The Trial

This article is about the novel by Kafka. For other uses, see The Trial (disambiguation).

The Trial (German Der Prozeß) is a surreal novel by Franz Kafka about a character named Joseph K.(Josef K.), who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and subjected to the rigours of the judicial process for an unspecified crime.

Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was left unfinished at his death, and was never intended to be published. Its manuscript was rescued by his friend Max Brod. It was first published in German in 1925 as Der Prozeß.

The Trial has been filmed by the director Orson Welles, with Anthony Perkins (as Josef K.) and Romy Schneider. A more recent remake featured Kyle MacLachlan in the same role. In 1999 it was adapted for comics by the Italian artist Guido Crepax.

Plot synopsis by chapter

The Arrest - Conversation with Frau Grubach then Fräulein Bürstner

On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, a junior bank manager, Josef K., who lives in lodgings, is unexpectedly arrested by two unidentified agents for an unspecified crime. The agents do not name the authority for which they are acting. He is not taken away, but left at home to await instructions from the Interrogation Commission.

K's landlady, Frau Grubach tries to console Josef but unintentionally offends him by speculating that perhaps the arrest was related to an illicit relationship with Fräulein Bürstner, K's neighbor. Josef visits Fräulein Bürstner to discuss his plight, but ends up kissing her - belatedly fulfilling the landlady's speculation. This is an early indication that Josef is no longer in control of his fate.

First Interrogation

K is instructed to appear at a local court, but the time of the trial is not specified. He then assumes that this court, like most, will open at nine. Upon arriving shortly after nine, he is told he is severely late. As the interrogation begins, he is asked an ill-informed question, which he uses as the basis for his attack on the preceding events and the general competence of the court. As he leaves, the Examining Magistrate tells K that "...today you have flung away with your own hand all the advantages which an interrogation invariably confers on an accused man."

In the Empty Interrogation Chamber - The Student - The Offices

Josef K tries to visit the Examining Magistrate, but finds only the Law-Court Attendant's wife. Looking at the Magistrate's books, he finds that they are not law books, but pornography. The woman tries to seduce him. As Josef resolves to succumb to the woman as an act of defiance against the Court, a law student appears and, after an argument with Josef, carries the woman off in his arms.

Josef later spots the Attendant, who complains about his wife's wantonness and offers Josef a tour of the court offices. There are many other defendants waiting hopelessly for information on their cases. Josef struggles to cope with the "dull and heavy...hardly breathable" air, and almost faints. To his shame, he has to be carried out of the court by two officials.

Fräulein Bürstner's Friend

Josef returns home to find Fräulein Montag, a lodger from another room, moving in with Fräulein Bürstner. He suspects that this is to prevent him from pursuing his affair with the latter woman. Yet another lodger, Captain Lanz, appears to be in league with Montag.

The Whipper

Later, in a store room at his own bank, Josef K discovers the two agents who arrested him being whipped by a superior. This surreal event appears to have been staged for his viewing, either to simply frighten him, or to demonstrate the seriousness in which the court views incompetence and corruption. The next day he returns to the store room and is shocked to find everything as he left it, including the Whipper and the two agents.

K.'s Uncle - Leni

Josef K is visited by his influential uncle, who by coincidence is a friend of the Clerk of the Court. The uncle is, or appears to be, distressed by Josef's predicament and is at first sympathetic, but becomes concerned that K is underestimating the seriousness of the case. The uncle introduces Josef K to an Advocate, who is attended by Leni, a nurse. K visits Leni, whilst his uncle is talking with the Advocate and the Chief Clerk of the Court, much to his uncle's anger, and to the detriment of his case.

Advocate - Manufacturer - Painter

K visits the advocate and finds him to be a capricious and unhelpful character. K returns to his bank but finds that his colleagues are trying to undermine him.

Josef K is advised by one of his bank clients to visit Titorelli, a painter, for advice. Titorelli has no official connections, yet seems to have a deep understanding of the process. He explains: "You see, everything belongs to the Court." He sets out what K's options are, but the consequences of all of them are unpleasant. The laborious requirements of these options, and the limited outlook that they offer, lead the reader to lose hope for Josef K.

The Commercial Traveller - Dismissal of the Advocate

Josef K decides to take control of his own destiny and visits his advocate with the intention of dismissing him. At the advocate's office he meets a downtrodden individual, Block, a client who offers K some insight from a client's perspective. Block's case has continued for five years, yet he appears to have been virtually enslaved by his dependence on the advocate's unpredictable advice. This experience further poisons K's opinion of his advocate, and K is bemused as to why his advocate would think that seeing such a client, in such a state, could change his mind.

In The Cathedral

K has to show an important client from Italy around the Cathedral. The client doesn't show, but just as K is leaving the Cathedral, the priest calls out K's name, although K has never known the priest. The priest works for the court, and tells K a fable, (which has been published separately as Before the Law) that is meant to explain his situation, but instead causes confusion, and implies that K's fate is hopeless. Before the Law begins as a parable, then continues with several pages of interpretation between the Priest and Josef K. The gravity of the priest's words prepares the reader for an unpleasant ending. This chapter was left unfinished by the author.

The End

On the last day of Josef K's thirtieth year, two men arrive to execute him. He offers little resistance, suggesting that he has realised this as being inevitable for some time. They lead him to a quarry where he is expected to kill himself, but he cannot. The two men then execute him. His last words describe his own death: "Like a dog!"

Evaluation

The Trial is a chilling story that maintains a constant, relentless atmosphere of unease, right up to the brutal ending. Superficially the subject matter is political; an illustration of a truly twisted brand of law enforcement. However, one of the strengths of the novel is in its description of the effect of these circumstances on the life and mind of Josef K. It presents the absurdity of human nature, of drudging along without direction, and without result. It can also be considered allegorically in a number of frameworks, for example, emotional. If it were published today, it might be described as a "paranoid thriller", but it is unusually uncompromising and depressing by modern standards.

When analyzing The Trial, it is important to note that the end of the novel, the death scene, was the first part written by Kafka. This is what in part gives Josef K.'s trial and ultimate conviction a sense of inevitability, greatly adding to the paranoia of the text. Josef K. is never told what he is on trial for, and he maintains his innocence throughout. What becomes clear to the reader is that Josef K. is on trial precisely for his innocence; for to be human is to be guilty. By admitting his basic guilt as a human being, perhaps Josef K. could have freed himself from the proceedings. Then again, the trial against K. was set up because he was incapable of admitting his guilt, and, by extension, his humanity. This theme of isolation from the human race is a theme that Kafka uses throughout his works.

Another way to evaluate The Trial is to consider what Jean-Paul Sartre has to say about it in his book Anti-Semite and Jew: An Exploration of the Etiology of Hate. As the title suggests, the book relates the way Jews receive a world marred with anti-Semitism. That Jewish life in such a world, Sartre argues, is similar to the way Josef K experienced it, and the way Kafka may have experienced it as well. According to Sartre:

This is perhaps one of the meanings of The Trial by the Jew, Kafka. Like the hero of that novel, the Jew is engaged in a long trial. He does not know his judges, scarcely even his lawyers; he does not know what he is charged with, yet he knows that he is considered guilty; judgment is continually put off -- for a week, two weeks -- he takes advantage of these delays to improve his position in a thousand ways, but every precaution taken at random pushes him a little deeper into guilt. His external situation may appear brilliant, but the interminable trial invisibly wastes him away, and it happens sometimes, as in the novel, that men seize him, carry him off on the pretense that he has lost his case, and murder him in some vague area of the suburbs." Schocken Books.

Relations between The Trial and Crime and Punishment

In 1983 Guillermo Sánchez Trujillo, professor of UNAULA ("Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana" of Medellín, Colombia) undertook a research project to investigate some of the possible sources used by Kafka in writing The Trial. He dedicated twenty years of his life to the investigation, and finally in 2002 published the final results in Crimen y castigo de Franz Kafka, anatomía de El proceso ("Crime and Punishment by Franz Kafka, anatomy of The Trial"), edited by UNAULA.

At the end of his investigation, Sánchez advanced the theory that Kafka had used Crime and Punishment and other works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, as palimpsest to write his works, including The Trial. By closely comparing Crime and Punishment with The Trial, Sanchez discovered that Kafka used the first three chapters of the second part of Crime and Punishment (in the order 3, 2, 1), to write and organize The Trial. Sánchez also put forward a new theory on the correct order of the chapters of the novel -- something which has never been clear because of the confusing way Kafka had of systematizing his work. Kafka bequeathed his works to his friend Max Brod. After Kafka died, Brod started to organize and edit Kafka's works to publish them, but with The Trial Brod couldn't decipher Kafka's system, so he organized the chapters in an intuitive and arbitrary way.

The new order found in the study reestablishes the logic of the plot and fits on it the chapters that were relegated to the appendix by Brod and the editors. But the study also argues that the work A Dream, published as an independent short story, was an essential chapter of the novel.

The investigation also confirmed the autobiographic contents that Kafka put in the novel, and the identity of the real persons and the historical events that inspired some of the characters and events of the novel.

A critical edition of the novel with the new order was published in 2005 by UNAULA, containing an introduction detailing the most important points of the investigation and its results and also, side notes explaining the creative process of the author and the use of the palimpsest of Dostoevsky's works.

The UNAULA edition arranges the chapters thusly:

The Arrest
Conversation with Frau Grubach then Fräulein Bürstner
B.’s Friend
Initial Inquiry
In the Empty Courtroom - The Student - The Offices
The Flogger
To Elsa
Public Prosecutor
The Uncle - Leni
Lawyer- Manufacturer - Painter
In The Cathedral
Block, the Merchant - Dismissal of the Lawyer
Struggle with the Vice President
The Building
A Dream
Journey to His Mother
The End

More info see: ^*

Published editions

Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics, ISBN 0-14-018113-X

External links

The Trial: A Study Guide
Freely available at DigBib.Org (German version, text, pdf, html)

Critic Edition in Spanish in UNAULA

Critic Edition in Spanish

1925 novels | Dystopian novels | Unfinished books | Franz Kafka

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