"The Trial"- By Franz Kafka - A Few Personal Thoughts After a Second Reading

Here are some of my thoughts after my second reading of The Trial by Franz Kafka. 

Is the Character of K a Reflection of Kafka? 

First, I get a sense of some personal aspects of Kafka coming through in the character of "K". He is proficient at his work (bank and law office), but his personal life seems to be in turmoil, much like Kafka's. K also has similar confusing relationship with women - whether it's his regular prostitute he visits, Fraulein Burstner who he forces himself on, or Leni who he also is somewhat taken with. Kafka too was in some very confusing love triangles, including the breaking off of an engagement right before this novel was written. There is also the overarching aspect of judgment falling on K, though he never finds out what for. This is a common theme in Kafka's writings, especially with his relationship with his father ... and thus maybe an extension to his view of God. His short story The Judgment and the Letters to Father certainly attest to this. 

The Overt Meaning

A second thought ... There is clearly an overt meaning to this novel in regards to the universal and perennial woes of dealing with governments and the legal systems, and the capturing of the sense of unspecified dread hanging over one's life caused by some type of trial and sentence looming while still trying to function in everyday life. This is certainly the genius captured in this novel to which all generations are going to be able to relate. Indeed, what a horrible situation to be in. 

And so, overtly, the heart of the novel is K trying to figure out how these secret courts work, what he is being charged with, and how he can defend himself and get back to his normal life. He is never really able to do any of these things. The courts in the "attics" of the large tenement buildings of the city remain secretive, as well as their hierarchical structure and processes. Everyone he meets seems to be involved somehow in these courts, and yet no one seems to know much of anything beyond the slice of knowledge they have been given, and the duties and/or rewards they have in association with the court.

 

And so everyone tells K something and nothing at all at the same time. What I mean by this is that throughout the novel the characters have advice and plans of action that seem to offer hope for K, and yet at the same time they openly admit that maybe all of this will be of no use and that they don't really know how things work. And thus K is caught in a confusing web of different individuals around the city offering him hope, but not really. He never is even able to get past the lower members of this secretive court. Ultimately there’s no real recourse to justice if these courts get a hold of your life. 

The Myth of the Doorkeeper

And this brings me to a second layer of interpretation that I believe the novel bears out, Kafka's view of religion and God. In the penultimate chapter K meets the priest in the cathedral. He is the "prison-chaplain" of the courts and pronounces clear judgment on K, speaking more openly to him that anyone has up to that point. The priest tells him that there is a myth which precedes the preface to the "scripture" of the Laws. 

In the myth of the doorkeeper a man from the country comes seeking the Law. He comes to a doorway through which he is to pass towards the Law, but there is a doorkeeper which prevents him. The doorkeeper says that it is not time for him to enter, but he can wait at the door if he likes. And so the doorkeeper waits with the man his whole life, speaking to him in generalities when asked questions, taking his prized possessions (not out of greed but so that the man will not feel like he has left any stone unturned, supposedly), but keeping him out all the same, for to enter would be something too terrible to bear in beholding the other deeper doorkeepers. And so the man is on his deathbed waiting at the door, and finally asks the doorkeeper directly why no one else ever came to enter the door since all men are seeking the Law. The doorkeeper says that the door was only for this man, that he could have asked that question earlier, that he is "insatiable," and that he is now going to close the door on him. 

When the myth is over, K and the priest go into the many speculations and interpretations of this "scriptural" story about the Law, some blaming the doorkeeper and some making the doorkeeper the one who is manipulated. At the end of this conversation K concludes that this myth turns "lying into a universal principle." 

A Deeper Meaning of Kafka's View of Religion

In a certain sense the myth sums up the overt meaning of the story and the struggle that K has been going through (and his impending death), and yet it may also reflect how Kafka views God and religion. Think about it ... that there is an alternate and secretive law (moral or religious law) and that he is facing judgment (divine judgment for sin), it seems hard to pinpoint exactly what is wrong and how to defend himself (how is one to be saved?), everyone is somehow involved to a degree in the system (Church hierarchy from laity to Pope), all men are seeking the truth and yet the men appointed as the lower officials and advocates (like priests) may themselves be deceived (though they receive power from it and will take your donations), and that at the end of the day maybe it is all built on lies (is he questioning the validity of Christianity?). There is no path to God, it seems to Kafka; a harsh realization especially when one suffers from a deep sense of judgment as Kafka did. 

Now, of course I do not agree with this outlook on religion and God, but for those coming out of the carnage that was 19th Century philosophy and the implosion of the Rationalist school of philosophy into a nihilistic skepticism which reigned at the beginning of the 20th Century in Europe (paired with the carnage of World War I) it might not be all that surprising that a European may hold a view like Kafka's and feel as though he is lost in a conundrum that will never be solved. Thankfully, there were also movements in the early 20th Century to revive a philosophy of epistemological Realism and to return to a hylo-morphic view of the world (the revival of the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas) instead of continuing down the dead end of Rationalist philosophy.