Episode 59: What Is Kafkaesque In Kafka’s The Trial?

Earlier today, in one of the sites that I frequent pretty often, I saw something posted about Kafka that I thought wasn’t quite right. Although it was clearly reflective of what the author had to say about it, but it also struck me as something that’s a little bit either naive or hackneyed, and I wanted to say a bit more about my own response—or rather think a bit more about it. I’m intending down the line to do a bit of writing about it, so I thought I would hash out the ideas here.

So, you might be saying, “All right, what did this person say?” It has to do with his novel, The Trial, which I assume that many of you are familiar with. If you’re not, there’s a guy whose name is simply Joseph K., and he finds himself one day accused of a crime, and he spends nearly all of the novel trying to figure out what he’s actually guilty of and how to prove that he’s not actually guilty. And he tries all sorts of different remedies, you might say: he engages a lawyer, he tries bribing people, he even at one point meets, towards the end, with the prison chaplain. And nothing works. And at the very end of the novel, he is killed, and he says, “like a dog.”

So a lot of people have taken this as sort of a symbol for totalitarian regimes, or guilt, or whatever we want to make of it. And this person wrote, “The terrifying thing about Kafka’s The Trial isn’t being found guilty; it’s never finding out what you’re guilty of.” So notice that they’re saying being found guilty: not really that big of a problem. It’s bad, but it’s not terrifying. But not finding out what you’re guilty of while the sentence is passed on you, that’s the terrifying thing.

I think “terrifying” is probably a bit of an overreaction. It’s being dramatic for the sake of being dramatic, probably to get eyeballs, or responses, or clicks, or whatever. Maybe the person really feels that’s the right term, but I think there’s probably a lot of other ones that are more apt. And I leave it up to you to think about what you would say about that.