The Trial

The Trial

File:The trial.jpg
Author	Franz Kafka
Original title	'Der Prozeß'
Translator	see individual articles
Language	German
Genre	Philosophical, Dystopian
Publisher	Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich
Publication date	1925
Publication place
ISBN	0805209999

This article is about the novel by Kafka. For other uses, see The Trial (disambiguation).

The Trial (German Der Prozeß) is a novel by Franz Kafka about a character named Josef K., who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and subjected to the rigours of the judicial process for an unspecified crime.

According to Kafka's friend Max Brod, he never finished the work and gave the manuscript to Brod in 1920. After his death, Brod edited The Trial into what he felt was a coherent novel and had it published, despite the German ban on Jewish literature, in 1925.

The Trial has been filmed by the director Orson Welles, with Anthony Perkins (as Josef K.) and Romy Schneider. A more recent remake featured Kyle MacLachlan in the same role. In 1999 it was adapted for comics by the Italian artist Guido Crepax.

Plot synopsis by chapter

The Arrest - Conversation with Frau Grubach - Then Fräulein Bürstner

Shortly before his thirtieth birthday, a junior bank manager, Josef K., who lives in lodgings, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, but left at home to await instructions from the Interrogation Commission.

K's landlady, Frau Grubach tries to console Josef; however, she unintentionally offends him during a conversation about Fräulein Bürstner, K's neighbor. Josef had met with a magistrate in her apartment earlier that morning, and when Josef mentions this, Frau Grubach begins to gossip about the younger woman, about her illicit affairs with other men, and Josef K. grows angry with her, saying she has no idea of what she speaks. Josef visits Fräulein Bürstner to inform her of the meeting in her room, but, after a frenzied explanation, loses control and ends up kissing her. This is an early indication that Josef is no longer in control of his fate.

First Interrogation

K is instructed to appear at a local court, but the time of the trial is not specified. He then assumes that this court, like most, will open at nine. He arrives at the address to find it is a rundown apartment building. He is then left to frantically search the building looking for the court. He decides to walk through, using a search for a ficticious carpenter named Lanz as an excuse to knock on doors. He eventually arrives at the court, which is simply a room in the back of an apartment. Arriving around ten, having gotten lost for an hour, he is told he is an hour late. As the interrogation begins, he is asked an ill-informed question, which he uses as the basis for his attack on the preceding events and the general competence of the court. As he leaves, the Examining Magistrate tells K that "...today you have flung away with your own hand all the advantages which an interrogation invariably confers on an accused man."

In the Empty Courtroom - The Student - The Offices

Josef K tries to visit the Examining Magistrate, but finds only the Law-Court Attendant's wife. Looking at the Magistrate's books, he finds that they are not law books, but pornography. The woman tries to seduce him. As Josef resolves to succumb to the woman as an act of defiance against the Court, a law student appears and, after an argument with Josef, carries the woman off in his arms.

Josef later spots the Attendant, who complains about his wife's wantonness and offers Josef a tour of the court offices. There are many other defendants waiting hopelessly for information on their cases. Josef struggles to cope with the "dull and heavy...hardly breathable" air, and almost faints. To his shame, he has to be carried out of the court by two officials.

Fräulein Bürstner's Friend

Josef returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.

The Whipper

Later, in a store room at his own bank, Josef K discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a flogger for asking Josef for bribes. K. tries to argue with the flogger, saying that the men need not be whipped, but the flogger cannot be swayed. This surreal event appears to have been staged for his viewing, either to simply frighten him, or to demonstrate the seriousness in which the court views incompetence and corruption. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he left it, including the Whipper and the two agents.

K.'s Uncle - Leni

Josef K is visited by his influential uncle, who by coincidence is a friend of the Clerk of the Court. The uncle is, or appears to be, distressed by Josef's predicament and is at first sympathetic, but becomes concerned that K is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces Josef K to an Advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse. K visits Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle's anger, and to the detriment of his case.

Advocate - Manufacturer - Painter

K visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. K returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.

Josef K is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. He explains: "You see, everything belongs to the Court." He sets out what K's options are, but the consequences of all of them are unpleasant. The laborious requirements of these options, and the limited outlook that they offer, lead the reader to lose hope for Josef K.

Block, the Tradesman - Dismissal of the Advocate

Josef K decides to take control of his own destiny and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate's office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K some insight from a client's perspective. Block's case has continued for five years, yet he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate's unpredictable advice. This experience further poisons K's opinion of his advocate, and K is bemused as to why his advocate would think that seeing such a client, in such a state, could change his mind. This chapter was left unfinished by the author.

In The Cathedral

K has to show an important client from Italy around the Cathedral. The client doesn't show, but just as K is leaving the Cathedral, the priest calls out K's name, although K has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K a fable, (which has been published separately as Before the Law) that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K's fate is hopeless. Before the Law begins as a parable, then continues with several pages of interpretation between the Priest and Josef K. The gravity of the priest's words prepares the reader for an unpleasant ending.

The End

On the last day of Josef K's thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry where he is expected to kill himself, but he cannot. The two men then execute him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!"

Characters

Joseph K.

The hero and protagonist of the novel, K. is the Chief Clerk of a bank. Ambitious, shrewd, more competent than kind, he is on the fast track to success until he is arrested one morning for no reason. There begins his slide into desperation as he tries to grapple with an all-powerful Court and an invisible Law.

Others

Fraülein Bürstner - A boarder in the same house as Joseph K. She lets him kiss her one night, but then rebuffs his advances. She makes a brief reappearance in the novel's final pages.

Frau Grubach - The proprietress of the lodging house in which K. lives. She holds K. in high esteem.

Uncle Karl - K.'s impetuous uncle from the country, formerly his guardian. Karl insists that K. hire Huld, the lawyer.

Huld, the Lawyer - K.'s fustian advocate who provides precious little in the way of action and far too much in the way of anecdote.

Leni - Herr Huld's nurse, she's on fire for Joseph K. She soon becomes his lover. Apparently, she finds accused men extremely attractive--the fact of their indictment makes them irresistible to her.

Assistant Manager - K.'s unctuous rival at the Bank, only too willing to catch K. in a compromising situation.

Rudi Block, the Tradesman - Block is another accused man and client of Huld. His case is five year's old, and he is but a shadow of the prosperous man he once was. All his time, energy, and resources are now devoted to his case. Although he has hired hack lawyers on the side, he is completely and pathetically subservient to Huld.

Titorelli, the Painter - Titorelli inherited the position of Court Painter from his father. He knows a great deal about the comings and goings of the Court's lowest level. He offers to help K., and manages to unload a few identical landscape paintings on the accused man. If the novel had been finished, we might have heard more from Titorelli.

Interpretations

Bureaucracy

The Trial is both a chilling and blackly amusing tale that maintains a constant, relentless atmosphere of disorientation and quirkiness, right up to the surreal ending. Superficially the subject matter is bureaucracy: an illustration of a truly twisted yet realistic brand of law and church. However, one of the strengths of the novel is in its description of the effects of these circumstances on the life and mind of Josef K. It presents the absurdity of "normal" human nature, of acting upon one manic thought after another and chasing along with surprise after surprise, yet without direction and without result.

Humanity

When analyzing The Trial, it is useful to note that the end of the novel, the death scene, was the first part written by Kafka. K. is never told what he is on trial for, and he maintains his innocence almost to the end. Upon declaring his innocence, he is immediately questioned "innocent of what?" Is it that Josef K. is on trial for his innocence? By confessing his guilt as a human being, perhaps Josef K. could have freed himself from the proceedings. Perhaps the trial against K. was set up because he was incapable of admitting his guilt, and, by extension, his humanity? This theme of not being human, of there not being anything to point to as the "human race", is a theme that Kafka explores throughout his works, one that keeps the book fresh, prompting a questioning of the arbitrary customs and beliefs of life which can appear, in a certain light, just as bizarre as the occurrences in K's life.

Marriage and Social Relations

Another interpretation is offered by Kafka's diary around the time he began to write the novel. In 1914, he entered into an engagement with Felice Bauer. In a letter to Felice, he compared their nuptial to a couple who, during the terror after the French Revolution, had been tied together upon the scaffold for execution. He visited Felice in Berlin a few times during that year. On the last occasion, that of the official engagement ceremony, he notes in his diary that it was like trial-and-judgment, in which others decided upon the course his life took while he himself was kept aside. A subsequent visit to Felice involved much disputation during which he was again sidelined. Eventually, it was decided that the engagement should be broken off. Kafka described his letter of farewell written on the eve of the first World War as his "speech from the gallows." He himself, it seems, found the prospect of marriage a threat to the sustenance he received from writing. His writing was mainly done at night, a time at which he would have been expected to sleep with his wife.

In this biographical interpretation it would seem that The Trial parallels Kafka's engagement, and his entering into serious social relations. Such a reading accounts for Josef K's willingness to partake in his own execution, since it mirrors the end of the engagement; that is, the end of Kafka as a "human", as a familial member of society and an ancestor. It also accounts for the bizarre, subdued sexual tension of "The Trial", with the scattered sexual interludes reflecting his private encounters with Felice on his visits to Berlin for the aforementioned family meetings. Such an interpretation accounts for the correspondence between the book and Kafka's life at the time, though the themes explored reach beyond this superficial similarity to Kafka's broader thoughts on society, family, and writing, which must have arisen at such a cross-roads in Kafka's life. The Koanic story related by the prison chaplain, of the man waiting for admittance by a stern doorman to the Court, is especially relevant to this.

K's execution is seemingly his triumph, in that he realised the constant deferment implicit in his desire for "admittance to the Law" and instead accepted his fate without withering like the old man waiting his whole life at the door of the Court in the chaplain's story. Kafka too at this time accepted the execution or closure upon himself as a "human", deciding he would not lead the life chosen for him but one in his own strange world.

Jewish Identity

Another way to interpret The Trial is to consider what Jean-Paul Sartre has to say about it in his book Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etimology of Hate. As the title suggests, the book relates the way Jews receive a world marred with anti-Semitism. Jewish life in such a world, Sartre argues, is similar to the way K. experienced it, and the way Kafka may have experienced it as well. According to Sartre:

"This is perhaps one of the meanings of The Trial by the Jewish Kafka. Like the hero of that novel, the Jewish person is engaged in a long trial. He does not know his judges, scarcely even his lawyers; he does not know what he is charged with, yet he knows that he is considered guilty; judgement is continually put off -- for a week, two weeks -- he takes advantage of these delays to improve his position in a thousand ways, but every precaution taken at random pushes him a little deeper into guilt. His external situation may appear brilliant, but the interminable trial invisibly wastes him away, and it happens eventually ... that men seize him, carry him off on the pretence that he has lost his case, and murder him in some vague area of the suburbs." [88, Schocken Books].

Style

Parable

Parables are familiar teaching devices that reveal moral lessons through short and simple stories. A parable's simplicity lends it a timeless quality. For this reason, parables thousands of years old hold relevance today. Parables can also be enigmatic sayings or tales, which obviously contain a message though the precise meaning is anyone's guess.

Kafka intentionally set out to write parables, not just novels, about the human condition. The Trial is a parable that includes the smaller parable of the Gatekeeper. There is clearly a relationship between the two but the exact meaning of either parable is left up to the individual reader. K. and the Priest discuss the many possible readings. Both the short parable and their discussion seem to indicate that the reader is much like the man at the gate; there is a meaning in the story for everyone just as there is one gate to the Law for each person.

Relations between The Trial and Crime and Punishment

In 1983 Guillermo Sánchez Trujillo, professor of UNAULA ("Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana" of Medellín, Colombia) undertook a research project to investigate some of the possible sources used by Kafka in writing The Trial. He dedicated twenty years of his life to the investigation, and finally in 2002 published the final results in Crimen y castigo de Franz Kafka, anatomía de El proceso ("Crime and Punishment by Franz Kafka, anatomy of The Trial"), edited by UNAULA.

At the end of his investigation, Sánchez advanced the theory that Kafka had used Crime and Punishment and other works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, as palimpsest to write his works, including The Trial. By closely comparing Crime and Punishment with The Trial, Sanchez discovered that Kafka used the first three chapters of the second part of Crime and Punishment (in the order 3, 2, 1), to write and organize The Trial. Sánchez also put forward a new theory on the correct order of the chapters of the novel -- something which has never been clear because of the confusing way Kafka had of systematizing his work. Kafka bequeathed his works to his friend Max Brod. After Kafka died, Brod started to organize and edit Kafka's works to publish them, but with The Trial Brod couldn't decipher Kafka's system, so he organized the chapters in an intuitive and arbitrary way.

The new order found in the study re-establishes the logic of the plot and fits on it the chapters that were relegated to the appendix by Brod and the editors. But the study also argues that the work A Dream, published as an independent short story, was an essential chapter of the novel.

The investigation also confirmed the autobiographic contents that Kafka put in the novel, and the identity of the real persons and the historical events that inspired some of the characters and events of the novel.

A critical edition of the novel with the new order was published in 2005 by UNAULA, containing an introduction detailing the most important points of the investigation and its results and also, side notes explaining the creative process of the author and the use of the palimpsest of Dostoevsky's works.

The UNAULA edition arranges the chapters thusly:

1. The Arrest
2. Conversation with Frau Grubach then Fräulein Bürstner
3. B.’s Friend
4. Initial Inquiry
5. In the Empty Courtroom - The Student - The Offices
6. The Flogger
7. To Elsa
8. Public Prosecutor
9. The Uncle - Leni
10. Lawyer- Manufacturer - Painter
11. In The Cathedral
12. Block, the Merchant - Dismissal of the Lawyer
13. Struggle with the Vice President
14. The Building
15. A Dream
16. Journey to His Mother
17. The End

More info see: Template:Es icon [1]

Film portrayals

In the 1962 Orson Welles movie adaptation of The Trial, Joseph K. is played by Anthony Perkins. Kyle MacLachlan portrays him in the 1993 version.

Influence on culture

A minor character in Camus's The Plague is reading The Trial, mistaking it for a mystery story.

Josef K was a Scottish post-punk band active in the early 1980s who released singles on Postcard Records.

The book is present on the cover If You're Feeling Sinister by the Scottish band Belle and Sebastian.

In the out takes from the first series of British comedy Black Books, Manny's song 'Who Will buy my Book to-day?' mentions 'Leopold Bloom and Joseph K and Bridget Jones'.

There is a famous Belgian rock group called K's Choice. The K in K's Choice comes from Joseph K. (and other protagonists K. of Kafka).

References

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External links

• The Trial: A Study Guide
• Freely available at Project Gutenberg
• The Trial movie at liketelevision.com
• The Trial (1993) at IMDb
• Le Procès (1962) at IMDb
• Template:Es icon Critical Edition in Spanish