Term Paper

Kafka uses the story of Joseph K. in The Trial to criticize the system that every human being is a part of. Joseph K. is a common man who works at a bank who finds himself as the defendant in a trial where he is unaware of his so called crimes. Through K.’s experience with the government and its judiciary system, Kafka reveals his thoughts about the world that people created for themselves. Kafka argues that although the government was created to abolish the flaws of the individual, it contains the same flaws that it was supposed to erase.

In the opening scenes of The Trial, Kafka demonstrates the attitude and initial reactions Joseph K. has towards his situation. K. wakes up and he is told that he is being arrested. He cannot be told what he is being arrested for, but he is nonetheless arrested. K.’s initial thoughts are that the situation must be a practical joke by his colleagues or possibly a mistake. He is so untroubled by the idea that the only conclusion the reader can draw from his emotions is that he must be innocent. Kafka is demonstrating one of society’s biggest fears; being charged for something that you did not do. In every country, the judiciary system is not just imperfect, but there is also corruption from within the system. Justice does not always prevail and it could happen to any individual. The judicial system was created so that every person could have a fair trial and so that the innocent could live peacefully and happily and the guilty would be forced to live in oppression in prison. The evil of the individual is what the government tries to prevent. The flaws of the government are a result of corrupted individuals. Because the government’s imperfections stem from the individual, its flaws mirror those of an individual. The government tries to suppress the evil in society but inevitably has some evil member of its own. The individual does exactly the same, trying to suppress evil feelings and emotions.

Kafka forces the readers to begin to create their own idea of what is to come next because the beginning of the novel is so unclear. The reader does not know what K. is being tried for. They do not know much of his character. The imagination that Kafka forces the reader to have reveals the reader’s perspective and attitude towards life. Some people fear for K. while others find him insane for the dismissal of his own arrest. The reader becomes a witness in K.’s trial.

Later in the story, K. goes to an inquiry about his trial after he is called and told about the event. When K. arrives to the government room, there is a crowd awaiting him. The crowd cheers, which gives Joseph a sense of confidence and gives him the idea of being able to control the crowd. K. talks about his arrest and he criticizes the government for their actions towards him. After a commotion in the room, K. tries to move closer to the disturbance. “Had he misjudged the people? Had he overestimated the power of his speech? Had they been pretending all the time he was speaking…?” (Kafka, 51). Kafka saw that the crowd was more interested the new commotion than in his speech about the government. Kafka then finds out that the people in the crowd were not spectators, but government workers. The government had placed Kafka in that situation to make him feel powerful, although he was being controlled completely. The state is trying to make it seem as if K. is being tried fairly. They’re trying to convince K. himself that he is undergoing an honest trial. Society tries to make the individual feel powerful, but in reality society suppresses the individual. Mankind is attracted to society based on false motives. They believe that they will be protected and free within a society, but even those two ideas contradict one another. Joseph K. is a victim of this system. He is being controlled at the whim of the government.

After K.’s annoyance with the crowd, he decides to leave and as he walks out the door, the magistrate tells him that he is losing the right of being interrogated for his case. K. remains angered and walks out of the room. The government has played K. like a puppet. K. has almost given the government the right to assume anything they want of him. The government planned everything that happened on that day. K. was supposed to get excited so that he would become angry when he found out that the crowd was filled with government workers. They wanted him to ignore the obvious choice of being interrogated so that they could do whatever they want with him “justly.” Because K. is a part of the government system, he has already lost all of his control over his life. Society strips all power from the individual.

Joseph K. returns to the government room a few days later on his own behalf. When he arrives the same woman that had opened the door for him the last time greets him and tells him that there is no sitting on that day. They begin to talk and she flirts with him, but a student interrupts. While the woman is away from K. he thinks to himself that he would like to have sex with her. When individuals have sexual thoughts, they try to suppress their emotions and thoughts. These thoughts that people have are not “socially acceptable” although they are the least fabricated thoughts a person can have. Although K. thinks about having sex with the woman in his mind, he would never admit to being after her only for sex. A person’s thoughts are the individuals that make up the society, which is the mind. K., like any other person, has many thoughts at any given time. K. suppresses and ignores many of them. These thoughts that K. had parallel K.’s roll in society. K. does not want his thought to become important so that he can tell himself he is a “good” person, although his thoughts are not morally wrong. Although this thought was suppressed for a reason, other thoughts are suppressed because people are so focused on one way of thinking that they do not want to give other thoughts a chance. K. is just a thought within the government’s mind that at the moment is elsewhere, focused on other things. The judicial system parallels the way people reason and breakdown thoughts. People create arguments towards thoughts that are illogical and that do not make sense. This allows people to not dwell on that thought and continue with what they are already committed to doing. K. is being dismissed illogically and it is only K., the thought, that suffers.

In the fifth chapter, the events that take place in the story get even stranger. On his way out from work, K. heard groans as he exited through a hallway. He opened the door that the sounds were coming from and found a whip man getting punish two warders. These men are being punished because K. had supposedly complained about their behavior in a prior interrogation. K. did not actually complain about these individuals, he just criticized the way every government worker treated him. K. leaves the room and the men are whipped and as a result K. feels terrible for being the reason they are whipped. K. thinks to himself that he would have done more for the warders if there had not been clerks outside the door that he had to explain the noises to. He creates a thought that allows him to not feel bad about what he has done. In this situation, K. tries to erase the genuine thought to believe in a fabricated one.

The whipping that K. witnesses is another act of the government. The warders were being whipped on K.’s exit route from his office so that he could not avoid the site. By forcing K. to witness the warders’ punishment, they win emotional control over K. Because this event stays with K. because he feels it is his fault, he will no longer complain about government workers out of fear of having them punished. This gives the government even more flexibility with what they can do with K. He does not just feel bad about the whipping, but he is tormented by it.

K.’s final experience with the government occurs when two men come for him. K. is forced to go with the men and he is taken to a quarry where one of the men takes out a butchers knife. These men pass the knife back and forth over K. He understands that he is supposed to kill himself with the knife. K. just sits until the two men kill him. As he is dyeing, he says “‘Like a dog!’” after seeing that he was being watched from a building (Kafka, 231). K. had already been controlled mentally and emotionally by the government, but in the final chapter he is controlled physically. The government made K. feel as if he did not need to avoid death anymore. K. was removed from society without giving him any chance of protecting himself. K. was manipulated the same way thoughts are manipulated in people’s minds.

Kafka believes that institution of government is conflicted from within. This institution is supposed to protect the individual and allow them to be free, but the judicial system convicts innocent men and allows murderers to continue to live. Because there is no perfect person, there can never be a perfect society. Everything depends on each individual’s perspective and moral values. There must be judgments to control society, but who is to say that one person had better judgment than another. Anyone can be tried for anything depending on who is looking at the situation. Because of these differences within mankind, many people believe the judicial system is a failure. The flaws of the government mirror the flaws of the individual because the flaws of the government stem from that of the individual. People will always see flaws in the government, just like people always find flaws in others. Throughout The Trial, Kafka demonstrates that the conflicted government can condemn whoever they wish to be condemned.