The life of K ends surprisingly and almost without event as two officers appear outside his door on the evening of his birthday and force him to walk. These officers, however, don't torture K in the sense where they strip K of all his power as an individual. In fact, K runs ahead of them and could probably have gotten away, as Kafka writes "the men had to run with him, although they were gasping for breath" (229). The officers stand on either side of K and pass a knife to one another, a "courtesy" (230) which occurs and K is meant to grab the knife and kill himself. However he couldn't "rise to the occasion" (230). K starts to question the meaning of the trial and the purpose of his arrest, and where the high courts and the judge were whom he'd never met. Finally, an officer stabs K in the heart and K's last words are "like a dog!" (230).
I think K's death and overall trial experience are related to the story that the priest tells him in the 9th chapter. The priest tells the parable of a man who basically sits outside the door of the law. The gatekeeper, in the beginning, says he can't let K in. The man stays in front of the door and tries to bribe the man but is never able to enter. As the man is dying, the gatekeeper reveals that the door was only meant for the man. This is similar to K's story, in that he never really gets to fully interact with the law and the high court, only briefly dance around the entrance. I'm not sure what the fault is in not being able to enter. Possibly the man didn't take enough action to warrant being entered into the law, or maybe he was never going to be allowed in for reasons beyond his knowledge. Whatever the case, there are certainly similarities between the priest's parable and K's story, including the light that both the man and K see at the end of their lives.
Great point about how K's life mirrors the priest's parable! I definitely thought that it was very similar in the sense that K was never able to fully grasp what the law meant, as you said. I think that this is exactly what people mean by living in a Kafka-esque world: constantly trying and running to get to a certain point but never being able to quite get there. The idea of the door being built particularly for the man is especially Kafka-esque as it seems even more taunting and ironic, as bureaucratic systems often can be. As for the men trying to get K to kill himself and running themselves out of breath, I think this ties back into the idea of workers in the government simply being cogs in the system instead of full supporters. The officers would much rather not do the actual deed of killing K and want it to be over as soon as possible because they don't really understand why K must die. It's really quite admirable how K still refuses to give in at the last second, even when he knows that he will die regardless.
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