Camille Kelleher
After reading the first 60 pages, I
have realized that Kafka uses K.’s trial as an outlet to tell a completely
separate story. Although K.’s trial is unjust and random, Kafka uses the trial
to illicit a theme about human depravity. This theme becomes concrete during
his hearing with the magistrate and the following Sunday with the woman.
Through these two events, I have learned that Kafka views human society as
fake, corrupt and unreasonable.
During K.’s hearing, the readers
become aware that the crowd is composed of students who are acting to create a
certain atmosphere. Everything that happens is all staged. This may be out of
the desire to mentally derange K into his speech in front of everyone and to
have him say something that could be used to base his arrest on. The whole
hearing relies upon the magistrate and his signals to his students.
The following Sunday, K returns to
the apartment and finds himself in an unplanned confrontation with one of the
student’s wife. She is the same woman that was having sex during K.’s hearing;
however, throughout his conversation with her, K. remains sensible and
sensitive to reality. K.’s conversation
with the women tells us that she has leverage with every man in the
organization via sexual endeavors. Kafka shows that the woman is willing to
betray the organization to help Kafka through her insight. Both K.’s hearing
and his conversation with the woman is the epitome of the fake, corrupt and
unreasonable surrounding society.
I really like this post Camille. It opened up my stubborn perspective on the book a little bit. All of the events and outcomes of events primarily seemed to happen randomly and without any purpose, especially the hearing with the magistrate. At first, I was pretty confused and couldn't really believe if everything that I thought was happening was actually true or not. After reviewing this scene, it does seem like the magistrate and his students act in a certain way to affect K. and his overall decision making.
ReplyDeleteKafka seems to parallel the legal situation that K. is in to human depravity as a whole. The unjustified situation (as of now) that K. is in seems to be a scandal based on people who want to gain for themselves without considering the expense that others will have to pay.
Like Camille and Ben, I believe that the strange and irrational events occurring in the novel are Kafka's way of expressing to the readers his harsh yet realistic beliefs about society as corrupt and ignorant.
ReplyDeleteFrom the hearing with the magistrate, to the strange situation with the student's wife, it is clear that Kafka's perception of society is negative and pessimistic. He demonstrates his views of corruption and fallacy when he shows the readers that the student's wife gets what she wants by utilizing her body as a tool. Not only that, the fact that K. is proud of having seduced a woman that the men of the organization desire shows the level of shallowness that people can reach.
The hearing evokes a sense of delusion and irrationality; clearly the system is not organized and the people working in it are not acting the way they are for the right reasons. Throughout the book I keep getting a sense that everything is planned out around K., and that there is something Kafka is not telling us that would cause the story to make more sense.