FRANZ KAFKA I THE TRIAL

The portrayal of law in literature is valuable for both the lawyer and the layperson. For the

former, it throws light on broader legal issues and deals with them in an innocuous but influential

forum; for the latter, it may be the most accessible form of education about the law. Literature can

present an image of the law that is beyond what it can create itself; “a justice that exists like equity

beyond the letter of legal rule.” (Hardwood, 2007, p.7)

In the novel called The Trial, Franz Kafka presents a metaphorical outlook on law and

legality and reflects on the influence of modernity and bureaucracy on criminal justice system. The

novel offers a distorted version of the court system, where the readers focus on the trial process,

although the opening part of the story already focuses on the ambiguity of the situation. (Kafka,

2005)

To understand Kafka’s literary works, one must peer a little into his personal life, for one’s

perceptions are shaped by “the narrow keyhole of one’s own personal experience”. (Hardwood,

2007, p. 12)

Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883 and lived there for the most of his life. Kafka was

Jewish and spoke Czech and German, though he could only write in German, which was the

official language of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was spoken by the upper and middle classes.

Hardwood (2007) added that the family’s distance from Judaism combined with their use of the

German written language was probably an attempt by Kafka’s father to assimilate his family with

the German middle class. Such assimilation into German culture was common in the Empire,

particularly if the family was wealthy, as it aided access to opportunities in German commercial

life.
 Kafka was dominated by his "strong and enormously imposing father," whom he saw as a

critical, self-assured, domineering, and eloquent man. The fact that Kafka felt he never had his

father’s approval meant a life of “fear, weakness and self-contempt.” Kafka had a deeply negative

view of himself. (Hardwood, 2007, p. 12)

Kafka was an avid keeper of diaries which revealed his innermost thoughts and emotions,

and the many volumes have now been published. Many entries contain beginnings or extra material

to stories that were not included in their final form, observations of his friends and strangers he

had seen, and musings on his life. Most entries are fragmentary, combining the profound with the

mundane.

Taken as a whole, Kafka's prose exudes forebodingness and sadness. “In all literature, the

narratives of Kafka are among the blackest, among those most riveted to an absolute disaster.”

Much of Kafka’s literature uses the law as a backdrop or plot device. “Kafka used the law as a

template for his fiction. The law is what he knew.” Kafka referred to “the narrow keyhole of one’s

own personal experience” as providing a view of the world, and it was the law-shaped keyhole

which defined his writing

Given Kafka's everyday interaction with the law, the use of the law as a story element is

hardly unusual. Kafka was exposed to many facets of the law by being a law student, an employee

at a commercial firm, the courts, and at the Worker’s Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom

of Bohemia. (Hardwood, 2007, p.16) Each of these encounters molded Kafka's legal knowledge

and familiarity, and their impact may be observed in his work. During Kafka’s lifetime Prague was

part of the decadent Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had been created in 1867. This was a civil

jurisdiction, based heavily upon Germanic codification in a series of Austrian codes. (Hardwood,

2007, p. 17) The military, press, Catholic hierarchy and cultural life were also almost exclusively
German, resulting in a power struggle between Germans and other ethnic groups in the Empire,

especially the Czechs. (Hardwood, 2007, p. 18)

While it is not contested that Kafka used themes of law, punishment and a trial to explore

abstract ideas, commentators have differed in their views as to the significance of their roles.

(Hardwood, 2007, p. 22)

In both The Trial and “In the Penal Colony” the idea of unquestioned guilt is explored. In

the novel, it is assumed that because K. is on trial, he must be guilty: “[o]ur officials… never go

looking for guilt in the population… but are, as the law states, attracted by guilt.” This can be

linked to the trend of the pretrial proceedings to only alert the subject of the inquiry as to the trial’s

existence after guilt has been in effect established, but the literature goes further and challenges

the requirements for a legitimate judgement of guilt. ((Hardwood, 2007, p. 22)

Kafka used metaphors in his novel. The court is portrayed as representing both the law and

almighty authority. Its labyrinth of backrooms and attics is portrayed as claustrophobic throughout

The Trial. The unusual usage of metaphor represents the institution's perplexing and overpowering

influence on individuals under its control.

Kafka's approach is definitely comedic, moving via understatement rather than exaggerated

or excessive words. The depiction of unusual occurrences in matter-of-fact language, as if they

were fairly ordinary, paradoxically increases the absurdity of the scenario. The Trial by Franz

Kafka has frequently been viewed as a religious allegory, despite the fact that the work appears to

avoid particular religious themes. This is likely most noticeable in Chapter 9, which, given it takes

place in a church, should be the gold mine of religious references. Instead, the jail priest

commandeers the room and delivers a lecture on the (secular) judicial system. These omissions
allow Kafka to brilliantly stage his critique of divine power, or more specifically, the way divine

authority is perverted by human institutions such as the judicial system. The senior officials of the

court, like God, are unreachable to ordinary people; while no one can affirm their existence, they

have immense influence over individual destiny. In Kafka's work, we have an omniscient narrator

who appears to spend the most of his time inside Josef K.'s mind. The story is so committed to K.'s

point of view that it doesn't skip over all of his misunderstandings and diversions. Instead of

combing through K.'s hazy sensations to expose the truth, the narrator allows these impressions to

overwhelm the reader, producing an experience that is as confused and tiring for the reader as it is

for K.

The absence of tangible information and the arbitrary use of authority are reminiscent of

the activities of the Austrian secret police in the mid-nineteenth century, prior to the alliance with

Hungary. Informants were frequently paid to inform to police on residents' actions, which resulted

in seemingly random arrests. Hardwood (2007) thought that this resembled in the first scene of the

trial: This is evident in the first line of the novel: “someone must have been slandering Joseph K.,

for one morning, without warning, he was arrested.”