There is a whole pile of fictions that I want to
read in 2015 and I have not been able to read as fast as I like. I alternate
between fictions that are fun read and those novels that are insightful or
soulful . Finally I got around to reading The
Trial written by Franz Kafka . The copy I have at home is translated by Douglas Scott and Chris
Waller and it is decades old. After flipping the pages and getting through the book, re-reading some
pages back and forth, the book is presently looking tattered.
After his death, Kafka bequeathed
a number of manuscripts to his friend, Max Brod, with the instruction that they
were to be destroyed. Brod disregarded his instruction and thus Der Prozess – translated as The Trial was
published a year after he died, about ten years since it was written.
From the beginning of the story, Kafka sets the tone of his writing in a
fashion that makes you feel the bleakness and doom particularly with regards to the legal process. The mood
suggests oppression. In The Trial the representatives of the law are somehow
described as functionaries who follow orders in a robotic manner and fulfil
their duties without understanding or attempting to understand the Law. It is apparent from the story that the
execution of the legal process was perfunctory and inexplicable.
Although the book was written around 1914, the
parable is relevant even in the present era where we cannot guarantee that
the rule of law is understood
in the only way it must be
interpreted and applied. In the
story, on his thirtieth birthday, Josef K, the protagonist is arrested and it is never disclosed to him nor the readers
the crime that he has committed . He is a bank clerk who is steadily
achieving success in his career path and he comes across as confident and arrogant.
However as the story progresses, he finds himself getting distracted and his work at the bank is
terribly affected. Upon hearing about his arrest, his uncle from the country
insists that he seeks legal representation and introduces him to his old lawyer
friend, Herr Huld who is on sick
bed when K and his uncle visits the latter. Strangely enough, the chief clerk
of the court happens to be visiting Herr Huld when K and his uncle calls on
him. K becomes frustrated with the lawyer who has been conveying all the information about the tangled workings of
the court and K gradually grows weary of his lawyer’s endless talk and
seemingly minimal action. In the meantime, it has become common place that
people come to know about K’s arrest and one of his bank clients suggests that
he contacts a painter who paints portraits for the court. K takes client’s advice and contacts Titorelli the official Court painter who
provides him with more information about the Court and the painter offers to use
his connections to aid K’s cause.
The painter has inherited the connection from his father and he claims
that his position unassailable. He also tells K that the Court is impervious to
proof that is brought before it.
Titorelli had
pulled his chair up nearer the bed and went on in a subdued voice:
‘ I ought to have
started by asking you what kind acquittal you want. There are three
possibilities, namely actual acquittal, apparent acquittal, and postponement.
Actual acquittal is , naturally , the best, the only thing is I haven’t the
slightest influence on that kind of verdict. In my opinion there isn’t a single
person who could influence a verdict of actual acquittal. The deciding factor there is probably the innocence of the accused. As you’re innocent, it really
might be possible for you to rely solely on your innocence. But then you
wouldn’t need help either from me or anybody else.’
K was nonplussed
at first by this neat exposition ,but then he said just as quietly as the
painter :
‘ I think you ‘re
contradicting yourself.’
‘How?’ Titorelli
asked patiently, leaning back with a smile.
K points out to Titorelli the inconsistencies one of which is that earlier on the
latter has indicated that the judges were open to personal persuasion then he
denies by saying that an actual acquittal can never be achieved by personal
persuasion. In Chapter 9 entitled
‘In
the Cathedral’ K meets the priest who is
supposed to be the prison chaplain and is thus connected to the court.
‘ Don’t delude
yourself,’ said the priest.
‘How am I
supposed to be deluding myself?’ K asked.
‘You’re deluding
yourself about the Court,’ the priest said. ‘ In the writings which preface the
Law it says about this delusion: before the Law stands a door-keeper. A man from
the country comes up to this door-keeper and begs for admission to the Law. But
the door-keeper tells him that he cannot grant him admission now. The man
ponders this and then asks if he will be allowed to enter later. “Possibly, “
the door-keeper says, “but not now.”
The priest tells the tale to K about the man from the
country who has been denied admission to the court despite making use of
everything he has, however valuable, to bribe the door-keeper who accepts it
all and as he takes each thing, the door-keeper says :
“I am only accepting this so that you won’t believe you have
left something untried.”
When he is dying, the man from the country is told by the
door-keeper that the door was
intended only for him.
‘The door-keeper realizes that the man is nearing his end and
that his hearing is fading, and in order to make himself heard he bellows at
the man:
“ No one else
could gain admission here, because this door was intended only for you, I shall
now go and close it.”
K and the priest engage themselves in discussing several
possible interpretations of the tale.
The priest explains,
“ ……First and foremost, a free man is superior to one who is
bound. Now the man from the country is actually free, he can go wherever he
wants, it is only entry to the Law
that is forbidden him, and then only by one individual, the door-keeper. If he
sits on a stool beside the door and stays there for the rest of his life, this
is a voluntary action ,the story says nothing about compulsion. The door-
keeper, on the other hand is duty-bound to stay at his post, he may not go out
into the country, nor apparently is he allowed to go into the interior of the
Law, even if he wanted to. What is more, he is, it’s true, in the service of
the Law, yet he serves only this entrance, and therefore only this man, for
whom alone this entrance is intended. For this reason, too,he is subordinate to
the man. ……”
When K says that he does not agree with the priest’s point of view as he does not think
everything the door-keeper says is true.
“No” the priest
replied,’ one doesn’t have to accept everything as true, one only has to accept
it as necessary’
“ What a gloomy
point of view, “ K said. “The lie has become the order of the world.”