Essay on "Franz Kafka "The Trial"

Essay 4 pages (1440 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Indeed, even the two guards who staff the power structure are powerless to stop it when it turns on them, appealing to the authority of the heretofore downtrodden K. The two guards, being stripped of their uniforms for the flogging, metaphorically join K. As just another criminal that must be dealt with by the law.

The third guard, still on the right side of the law, gives voice to the rigid, impractical, and self-serving spirit of this power structure, explaining that "…this punishment is both just and unavoidable." That is, it is "unavoidable" because the law is set in stone and society is under the rule of law instead of the rule of men, who might have been able to avoid such excesses. The punishment is "just" only because the law was applied correctly and impartially. It was certainly not "just" in the sense that the victim gets the relief so requested or that the offender gets the punishment that he deserves. The third guard's understanding of what is "just" indicates that the power structure here is not guided by meaningful goals, but is guided solely by its own process and logic. Thus, the power structure here is self-serving in the most disturbing and absurd sense, existing only to follow its own rules.

3) The parable of the doorman and countryman as exemplifying the ambiguous and self serving nature of man-made law.

The parable is meant to show that the hyper-bureaucratized power structure labeled in the parable as simply "the law" is beyond the sort of moral reasoning and moral judgment that we have judged all previous power structures with. The "law" described in the parable, which is never seen by the countryman nor illustrated in detail by the narrator, is as shapeless as the power structure that had assailed K. In his world. (156). Both are difficult to pin down by those accustomed to traditional sources of authority such as kings and priests.

The "law" in the parable and its analogue in K.'s society seem to exist more as a metaphor than an actual entity that can be engaged with in any meaningful way. A mere metaphor, however, is not real so it is incapable of organizing so many intelligent people to defend its legitimacy in society. Thus, there must be a man behind the metaphor, an actual person behind this supposedly impersonal institution. The reader expects for K. To meet some person or group who can explain the workings of the world to him and why he has had to suffer. The reader expects it to be some evil genius who needs to remove K. To protect his own selfish interests. However, no such man is revealed in the novel. The Chaplain, at first, seems to be some type of surrogate or spokesmen for this figure, but his conversation with K. suggests that no such figure actually exists.

Perhaps the reason that the man behind the power structure is never revealed is because that man is no longer necessary and long forgotten. Because bureaucratic institutions rely on rationality as the basis for legitimacy and authority, the men of great power and charisma who traditionally create and control institutions are no longer necessary. Without such men to formulate an ultimate goal or meaning to guide the institution, the institution guides itself through rationality, represented by the institution's internal logic and rules. Thus, the modern bureaucratic institution, created to achieve some purpose formulated by man but designed to operate through the rule of law instead of the rule of man, eventually begins to exist for the sole purpose of following its own rules, much to the dismay of men like K. And Kafka.

Conclusion

Kafka's angst probably sunk deeper than that of his Modernist peers. Whereas other prominent Modernists such as T.S. Eliot believed that modern society made life merely vapid and unfulfilling, Kafka believed that modern society made life absolutely unbearable. Kafka was expressing a very fundamental, existential type of angst here. Unlike many social critics, who held that it was the modern trends of industrialization and bureaucratization which make life meaningless, Kafka suggests that life may be inherently meaningless and it is only in modern times that man, liberated from the comforting fairy tales of religion, has… READ MORE

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