Response to The Trial: Part III, pg. 166-231

K. desperately tries to be acquitted of his unknown crime. He confides in the court painter, who advises him to continuously delay his verdict. K. also fires Huld, but is later warned by the prison chaplain about his attitude towards his case. In order to address K.’s mistaken view of the court, the chaplain tells K. a parable about the Law: “a man from the country” is denied access to the gate of the Law. Once aged, the man asks the gatekeeper why no one else has tried to enter the gate: all along, the gate was meant for the man alone. K is ready to celebrate his birthday, but two men stop him and lead him outside of town. The novel abruptly ends as they stab him in the heart.

We see that in the end, K. is going along with a scripted performance where he can’t control what happens to him, much like “O Judeu” and “The Crucible”. Yet throughout his trial, as Foucault would put it, he was literally a spectacle: his trial, for instance, had an audience that cheered and booed his actions. Everyone knew about him and his trial, and to many women, he became attractive because he was guilty of a crime. Interestingly, although we never find out what K. was found guilty for, the sex he has with multiple women could’ve caused some guilt, much like John Proctor’s situation in “The Crucible,” which would’ve caused an innate psychological torture that isn’t a spectacle. We are presented with one of the paradoxes from the intriguing judicial system we see in The Trial, which neither seems to be fully modern nor of the past.

Kafka's "The Trial", Pages 1- 87

Kafka plays out a story for us about a man named Joseph K. who is accused of a crime that he is never informed of. Throughout the story, he seems lost and uninformed as to how the court proceedings go. He is surprised that he is “under arrest” but can still go about his daily job, he doesn’t know the location of the courts, and he was never told a time to arrive at court. When he finally manages to arrive at the court, he realizes that he is being judged by an audience that claps or boos what he says.

While K. is left out of the loop and seemingly without any power to guide his fate in his own favor, he ends up swaying the audience to listen to him as he claims that the court is and “extensive organization” that “arrest[s] innocent people and introduce[s] senseless proceedings against them, which…go nowhere” (Kafka, 50). This is an interesting display of power in a public trial. I think it will be interesting to see how this power of the court unfolds and whether or not there will be any influence from the “audience”, like how the girls in The Crucible put on a theatrical performance in order to get their way.

Response to The Trial pt. 1

            The first few chapters of “The Trial” by Franz Kafka chronicle the mysterious arrest of Josef K., a man simply referred to as “K.”. When he is disturbed one morning by several representatives of the court who arrest him, he is confused as to why they are there, but they are unable to give him an explanation, as they are merely following orders. It is a peculiar arrest, since he is still permitted to go about his life normally, but he is particularly perturbed by the lack of organization that comes along with the arrest. This is ironic, because if the arrest were to be more formal, he would likely not be granted so many liberties.

            One passage that particularly struck me was when an interrogator asked K. if he was very surprised about his arrest, to which he replied he is not surprised, because he is accustomed to strange, unexpected things happening in life. I thought this was an interesting commentary, because it caught the interrogator off-guard, and explained why K. reacted relatively calmly to his arrest. He is not a submissive prisoner, and I am intrigued to find out how this unorthodox legal procedure pans out.

Response to Kafka's The Trial

            Although the events in Kafka’s The Trial would not ordinarily be considered “torture” in the usual sense of the term, the response to these events by the protagonist, Josef K, follows the same process as that of other characters being tortured in previous readings.  K is being held on trial for a crime he is not being informed of, and many people tell him that it is inevitable that he will be convicted.  He spends all his time trying to find a way to prove himself innocent to the court.  This causes his work to falter, and him to lose any sense of caring for anything other than his case.  Similarly in readings like The Wall and Scarry, people being tortured lose their sense of self and the world, losing interest in anything other than their own circumstances. 

            It is also interesting to note that although Downcast Eyes in part noted the importance of visibility in many forms of torture, the torture that K undergoes in The Trial is entirely private to him.  While visibility is often a key factor in torture, including in psychological torture (such as being publicly naked), K undergoes severe psychological torture as a result of his trial without any information being made public beyond a select few which he generally chooses.  This illustrates the many and diverse forms of torture that people can be subjected to and shows how wide the range of things is that can be considered “torture”.

Franz Kafka - The Trial Response

     Kafka's The Trial starts off with a very strange scenario of the protagonist, Joseph K. being suddenly arrested in his house - without a given reason. Following his arrest, K. receives a phone call requesting his attendance at court; he is given the address of the place, but is not given a time of when he is supposed to appear. Upon his arrival at the given address, he discovers that the building is that of an apartment complex. Without an apartment number, he is forced to blindly find his way to the court. Once he finally finds the courtroom, he tells the judge of the court his story with supposed approval from the audience, only to find out that he was set up - that all the audience members as well as the judge were the "corrupt officials" that had forced him into his situation.
     Throughout the story, K. finds himself completely in the dark in all sorts of instances. He is not given any details about his arrest, is toyed with when given information regarding his court appearance, and is set up when he does arrive. He is also forced to defend himself against the unknown accusation that led to his arrest, which is understandably rather difficult. Though none of this can be considered torture directly, the story can be related to the other works read in class. For example, despite being taken even a step further in the sense that K. is given absolutely no information to go off of, The Trial, like other works we have read such as The Crucible and Heresy, involves scenes of interrogation where the defendant is unable to truly prove himself innocent. 

Response to "The Trial" by Franz Kafka (Pages 1-87)

The first couple chapters of “The Trial” describe the mysterious proceedings surrounding Joseph K.’s arrest. As contemporary readers, we are used to seeing those under arrest explicitly being told the reasons behind their arrest. However, when officials appear at Joseph K.'s home, he is given no details other than the fact that he is being arrested. Furthermore, he is instructed to appear at a court located inside of an apartment building without any details as to which floor or room the court is located. Once inside the courtroom, Joseph denounces the entire procedure surrounding his arrest and his greeted with applause from the “audience” in the courtroom. After his speech, it is revealed that everyone in the room is a magistrate and Joseph states that “it’s in the nature of this judicial system that one is condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance” (Kafka 55).  The main issue with this entire series of events is that Joseph is left in the dark about the details of arrest: he is forced to try and defend himself against an unknown accusation. This relates to the circumstances surrounding interrogation that we have discussed in class, namely the fact that many interrogations were enforced against completely innocent people. Such interrogations, such as that shown in “O Judea” are used to display/justify power and dominance, and though the reason behind Joseph’s arrest is currently unknown, it can be inferred that it also for such a reason. Yet, what sets this situation apart from others we have discussed in class is the sheer mystery. “The Crucible” was set in the time of the Salem witch trials, and “Heresy” and “O Judea” were set during the Spanish/Portuguese Inquisition, but the arrest of Joseph seems to occur in a modern time where interrogations are not actively taking place. Most importantly, all the characters in the previous readings had an idea about why they are being arrested: Joseph has none.