Critique of Kafka's The Trial
I was a sophomore in high school. Sorry.
posted by Brian Hillman at 12:07 PM
Sunday, February 12, 2006
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4 Comments:
Hello.
I am from Singapore. I am currently an English student at the local university. My examination paper is on Kafka's The Trial so I really appreciate you for blogging your essay.
I found The Trial a great book in which each and every character that Kafka introduces to us is a simple person that lives by societys laws. Josef K lived by societys laws but he did not live by the laws of man kind and what man kind thought a person should live by. Are we all not put on trial everyday? Josef K lived mainly for himself yet he showed some humility he never really showed compassion. He was not married, nor did it seem like he wanted to be. He was charged with a crime the reader will never know of, but looking through it on a philosophy side it is showing us that there is more to life then being selfish, and life is not about taking advantage.
The Trial certainly acts as a critique on oppressive beuraucracy, that much is clear. But I think fundamentally it is much more about existential dilemma. After his arrest K. begins to doubt his own innocence--it becomes that he is guilty simply for being alive. One could argue the whole trial is his own subconscious awakening to his existential reality, and that once confronted with it he fails to overcome it. The court is the world, the void--whatever it is that stares into us and makes us doubt what right or reason we have to exist.
I am currently doing an independent study of The Trial for a major work at school. I interpreted The Trial to be an examination into a mans inner capitulation. The constant thread of K conveluting with every girl he comes across insead of focusing on his trial leads to the two men (symbolic of K's testicles) taking K away and stabbing him. This is one of many interpretations, I am also facinated by the prophetic nature of the novel in forecasting the totalitarian governments in Germany and Russia in WWII as the other texts I am doing are Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and Faulkner's "A Fable".
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