In Kafka’s Trial we see the story of a man, K, arrested for reasons unknown to him, and his journey to try and find out more information about his case and efforts to get acquitted despite not knowing the charges against him. Throughout the course of the book we see K become more and more trapped in the convoluted system that is the law, with its haunting presence everywhere that he goes.
At the end of the book, one year later on his 31st birthday, K is taken hostage by two men to a deserted quarry, stripped and stabbed in the heart. The ending of the book is abrupt and shrouded with unanswered questions, one being would K have survived if he had resisted? I find that even if K had resisted, the outcome would have been the same for he was fighting a battle with a system that could not be won over, a system in which justice did not prevail. As the Chaplain says, “it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary” (Kafka, The Trial). K himself comes to this realization on being reminded of Fraulein Burstner, and though they pass by a policeman, K leads them away from him and does not resist.
Kafka’s Trial is suspected to be an unfinished novel, which makes me wonder if the protagonist K gave into the system’s nightmare and experienced imposed guilt or realized that his fate had been sealed all along and his attempt at an acquittal was inevitably futile.
Saniya - I agree with your assessment that K eventually resigned to and accepted his fate with the court. Seeing the change in K from researching, protesting, and fighting his case to a man essentially stripped of his identity shows the power of the court and the intense strain the court puts on the accused individuals. Additionally, while reading the final portion of The Trial, I could not help but picture how K had become similar to the men outside the courthouse in Orson Welles' movie. K too lost his identity and became nothing but another case in the court. Kafka shows through the book that even the strong-willed individuals can be broken down.
ReplyDeleteI very much agree with your viewpoint on K's situation; I feel that K was fighting an uphill battle throughout the story, and would not have survived even if he had resisted in the end. Due to the fact that he did not know of his crime, the attempts throughout that K makes to try and help the situation all prove fruitless, and thus ultimately ends with K accepting his fate. Regarding the scene where K is dragged out by the two men on his 31st birthday to be "executed", I can see many similarities to Sartre's "The Wall", which also has the protagonist eventually accepting death without resistance.
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