Final Term Paper

In Kafka's novel, The Trial, a phony bureaucracy under an unnamed society of men control and ultimately wear down K. into a completely different person. The idea that social creations like a fake bureaucracy are created to manipulate people ultimately can change who we are at our core existence. In the beginning of the novel, Joseph K. is described as being a self made, hard working, and independent young man with a great deal of potential within himself. Kafka made K. in the beginning of the novel to be perfectly autonomous and perfectly fine with himself. He was described as being happy with himself, until he got arrested for no named reason. After that day, the decline in not only the morale but also the spirit of K. began. This deterioration of K.'s soul will help almost predict the way in which we live and function in our society today. Kafka's novel almost parallels something of a prediction of what is to come in the future for mankind, stemming from the idea that human nature is to do what we want to do, and be extremely selfish. 

K.'s transformation into the man he died as started as a completely different person. He did not rely on anyone, only himself. K. was a successful banker in an industry that fed solely on competition, another indicator of the great mental condition that K. was in before his arrest. He was described as being happy with himself, until he got arrested for no named reason. K. even is seen as describing the men who arrested him as "underlings" to him. He viewed the world around him as sub-par to him, and ideal present in some of the most successful people today. In the first chapter, during K.'s arrest, he tries to go above and beyond and try and look into why he is being arrested. He sneaks around and brainstorms ways as to why he would have gotten arrested, without deciding to give up. These ideals are not present in K. after the arrest, he just let's everything sort of play out, even if it's for the worst. K. transforms into a pragmatic person with his arrest. He stops the clawing and scratching that got him to the top of his food chain of his bank, and ultimately allows for his "trial" to overrun and transform him into that pragmatic version of himself. K. is demanding in the first scenes of the novel, and is seen as not wanting to back down from his territory. If he wanted something, he went out and did everything in his power to retrieve that want, something completely different about himself at the end. It's almost as if K. becomes an old man towards the end of the novel. After the day of his arrest, the decline in not only the morale but also the spirit of K. began. K.'s travel through the labyrinth of corrupt institutions in this novel help show the deterioration process of his soul and his growth into an old man (spiritually, not physically). 

All of the successful qualities present in K. during the brief encounter before his arrest quickly evaporated as his life went on after his arrest. His qualities of getting the job done, and finding a way to make things work out in his favor turned into qualities of sluggishness and inefficiency. A man once described as being persistent and climbing the ladder of success at his bank quickly took a 360 degree turn into someone completely different. The trial became too much for K. to handle, but it's not like he did not put up a decent fight. He started going to his trial "hearings" and soon realized that the whole system was basically some phony, societal based community of student lawyers. He becomes completely obsessed with his trial, showing up to the court rooms on days that weren't even assigned as days just because maybe there was a chance that he did have a hearing that day, and he accidentally forgot about it. This begins to show the obsessive behavior that K. develops over time, which leads to his ultimate demise as a character. The obsessive behavior displayed by K. in the middle of the novel begin to leak in his work. K. turns to the painter, Titorelli, for help. Titorelli offers some help, but gives no definitive answers, leading K. to hire a lawyer. K. gives his case up to someone else, instead of taking it by the horns and trying to take the case on by himself. The biggest turning point for K. is when he sees the lawyer's client who has the same problem as K. He shows to both K. and to the reader that once you're stuck in the trial system, you're stuck for life, and have to devote your life to basically just prolong your existence on the planet. So, instead of trying to find an answer to this, or working through the process, he just decides to fire his lawyer, and take the trial into his own (now lazy and indifferent) hands. Rather than working through the process with his lawyer, and prolonging his life span, he decided to throw in the towel and call it quits. The whole dynamic displayed by Kafka in this novel help show the deterioration of a once very successful young man with a lot of potential. Kafka uses K. and the trial to show how certain aspects of the governing bodies around us can sometimes change who we are and ultimately control who we are at our core existences.

The idea of changing who we are based on policies and structures put in place by the government stems largely off of The Trial. Kafka uses K. as an example of this deterioration of the human soul built off of societal institutions. Everything we build up as a society for the "greater good" of society itself can sometimes do more damage than good. As humans, we always have the intrinsic need to please ourself and satisfy our own needs over everyone else's. Kafka displays this in the phony bureaucracy placed in The Trial. Whoever created the bureaucracy obviously had bigger plans in mind for himself/herself, but promoted it as a good thing for society. K. is the example of the innocent bystander that is struck by the negative externality of the fake institution, which was operating towards the need or want of another human being in the web that makes up society. Therefore, what we create in society ultimately can (and usually does) hurt that same society. K. is Kafka's main emphasis on this idea, showing that even the most successful people in society can fall down based on the institutions that we perceive to be doing a good job for society. It's odd that Kafka seemed to be able to exaggerate and foresee such an imperceivable type of civilization. In the United States, we live under a government that seems to grow closer and closer into what seems to feel like something along the lines of what Kafka writes about. A governmental institution that could change innocent bystanders, just like K. With portions of the government like the NSA and all that the internet tracks, literally any person in all of the United States is under watch, and is under some suspicion at all times. It doesn't quite fit the extreme population that Kafka promotes in his book, but it definitely raises some eyebrows as to where we are headed as a nation and society. K. suffers to show the potential of a bureaucracy as radical as the one in The Trial. A bureaucracy that could take the most successful of people, turn them into crap, and then take their life. Whoever is under the control of an institution like that portrayed in The Trial has his/her own, personal, wants that will ultimately gained regardless of whose lives are taken in the process. In this case, it was K.'s life for the want of another. In other cases, it could be me or you.

All in all, K.'s transformation is a direct portrayal of Kafka's exaggerated ideas on government and bureaucracy and how it is all filled with crap to make everything seem good and happy. Government and the way government was brought up was by telling people that it was going to be implemented to help better our society. But as most of us know by now, people act in accordance of their own, individual needs, not the needs of others (only in a very small percentage of the population do people make an effort for others). When you have enlightened physiocrats like John Locke basically saying that the government will help us all and that if it didn't that we'd simply rebel and take it over again, they make it seem like government is a great idea. Kafka, on the other hand, believed that government could be dangerous, and it was evident in K.'s life/death in the novel that this was the case. In today's world, people constantly speak about the growing power of the government and the loss in power of privacy. Although not a part of government, look at Donald Sterling. The guy's whole legacy as this great NBA team owner was literally completely dismantled when his mistress recorded him. It happened so fast, almost too fast. A growing technologically advanced world mixed with a power hungry world ran by the government leaves the average civilian at risk of things like this, and that's what Kafka was emphasizing in his novel. His ideas are extreme, but the possibility of something happening like what happened to K. is looking more and more possible. People's individual needs and satisfactions will always outweigh those that are present in another person. The people leading our government today are people who are extremely greedy and are people who lie, a lot. Look at all of the campaign speeches and commercials. It's just all propaganda to get a certain candidate a seat in office and for them to reap benefits and to do what they want to do. Obama took advantage of a large African-American community to win office again, promising to take out our troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, yet he leaves them after two terms in office. It's just ridiculous to think of what depths these greedy people will go to to get exactly what they want. You think those men in the army want to stay in Afghanistan? No. Then why are they there? Because of their president, and their government taking advantage of others for the needs of their own. K. was the victim of this in the novel, being manipulated and worn down up until his inevitable death, much like some of our troops in the army. It's a bit of a stretch, but the connection is actually somewhat there. The fact that Kafka almost predicted this in his book a hundred years ago is incredible.

Word Count: 1844

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