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Shelby Wolofsky

Mr. Shapiro

World Literature H

25 March 2012

Kafka’s Trial: A Criticism of Society and Punishment

Kafka’s The Trial is a psychological account of a man who is accused and arrested for an unknown offense. This book takes the reader through a series of events that slowly take away all of his personal rights and his actual existence. Kafka was born during the late 1800’s in Prague Germany in a traditional and conventional Jewish household (qtd. in Kafka vii). As a modernist, Kafka was very cynical about the government and the legal system after WWI (Shmoop editorial team). When he wrote The Trial he dealt with the darker side of humanity battling an untouchable totalitarian court. Many of the characters portrayed throughout the story parallel his personal life. His domineering father and his emotionally withdrawn mother caused problems for him throughout his childhood (qtd. in Kafka viii). Many of his inner thoughts were taken from letters and diaries because he desired solitude and was not open with his emotions. The Trial exposes the psychological effect of being arrested and accused for an unknown crime and paradoxically creates Joseph K’s, the protagonists; own personal self-destruction revealing Kafka’s criticism about society and punishment.  

 Kafka’s protagonist in The Trial becomes part of the negative side of humanity thus fulfilling the prophecy of an innocent man being drawn into being what society wants him to be. There is a whole psychological effect of punishment where a person entering the legal system becomes what they are accused of. In The Trial Joseph K. slowly becomes corrupt, violent, and amoral. Before he entered the court K was a very successful man who enjoyed what he did, he held a high position at a bank, and was extremely motivated. When he was arrested he becomes desperate and obsessed with trying to prove himself innocent. As a result of K. becoming obsessed with his trial he becomes aggressive and frustrated. The reader is unclear as to K’s psychological state as shown when he causes fear and a screaming response from another defendant that he meets. K. Grabs a man’s arm when he wants him to believe that he is innocent and, “ the man cried out as if K touched his arm not with two fingers but with red hot pincers.” (Kafka 51). K’s reaction to the man’s screaming is to push him down on the bench and become even more aggressive in his behavior trying to prove his innocence. K has now become a loud and violent man. In addition, as part of a way to deal his terrible fate and avoid thinking about his trial, K sleeps with the women of the court. K sleeps with his defense lawyers nurse, the court ushers wife, and Fraulein Burstner who is a tenant in his lodging house. As K. becomes more desperate, his behavior becomes more distracted.

The book The Trial deals with issues of guilt, lack of responsibility, and conformity in society. It is interesting that this novel was written before WWII and Nazi Germany. It is as if Kafka predicted the future for the German society during WWII.  When K gets arrested in the beginning of the book and is agitated and clueless as to his charge, the guard’s response is interesting because he openly acknowledges that he is blindly following orders and doing his job to get paid, “We are minor officials who hardly know what proof of identity looks like, and have nothing to do with your case apart from standing guard ten hours a day in your apartment and getting paid for it. That’s all we are but we are still able to understand that.”(Kafka 8). It is interesting the guards are comfortable with being minor guards and do not care that they do not understand the whole picture of what is happening to K. who they are arresting. They are happy with being given orders even though they do not realize that the punishment is going to be death. Kafka criticizes modern society’s view of the court system and its way of persecuting people. The guards show lack of responsibility because they are just taking orders and do not care about the outcome just as the German guards in WWII took orders to exterminate thousands of individuals who were German citizens and like K. did not know why they were even being persecuted.

As part of K’s psychological reality, K. never quiet knows if the arrest is a joke and whether or not he should take it seriously. At first K. thinks the guards are actors and therefore makes a bad decision to behave very dramatically when he is being arrested. Because he feels that this trial is somewhat of a mockery he gradually gets himself in a hole, this is part of the concept of self-destruction. K. gets involved in defiant speeches during his initial inquiry. In addition there is an unrealistic almost comic situation when K.  Examines the magistrate law books and finds out that they are actually pornographic novels. The prison chaplain refuses to council him personally about the case and is more interested in his stories than about K. This absurd situation continues to put him at psychological disadvantage where his behavior is inappropriate for the seriousness of his crime. He is not taking the reality of life seriously. Even at the end when he is going to be executed he refers to the executioners as supporting actors. K. becomes paranoid that the court is everywhere watching every move that he makes, which makes K. confused because no one is willing to really take up his case and he is not even sure if the whole situation is real.

The arrest of K. gives the reader a better understanding of how the court system is confusing and illogical. K. is never properly given any options for his trial. He is told without discussion that he is being arrested, and all he is getting is a lawyer who works at the court house. Because the law is so abstract no one is clear as to what the law even means. Therefore the court interprets the law and the court is made up of corrupt judges and clueless guards. Because humans are running the system they are able to corrupt the law to their own preferences. Society cannot run without the courts and the courts depend on the law but yet when the courts are corrupt than society becomes dysfunctional.  What’s even more absurd in The Trial is that even though K. is being “arrested” he is told to carry on with his normal routine of life, “you’ve misunderstood me; you’re under arrest, certainly, but that is not meant to keep you from caring on your profession. Nor are you to hindered in the course of your ordinary life” (Kafka 14). He will not be thrown in jail or prison because the law is so powerful that it extends throughout society, making society a prison. K. becomes psychologically imprisoned without actually being in prison. Even though K is not given any options for his trial, he still ends up choosing the direction his life will go, “from start to finish, K., like the Rabbis' Balaam, is "led down the path he chooses to tread”( Lasine 35). Not fully believing the severity of his situation, when K has to choose between life and death he picks the wrong path and ends up being executed.  

K. lives in a society where success and individualization is nonexistent. The society that K. is accustomed to is an impoverished society that does not take care of the citizens. The society that K. lives in has a huge gap between the way the wealthy and the poor live. K. is part of the elite as a banker. When he becomes charged at court by people he thinks of as inferior, he “realized that this was the first clear defeat he had suffered at the hands of these people. Of course there were no reasons to let that worry him; he had suffered defeat only because he had sought to do battle. “If he stayed home and led his normal life he was infinitely superior to any of these people, and could kick any one of them out of his path” (kafka 42). Kafka uses K’s elitism to show the power of the masses and those he considers inferior to him to actually punish and kill him. It is his thinking that these people are not important that ends up being self-destructive. Kafka criticizes society by using those that were inferior to without real cause execute a man of higher social status.

The Trial exposes the psychological effect of being arrested and being accused for an unknown crime. It paradoxically creates Joseph K’s own personal self-destruction revealing Kafka’s criticism about society and punishment. It is interesting to note that the protagonist name is Joseph K. and often referred to in the book as K. which is Kafka’s last name. Was Kafka’s issue of guilt and responsibility something that he himself struggled with? In addition many of the characters in this book go through issues of guilt because of their conformity to society. The guards conform to how they are told to act and have a total lack of responsibility or knowledge when it comes to arresting the people who are being tried. Even the way in which K. is arrested gives him the opportunity to act in a way that makes his trial appear unreal or like a joke. Because K. is never put in jail until the end of the book, and is allowed to resume his everyday activity, he never really believes that he has been arrested nor does he know what charge he is accused of committing. The reader also gets this unreal and comical feel with K’s arrest and does not realize the seriousness of K’s behavior until the end when he executed. Throughout the book Kafka exposes a corrupt and illogical court system that displays power without accountability. The law that the citizens like K. are expected to abide by is so abstract, no one knows how to act. This lack of communication allows for corruption among the citizens. Because the average citizen is being told how to act individual thought is not allowed. This story is a great lesson in corrupt and repressive political power that ended up happening during WWII in Nazi Germany ironically to Jews like Franz Kafka.