The Trial


The Trial is a novel written by Franz Kafka between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously in 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoyevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which appears to bring the story to an intentionally abrupt ending.
After Kafka's death in 1924 his friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication by Verlag Die Schmiede. The original manuscript is held at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany. The first English-language translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published in 1937. In 1999, the book was listed in Le Monde 100 Books of the Century and as No. 2 of the Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century.

Plot

On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K., the chief cashier of a bank, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents from an unspecified agency for an unspecified crime. Josef is not imprisoned, however, but left "free" and told to await instructions from the Committee of Affairs. Josef's landlady, Frau Grubach, tries to console Josef about the trial, but insinuates that the procedure may be related to an immoral relationship with his neighbor Fräulein Bürstner. Josef visits Bürstner to vent his worries, and then kisses her. A few days later, Josef finds that Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, has moved in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this maneuver is meant to distance him from the latter woman. Josef is ordered to appear at the court's address the coming Sunday, without being told the exact time or room. After a period of exploration, Josef finds the court in the attic. Josef is severely reproached for his tardiness, and he arouses the assembly's hostility after a passionate plea about the absurdity of the trial and the emptiness of the accusation.
Josef later tries to confront the presiding judge over his case, but only finds an attendant's wife. The woman gives him information about the process and attempts to seduce him before a law student bursts into the room and takes the woman away, claiming her to be his mistress. The woman's husband then takes K. on a tour of the court offices, which ends after he becomes extremely weak in the presence of other court officials and accused. One evening, in a storage room at his own bank, Josef discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a flogger for asking K. for bribes and as a result of complaints K. made at court. K. tries to argue with the flogger, saying that the men need not be whipped, but the flogger cannot be swayed. The next day he returns to the storage room and is shocked to find everything as he had found it the day before, including the whipper and the two agents. Josef is visited by his uncle, a traveling countryman. Worried by the rumors about his nephew, the uncle introduces K. to Herr Huld, a sickly and bedridden lawyer tended to by Leni, a young nurse who shows an immediate attraction to Josef. During the conversation, Leni calls Josef away and takes him to the next room for a sexual encounter. Afterward, Josef meets his angry uncle outside, who claims that Josef's lack of respect for the process has hurt his case.
During subsequent visits to Huld, Josef realizes that he is a capricious character who will not be much help to him. At the bank, one of Josef's clients recommends him to seek the advice of Titorelli, the court's official painter. Titorelli has no real influence within the court, but his deep experience of the process is painfully illuminating to Josef, and he can only suggest complex and unpleasant hypothetical options, as no definitive acquittal has ever been managed. Josef finally decides to dismiss Huld and take control of matters himself. Upon arriving at Huld's office, Josef meets a downtrodden individual, Rudi Block, a client who offers Josef some insight from a client's perspective. Block's case has continued for five years and he has gone from being a successful businessman to being almost bankrupt and is virtually enslaved by his dependence on the lawyer and Leni, with whom he appears to be sexually involved. The lawyer mocks Block in front of Josef for his dog-like subservience. This experience further poisons Josef's opinion of his lawyer. Josef is put in charge of accompanying an important Italian client to the city's cathedral. While inside the cathedral, a priest calls Josef by name and tells him a fable that is meant to explain his situation. The priest tells Josef that the parable is an ancient text of the court, and many generations of court officials have interpreted it differently. Two days before Josef's thirty-first birthday, two men arrive at his apartment to execute him. They lead him to a small quarry outside the city, and murder him with a butcher's knife without any sense of formality. Josef summarizes his situation with his last words: "Like a dog!"

Characters

The Trial can be interpreted from various different angles, and literary critics have not agreed on one clear-cut interpretation. Generally, there are five major perspectives:
Although the diverse interpretations of the novel provide valuable insights, they are often impeded by the critics' eagerness to squeeze these insights into a frame which, ultimately, is beyond the novel's text.
Kafka's novel The Castle shows similar tendencies as well. Only later interpretations, e.g. by the German writer Martin Walser, express an increasing demand for a strictly text-based view. Current works, e.g. by the contemporary literary critic Peter-André Alt, go into the same direction.

Relations to other texts by Kafka

The myth of guilt and judgement discussed in The Trial has its cultural roots in the Hasidic tradition, where tales of plaintiff and defendant, heavenly judgement and punishment, unfathomable authorities and obscure charges are not uncommon.
There are many parallels between Kafka's The Trial and his other major novel, The Castle. In both novels, the protagonist wanders through a labyrinth that seems to be designed to make him fail or even seems to have no relation to him at all. Ill, bedridden men explain the system in lengthy terms. Erotically charged female figures turn to the protagonist in a demanding way.
Written around the same time, in October 1914, the short story In the Penal Colony bears close resemblance to The Trial. In both cases, the delinquent does not know what he is charged with. A single person – an officer with a gruesome machine – seems to be accuser, judge and executioner in one.
The idea that a single executioner could be enough to arbitrarily replace the entire court is exactly what Josef K. is frightened of.

Diversity of interpretations

One possible interpretative approach is to read the novel autobiographically. This claim is supported by the similarities in the initials of Fräulein Bürstner and Felice Bauer. In July 1914, shortly before beginning work on The Trial, Kafka had broken his engagement with Bauer. Elias Canetti points out that the intensely detailed description of the court system hints at Kafka's work as an insurance lawyer.
Theodor W. Adorno takes the opposite view. According to him, The Trial does not tell the story of an individual fate but rather contains wide-reaching political and visionary aspects and can be read as a vision predicting the Nazi terror.
German scholar Claus Hebell offers a synthesis of these two positions and demonstrates that the negotiating strategy used by the bureaucratic court system during the process to demoralize Kafka is reminiscent of the deficiencies in the Austro-Hungarian Empire's judicial system.

A few selected aspects of interpretation

Over the course of the novel, it becomes evident that K. and the court do not face each other as distinct separate entities but that they are interweaved. This interweaving between K. and the court system increasingly intensifies throughout the novel. Towards the end of The Trial, K. realizes that everything that is happening stems from his inner self and is the result of feelings of guilt and fantasies of punishment.
It is also worth mentioning the dreamlike component of the events: Like in a dream, K.'s interior and exterior world intermingle. A transition from the fantastic-realistic to the allegorical-psychological level can be made out. Even K.'s working environment is increasingly undermined by the fantastic, dreamlike world. It is, for example, a work order that leads to K.'s encounter with the priest.
The Trial as a humorous story
According to Kafka's friends, he laughed out loud several times while reading from his book. It is thus reasonable to look for humorous aspects in The Trial despite its dark and serious essence.
This phenomenon is also addressed by Kafka biographer Reiner Stach: The Trial "is gruesome in its entirety, but comical in its details." The judges read porn magazines instead of law books and send for women as if they were ordering a splendid meal on a tray. The executioners look like ageing tenors. Due to a hole in the floor of one of the courtrooms, an advocate's leg protrudes into the room below from time to time.

Film adaptations