The Trial – Franz Kafka
This is the second novel of his I am reading in a row.
Thanks to Max Brod for rescuing this one and publishing. Otherwise Kafka never intended to get it published. This was rather unfinished when Kafka died. There is an ending ofcourse, which sounds plausible, but you never know if the author wanted to write more. There is a chapter that is unfinished. So that means, he wrote the ending and was bridging the gaps?
My poor vocabulary doesn’t give me a proper word to describe the book in one word. So I resort to the word - excellent.
The protagonist is a chief clerk in a bank named Josef K. One morning he gets up and finds two gentlemen waiting for him. In a few minutes he learns that he is put under arrest. For what? He never learns neither do us. He stops thinking of his fault or crime as we proceed. Rather he completely forgets that he has to know why he is arrested, within a couple of initial pages.
He was arrested in the strangest of ways. They say he is arrested and don’t reveal why. They admit they don’t know it themselves. And then they leave telling him he is free to lead his normal life but has to appear in court if summoned.
There are characters who appear during one particular chapter or other, whom you feel would be of great importance but suddenly disappear without any mention. There is Miss Burstner, Court Usher’s wife, the student, Titorelli the painter, Leni, The business man. But the most intriguing of all are the whip man and the policemen with him.
During his very first appearance in the court, he mentions that the policemen who came to arrest him had eaten his breakfast and wanted to take his expensive clothes. Then one day as he was leaving for home he hears some noise from the junk room in the bank. He sees the two policemen and a man with a whip. The whip man was punishing the two policemen as K had complained against them. I didn’t understand how is it possible for them to occupy the bank’s junk room. Does that mean K was loosing his mind owing the stress of trial? Or that was a deliberate act by the court to put more pressure on him? He finds everything repeated the next day also. I am confused.
Wherever K goes, he finds all the people and places are related to the court in some way or the other. Even the little girls at the painters place are also said to be belonging to the court. And once again there is no explanation as to why or how? I thought K would go back to the painter for help. He didn’t. or may be Kafka died before writing something more. In that case he would have written more chapters on all of these mysterial characters.
The second last chapter, The Cathedral, is the most intriguing of all chapters. He goes to the Cathedral to meet an Italian client but ends up meeting the priest. Who was that old man doing wild gestures? And how did the priest know K’s name? Even the priest turn out to be related to the court. Still this chapter is the best part of the novel.
In the last chapter two new men come and take K out. There they kill him by stabbing in his heart. K goes with them willingly, knowing that he would die. But we realize that only after a couple of paragraphs. Then why was he killed before his trial ended and a verdict was given?
It is said that Kafka took Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky as a reference. To be frank, I didn’t see any obvious influence of Dostoevsky. But it is quite possible.
There are again a lot of mundane activities explained in detail. Certain descriptions are brilliant. But some other is, though excellent narration drags a little long. For example the chapter in which he thinks about the advocate, the thought process is stretched too far that somewhere in the middle I got lost and had to go back and check if I have missed any lines in between as there was a conversational dialogue which confused me.
Kafka didn’t think that as readers we may need some explanation and conclusion. That is what makes this book different. There are lots of things that we are left without any reasoning. But that is the excitement in this book.
If you have some time to read a 100 page book, definitely go for this. I have become a Kafka fan.
This is the second novel of his I am reading in a row.
Thanks to Max Brod for rescuing this one and publishing. Otherwise Kafka never intended to get it published. This was rather unfinished when Kafka died. There is an ending ofcourse, which sounds plausible, but you never know if the author wanted to write more. There is a chapter that is unfinished. So that means, he wrote the ending and was bridging the gaps?
My poor vocabulary doesn’t give me a proper word to describe the book in one word. So I resort to the word - excellent.
The protagonist is a chief clerk in a bank named Josef K. One morning he gets up and finds two gentlemen waiting for him. In a few minutes he learns that he is put under arrest. For what? He never learns neither do us. He stops thinking of his fault or crime as we proceed. Rather he completely forgets that he has to know why he is arrested, within a couple of initial pages.
He was arrested in the strangest of ways. They say he is arrested and don’t reveal why. They admit they don’t know it themselves. And then they leave telling him he is free to lead his normal life but has to appear in court if summoned.
There are characters who appear during one particular chapter or other, whom you feel would be of great importance but suddenly disappear without any mention. There is Miss Burstner, Court Usher’s wife, the student, Titorelli the painter, Leni, The business man. But the most intriguing of all are the whip man and the policemen with him.
During his very first appearance in the court, he mentions that the policemen who came to arrest him had eaten his breakfast and wanted to take his expensive clothes. Then one day as he was leaving for home he hears some noise from the junk room in the bank. He sees the two policemen and a man with a whip. The whip man was punishing the two policemen as K had complained against them. I didn’t understand how is it possible for them to occupy the bank’s junk room. Does that mean K was loosing his mind owing the stress of trial? Or that was a deliberate act by the court to put more pressure on him? He finds everything repeated the next day also. I am confused.
Wherever K goes, he finds all the people and places are related to the court in some way or the other. Even the little girls at the painters place are also said to be belonging to the court. And once again there is no explanation as to why or how? I thought K would go back to the painter for help. He didn’t. or may be Kafka died before writing something more. In that case he would have written more chapters on all of these mysterial characters.
The second last chapter, The Cathedral, is the most intriguing of all chapters. He goes to the Cathedral to meet an Italian client but ends up meeting the priest. Who was that old man doing wild gestures? And how did the priest know K’s name? Even the priest turn out to be related to the court. Still this chapter is the best part of the novel.
In the last chapter two new men come and take K out. There they kill him by stabbing in his heart. K goes with them willingly, knowing that he would die. But we realize that only after a couple of paragraphs. Then why was he killed before his trial ended and a verdict was given?
It is said that Kafka took Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky as a reference. To be frank, I didn’t see any obvious influence of Dostoevsky. But it is quite possible.
There are again a lot of mundane activities explained in detail. Certain descriptions are brilliant. But some other is, though excellent narration drags a little long. For example the chapter in which he thinks about the advocate, the thought process is stretched too far that somewhere in the middle I got lost and had to go back and check if I have missed any lines in between as there was a conversational dialogue which confused me.
Kafka didn’t think that as readers we may need some explanation and conclusion. That is what makes this book different. There are lots of things that we are left without any reasoning. But that is the excitement in this book.
If you have some time to read a 100 page book, definitely go for this. I have become a Kafka fan.
posted by Dew Drops at 7:28 AM
4 Comments:
a 100 page book, thats inviting ! I always get dissuaded by tiny fonts and those thousand page books - I will give this one a try ... thanks :o)
:))
I recently read Kafka's Judgement, still need to get a handle on his way of writing :)
Also interesting was to read the explanation by people about teh same story.
I have not read the Trial.
Will do one of these days
nice books..
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