Intro and First Body Paragraph

Camille Kelleher

In his novel The Trial, Franz Kafka describes Josef K.’s encounter with a hidden totalitarian government and his transformation under the noted government’s pressures and disturbances in his life. The ongoing madness and Josef K.’s personal destruction captures the vulnerability of human institutions like the church, family, and state to human desires and the absurd, an existential idea that gives no meaning in the world besides the one that humans assign to it. Kafka criticizes mankind’s innate, destructive logic to create societal institutions that confines citizens and inevitably leads to the failure of human values and beliefs. These institutions attempt to deceive citizens by hiding life’s chaos and uncertainty, which is highlighted or awakened in the court system.

Throughout the book, Josef K. meets multiple characters who maintain their own different roles in society and possess exclusive knowledge of the court system. Their respective influence in the court system varies by character, but all of their interactions in the court system lead to minimal progress for Josef K.’s trial. All of them have inconsequential effect in Josef K.’s trial because they are subservient to the totalitarian government. Josef K.’s interactions vary with the characters given their role in society. Block the Merchant signifies a citizen who is enslaved to human institutions and causes his own self-destruction because he is attached to ideals that are designed to fail. He is overly conscious about his position in society and interactions with Josef K because he establishes his opinion on artificial human values. When Josef K asks him about his past with lawyers, he replies, “I’ll confide in part, but you have to tell me a secret too, so that we both have something to hold over the other with regard to the lawyer.” His inability to escape the human institutions leads to self-destruction both in his personal life and career. He hired five more lawyers because he doesn’t want to overlook anything that could be valuable to his case and spent everything on his trial to ensure unconquerable success. Titorelli the painter provides a different perspective on the court system. He paints portraits of court officials and gossips about the court with Josef K., but acts like a beggar when he tries to sell his artwork. The manufacturer who suggested Josef K. talk to him says “a person is naturally reluctant to allow himself to be advised by a fellow like that.” Josef K still talks to Titorelli because Titorelli encompass the same characteristics, illusive and ignorant, that judges possess since he personally works with them. During his arrest, Josef K. talks to the inspector who accepts the idea of chaos and the absurd in everyday life. When Josef K. continues to hammer the inspector with primary questions about his case, the inspector replies, “think less about us and what’s going to happen to you, and instead think more about yourself.” This signals the start of Josef K.’s transformation from accepting the human institutions to eventually rejecting them at the end of the book. At the beginning of his novel, K introduces existential themes and describes the potential failure that every citizen faces while adhering to human institutions.