short story? cause it could be a good one for discussion.

Definitely, on both counts.

 

[Libra]

I agree.
Obviously he is a spoiled son of a rich father. He has lived comfortably all his life and got all he ever wanted.
His biggest problem might be his vanity - he is so above all the others.I haven’t read the Penal Colony but might try it later.

Arrogance is another word that comes to mind but then you see another side of his,like with the whipper.It feels like I am in Marquez's world,but in a dark dark world.

Definitely, on both counts.

That's good.I will make a thread.

 

[saliotthomas]

Just finished it (plus ramdom bits that where stuck at the end) and still scratching my head trying to make sense of it all.
BTW i don't think he is spoiled son of a rich father.He mention he lost him very young(maybe rich??)and in the additions there is a visit to his mother but does not seem very important.
The all idea seem to revolve around the fact that the trial is escencial but unimportant at the same time,and that only the element composing it can be acted upon but not is issue.
To be accused seem to carry some sort of privilege,more than infamie.
A world of paradox where every idea bears it's conterpart.
More head scratching...

 

[Sin]

BTW i don't think he is spoiled son of a rich father.He mention he lost him very young(maybe rich??)and in the additions there is a visit to his mother but does not seem very important.

Really? I didn’t catch that.
However, I haven’t finished the whole book yet (shame on me) so maybe it comes later.

The book can be interpreted in many different ways. In the beginning I thought that it’s just him and his inner world. Some kind of paranoia.
But then later you see that’s not just him. And it’s a paradox that you think that nobody knows about “the court” and “the trial” but as you progress through the book you realize that everyone actually knows about it. It’s creepy but sill funny story.

 

[Libra]

Can I say I am hooked on Kafka?
Here is a bit from a biography and about his father:

Kafka was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, a kingdom that was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described by Kafka himself as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, [and] knowledge of human nature ...".

and about Kafka himself:

It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered from clinical depression and social anxiety throughout his entire life. He also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains.

Alot of different things come to mind with this story.Living in a world and feeling alienated,being judged and judging others.Others controlling your fate.
Bureaucracy.
I don't think you can pinpoint just one thing going on.When he talks about the "stuffy" rooms and no air,it seems he is suffocating when others are close or around him,he is like an introvert at times,where he prefers to be alone.Existing in a meaningless world.
I also read somewhere that he didn't want his writings published and probably just wrote what he felt inside,making it possible ,instead of verbalizing his thinking, writing it down.


I am still analyzing....

 

[beer good]

Right, so an attempt to get my thoughts on The Trial down. This is going to get long, it's going to get rambly, and there are going to be some unavoidable spoilers though I'll try to stick the biggest ones under tags.

"Life, I do not understand you."
- Hjalmar Söderberg, Doctor Glas

"Life is the crummiest book I ever read. There isn't a hook, just a lot of cheap shots."
- Bad Religion, Stranger Than Fiction

"What have you done to deserve this punishment? What sins have you committed? What dark thoughts have you harboured that condemn you to wander through the universe without hope?"
- Gaius Baltar, Battlestar Galactica

"Like a dog."
- Franz Kafka, The Trial

So we know the story; Josef K awakes one day to find that he's been arrested. For what, he doesn't know. Neither do the people sent to arrest him (but not take him into custody). Neither does anyone else, nor do they seem to ask; and so the case against him proceeds, getting more and more complicated as he tries to solve his situation with the questionable help of others.

He was always inclined to take life as lightly as he could, to cross bridges when he came to them, pay no heed for the future, even when everything seemed under threat. But here that did not seem the right thing to do.

The original title, Der Prozess, ostensibly refers to the judicial process - the case against K - but also the process of learning, of discovery (or lack thereof) that he goes through. The English title, on the other hand, has a subtly different double meaning; it makes the reader (and K) expect an actual formal trial with an accused, two lawyers, a judge and a jury

Spoiler

which of course we never get.

The trial - or trials - of K begin on the first page, the entire book is both the prosecutor's and the defense attourney's legal documents.

K isn't used to the legal proceedings, he has no knowledge of the language or the customs or indeed the law itself; and so he seeks (or rather expects) help from everyone from his landlady to lawyers, priests and other accused. But none of their answers really help him. The judges and lawyers - the ones who are supposed to serve the law - are all, time and again, described as "vain." A lot of people claim to have seen others go through similar trials (processes) to K's, and they are quite happy to say that they know a lot about it, but they keep the details on them secret, stored away in drawers. And ultimately, their knowledge is useless since they're all just low-level servants and none of them know of an actual way out. As the painter points out, the hope of an accused can be put in either an acquittal, an apparent acquittal or a deferment; but the first is purely mythical, everyone's heard of it but nobody's actually seen it happen, and none of the others offer anything but a temporary reprieve, at the price of hard work and patience - and ultimately, yourself.

So these were the lawyer's methods, which K. fortunately had not been exposed to for long, to let the client forget about the whole world and leave him with nothing but the hope of reaching the end of his trial by this deluded means. He was no longer a client, he was the lawyer's dog.

I read it in German this time around, and it's interesting to note how often Kafka uses the (often difficult to translate) passive form - as in, it's not that people do things to him, but that things happen to him; the verbs don't have an agent. I don't read nearly enough fiction in German to know if this is something Kafka uses more than anyone else, but it seems to fit the feel of the story and adds yet another dimension of "the world is out to mess with you."

It's also, as I'm glad to see I'm not alone in thinking (thanks, Sin), very very funny. It's a joyless sense of humour which probably owes a lot to what's often referred to as "Jewish humour" - whatever its roots, it's the humour of the eternally shat-upon, the ones who cannot hope to win but can just stave off defeat by laughing in the face of the whole sorry deal. The laughter is the narrator's and the readers', though; there are no jokes for Josef K, our sorry protagonist (if he can even be called that), since he only realises at the very end that the joke is on him. The more absurd the situation gets, the more serious it gets. Kafka's prose is bone-dry, which just adds to the frustration and confusion of everyone claiming to know what's going on without ever telling us in so many words - you'd almost think they are all just as clueless, that the ones claiming to hold the answers are just deferring their own trials.

So what's the moral of this story? What crime is etched into Josef K's back? What, at the end, do we know about him?

- He's busy. He's 30, he's in the middle of his career (which falls apart as soon as he starts spending more time on his process). He works 12-hour days and doesn't have time for the big questions of guilt, innocence, meaning; the modern world isn't designed for people to spend their days philosophizing.

he did not know what the charge was or even what consequences it might bring, so that he had to remember every tiny action and event from the whole of his life, looking at them from all sides and checking and reconsidering them. It was also a very disheartening job. It would have been more suitable as a way of passing the long days after he had retired and become senile.

- He's arrogant. He's not really a bad guy, he's probably pretty nice in the right context (we're told he regularly hangs out with friends at a pub, but they never show up in the story). But he's just a little too convinced of his own importance, his own ability to handle everything that he comes across. He's critical of others, but he never turns that critical eye towards himself; he keeps claiming he's innocent without ever defining what he's innocent of.

- He's clueless about the law, about how the world works. And he doesn't seek to enlighten himself - it's doubtful if he can, since everyone who claims to know something ultimately has nothing to tell him that's of any use to him.

It's tempting, of course, to incorporate Kafka's own story and background into the interpretation of the story. Much has been made of the question who gets to "claim" Kafka as their own (which would probably be a very strange question to him). Born and raised in the Austro-Hungarian empire (Kakania, as Robert Musil called it in a very deliberate pun), later to live in the republic of Czechoslovakia, a secular Jew with German as his first language (and had he lived another 15 years he would have seen just how dark an irony that turned out to be). Where does he belong? What's his fate? What's anyone's?

There's nothing you can do as a group where the court's concerned. Each case is examined separately, the court is very painstaking. So there's nothing to be achieved by forming into a group, only sometimes an individual will achieve something in secret; and it's only when that's been done the others learn about it; nobody knows how it was done. So there's no sense of togetherness, you meet people now and then in the waiting rooms, but we don't talk much there. The superstitious beliefs were established a long time ago and they spread all by themselves.

(You might compare it to Vonnegut's concept of a granfalloon; a group of people who think or seem to have something crucial in common and act based on that, but the obvious traits that they share and base their togetherness on are actually completely irrelevant.)

On the other hand, one interpretation I've seen is that The Trial was written while Kafka was engaged to a much more socially active woman than he, and that it represents the trials of a socially inept person trying to relate to others without knowing the rules - which is an interesting idea about the inspiration for it, though I don't think that's all it is by a long shot.

Of course, it's also easy to say - just as it is for Metamorphosis - that The Trial is just a metaphored-up story of a young guy who's under a lot of pressure, who doesn't know what this thing called life is supposed to be, is prone to clinical depression, and eventually cracks

Spoiler

and kills himself?

K's breakdown in the attic is pretty much a description of a full-blown panic attack, after all. Or you can go to the other extreme and point out that this is Europe after the "long 19th century" (1789-1914) that started in progress and enlightenment and ended in war, depression, and the death of pretty much every old truth. The phrase "existentialism" hadn't been invented yet, but Kafka seems to have the concept down: the search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world. After all the old world has failed, all of humanity finds itself accused of a crime it doesn't understand in a world where it doesn't know the rules.

Perhaps, and again this is just one idea, the entire novel is summed up in the parable told by the preacher towards the end: each door to the Law - each way to understanding the world - is individual. Everyone has to seek it themselves. Then again...

"Don't get me wrong," said the priest, "I'm just pointing out the different opinions about it. You shouldn't pay too much attention to people's opinions. The text cannot be altered, and the various opinions are often no more than an expression of despair over it."

And obviously, there's despair. The Trial is a frustrating work because it doesn't seem to offer any outs, it just gets worse and worse (in a good way) with no end in sight. Then again, a great novel isn't supposed to give clear answers. A great novel is supposed to ask difficult questions and force the reader to think about them. The Trial is one hell of a great novel, and oddly enough it asks its question all the more effectively by never asking it outright.

What did K do to deserve this? What is he accused of?

Nothing. Everything.

 

[saliotthomas]

Great review BG.A real achevement for the trial is not an easy book to analyse and summerise.A bit like poetry,it can lead to endless speculation.It really helped me some sense out of it.

I specialy like the parallele with society.From few ellements i singled out,it make a lot of sense.The way the court despise the lawer,and the lawer the client.But only if this one needs him.A certain chain of snobery.The fact the lawer describes the accused has handsome or attractive peoples in general could fit nicely there too.The end could also be seen(by it's very means)has a metaphore to end of social life and sentimantal relation(maybe a bit pulled by the hairs on my side though ).

Another thing is the court and it's mignons work out of the law.When K is lead at the end by his guards,they are affraid of the police.The apparent misery of what surounded it,The court room,the painter and the urchins.It is a society inside another where facts does not count has much as influance.

I often imagine the film adaptation of the novels i read,The trial would deffenetly be directed by Terry Gilliam.

 

[Sin]

Great review BG.A real achevement for the trial is not an easy book to analyse and summerise.A bit like poetry,it can lead to endless speculation.It really helped me some sense out of it.

I agree. You wrote a great review, Beer Good. You should be doing it for money.

I often imagine the film adaptation of the novels i read,The trial would deffenetly be directed by Terry Gilliam.

When I was reading some chapters I was also thinking about making film out of it. Authors of "Being John Malkovich" would also be good for that job.

 

[beer good]

Thanks, guys.

You know there's a film of it already, right? It's even actually quite good. But I agree, Gilliam would do a fine job with it... of course, one might argue that Brazil already owes a lot to The Trial.