The Trial
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
|
| Author | Franz Kafka |
|---|---|
| Original title (if not in English) | Der Prozeß |
| Translator | see individual articles |
| Country |  Germany |
| Language | German |
| Genre(s) | Philosophical, Dystopian |
| Publisher | Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich |
| Released | 1925 |
| ISBN | NA |
- 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.
Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was left unfinished at his death, and was never intended to be published. Its manuscript was rescued by his friend Max Brod. It was first published in German in 1925 as Der Prozeß.
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.
[edit] Plot synopsis by chapter
[edit] The Arrest - Conversation with Frau Grubach - Then Fräulein Bürstner
On the morning of 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.
[edit] 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."
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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!"
[edit] Interpretations
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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-judgement, 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.
[edit] 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].[citation needed]
[edit] 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:
- The Arrest
- Conversation with Frau Grubach then Fräulein Bürstner
- B.’s Friend
- Initial Inquiry
- In the Empty Courtroom - The Student - The Offices
- The Flogger
- To Elsa
- Public Prosecutor
- The Uncle - Leni
- Lawyer- Manufacturer - Painter
- In The Cathedral
- Block, the Merchant - Dismissal of the Lawyer
- Struggle with the Vice President
- The Building
- A Dream
- Journey to His Mother
- The End
More info see: (Spanish) [1]
[edit] 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.
[edit] 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 Outtakes from the First Series of Britcom Black Books, Manny's song 'Who Will buy my Book to-day?' mentions 'Leopold Bloom and Joseph K and Bridget Jones'.
[edit] Published editions
- Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, ISBN 0-14-018113-X
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- The Trial: A Study Guide
- Freely available at DigBib.Org (German version, text, pdf, html)
- The Trial movie at liketelevision.com
- The Trial (1993) at the Internet Movie Database
- Le Procès (1962) at the Internet Movie Database
- (Spanish) Critic Edition in Spanish in UNAULA
- (Spanish) Critic Edition in Spanish
| The Works of Franz Kafka |
|---|
| Novels: The Metamorphosis ǀ The Trial ǀ The Castle ǀ Amerika
Short Stories : "Description of a Struggle" ǀ "Wedding Preparations in the Country" ǀ "The Judgment" ǀ "In the Penal Colony" ǀ "The Village Schoolmaster (The Giant Mole)" ǀ "Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor" ǀ "The Warden of the Tomb" ǀ "A Country Doctor" ǀ "The Hunter Gracchus" ǀ "The Great Wall of China" ǀ "A Report to an Academy" ǀ "The Refusal" ǀ "A Hunger Artist" ǀ "Investigations of a Dog" ǀ "A Little Woman" ǀ "The Burrow" ǀ "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" |
