Franz Kafka's The Trial by demandside

ISSN 2090-4304 Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research www.textroad.com

A Study of Franz Kafka’s The Trial Fatemeh Azizmohammadi 1, Hamedreza Kohzadi 2, Seyed Abolfazl Makki3 1, 2

Department of English Literature, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran Department of Sociology, Hamedan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran

ABSTRACT The novel has to be seen as some kind of an allegory or a parable. The sustained situation of Joseph K in The Trial stands in some way for man’s condition in the world itself. The novel has to be apprehended as a poetic image. Though the contours of the allegory are clear and stable the significance there of has been variously interpreted. In Aristotelian terms the novel has a simple episodic plot. Unlike the traditional novel, The Trial, in fact, it will be no exaggeration to say, has no plot with its ups and downs. The episodes in the novel are loosely put together and are not bound by cause-and-effect relationship. Similarly, there are many incidents that defy the logic of realism. For what does K.’s “arrest” mean if he is free to do his routine work in the bank? How is it that court offices are located in the shady part of the town and are always so stuffy? How is it that K. never comes to know the charges against him? All these questions prove one thing and that is that The Trial should not be read as a realistic novel. It has neither a well concatenated plot nor credible incidents. The whole novel centers round K.’s condition under arrest and his final death. This article attempts to examine Kafka’s famous work especially in terms of humanistic issues such as guilt, freedom, alienation, etc. Keywords: Kafka, The Trial, Consciousness, Unconsciousness, Guilt, Freedom, Alienation. INTRODUCTION The Trial was one of Kafka’s favourite works, which was written in 1912, and published after his death in 1925 by his friend Max Brod. In this novel, the reader meets a man witnessing an absurd form of justice a legal system without logic. The Trial represents a common theme. In Kafka’s stories all people are guilty of something and the punishments are in inverse proportion to the sin. In this novel, which is based on a mystery story, psychologically and philosophically, Joseph K. desperately tries to discover the nature of his guilt. In every sense, our attention should be focused primarily on the court of justice the invisible force whose presence is felt throughout the book. There are, in simplistic terms, two streams running through the book, but going in opposite directions. One is the attempt by the court to convince Joseph K. of his guilt. The court does this by attempting to make inroads into Joseph K.’s conscience. Another is to make him realize his guilt, and atone for it. On the other hand, he attempts to get right into the court, and by so doing, reach some degree of understanding about the nature of his guilt. It is as if both are desperately pursuing each other but never meet. All this is done with something that is intangible and surrealistic, but a deliberate artistic form of realistic view. In this context, Roy [1] says: Kafka’s primary concern in his works is to expose the raw nerves of human experience to our scrutiny, or abstractions must never detract from the essential truth that he is dealing with the human situation. After going through even the bald summary of the “events” in the novel, the question that comes first to the reader’s mind is: what does it all mean? For all that we know from the novel is that a man called Joseph K. is arrested under charges he never comes to know and is finally executed. The action moves in a straight, linear fashion from arrest to execution. Joseph. K versus Conscious and Unconscious World The Trial is a symbolic presentation of Kafka's awareness of the unconscious which accuses, tries, and condemns the conscious. As Joseph K. the protagonist of the novel, experiences the critical accusation by an inner voice which is represented in the story by the police inspector whose name is Franz: “you are under arrest, certainly but that need not hinder you from going about your business. You won’t be hampered in carrying on the ordinary course of your life.” [2] the inspector cannot even confirm that Joseph. K. is charged with an offence, or rather does not know whether he is. Instead he is advised to think less about his intruders or about what is going to happen to him, and more about himself. In the very first chapter a correlation is established between Joseph. K.’s state of consciousness

*Corresponding Author: Fatemeh Azizmohammadi, Department of English Literature, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak, Iran. E-mail: F-azizmohammadi@iau-arak.ac.ir.

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