Kafkas Parable of the Law - Research Paper Example

 Kafka’s The Trial: The Apocalypse of Truth Table of Contents: Pg. 2 I: Introduction Pg. 3 II: Space: Layers of Reality Pg 4 III: Disruption of Linear Time Pg. 5 IV: Legalistic, Circular Language Pg. 6 V: Obscured Identities Pg. 7 VI: The Parable of the Law Pg.8 VII: The Apocalypse of Truth Pg. 9 VIII: Comparing The Trial: The Metamorphosis and Gilliam’s Brazil Pg. 10 X: Text Summary and Concluding Thoughts Pg. 11-12 Works Cited I: Introduction In the past, religious leaders and government officials operated from a higher position detailing the truth of God’s law and the socially agreed upon concept of what was considered true or false, real or heretical, and legal or criminal. Yet, as humans gained access to printed works, societies and individuals have been actively contesting what is true and correct and what is false and wrong. The Trial begins as K. suddenly wakes to find himself accused of slander and interrogated before his breakfast. Like a rational person, K. seeks to learn the exact nature of the charges and who has brought them. However, Kafka’s exploration of legality, crime, and guilt does not play out rationally, but within spontaneous, claustrophobic, omni-present forums. As the verdict approaches, K. meets a priest in a cathedral who imparts the parable of the law to the confounded K. Within the parable, a man approaches a door guarded by a gatekeeper who bars his entry. The man, who waits his entire lifetime at the gate, finally asks the gatekeeper why no one else has sought to enter only to be told that the door was meant for the man alone. However, now access to the door and to the Law and the truth behind the door is closed. Through the defamiliarization of space, time, language, and identity, Kafka’s monumental novel The Trial exposes the ultimately reductive nature of humanity’s search for truth. II: Space and Objects: Layers of Reality In order to descend within the labyrinth of The Trial, readers must first leave their physical realities for the “reality” of the characters within the text. Once within the text, readers experience the multi-layered world where actuality and truth become endlessly contested. Separation of functions of spaces and individual natures of objects enters a free-flowing non-reality as K.’s rented flat transitions into an interrogation room and a random book can stand in for an oath book. It is after this introduction to the Law that K. symbolically eats an apple for breakfast, solidifying his connection to the Biblical Adam who ate of the Tree of Knowledge. One might make an argument that the puppeteers of the trial view the trial system as a “fantastic escape as offering a power of transformation, the ability of the secondary world to invade and conquer the primary world—psychologically, socio-politically, or theologically” (Aichele 324). As the trial invades K.’s life, it is as if every space becomes a site for judgment, yet even arriving at the site within this maze becomes increasingly difficult. On one of his first court visits, K. must navigate through tenement courtyards and past a woman washing diapers in a tub to arrive at a stuffy, packed courtroom. K. can barely comprehend the double-talk with people “pointing fingers at K. (through) the foglike haze” (Kafka 49). III: Disruption of Linear Time The trial organizers would initially entice K. to believe his case will proceed from a definite beginning point, through the clear exploration of facts and evidence, to the judgment and resolution. However, the trial morphs to become an omnipresent force within K.’s life as “Kafka constantly distorts time and space, and often underlines the frailty of human perception” (Mitchell xxi). The nightmarish fantasy world of the trial does not adhere to a linear timeline but evolves into a polytemporal circularity. “Progress,” within the context of the trial comes to mean its inexorable permeation into every facet of K.’s life. As K. has court meeting after court meeting, lawyer meeting after lawyer meeting, he descends into a somnambular state “of extreme fatigue…when his thoughts were drifting aimlessly (Kafka 124). Every minute of every day has devolved into fruitless repetition. K. is no longer a productive, evolving citizen pushing his cultural or social boundaries. He has been absorbed within the eternity of his trial, a trial that provides “three possibilities: actual acquittal, apparent acquittal, and protraction” (Kafka 152). When considering the potential religious interpretation, these states of judgment can represent heaven, purgatory, or hell. Spiritual time abandons the mundane, Brownian concept of time meaning change to offer a plane of eternal judgment. IV: Legalistic, Circular Language Just as space and time become overshadowed by the trial and the court presence, the characters’ language devolves into “legalese” (Mitchell xxiv). Words like assault, guilt, conscience, judgment, and sin come to dominate speech patterns, thus thought patterns. Mitchell notes, “The power of Kafka’s text lies in the language, in a nuanced use of the discourse of law, religion, and the theatre” (xviii). The opening pages of the text are filled with various interpretations of the word “assault.” K. angrily asks the officer who first interrogates him, “if you assault me in bed, you can hardly expect to find me in formal attire” (Kafka 11). He uses this term throughout the early morning interrogation process. But later he uses the term in reference to speaking to Fraulein Burstner whom he suspects filed the criminal charge against him. K. desists from speaking to her late at night in the hallway as it might “resemble an assault, and at the very least would give her a real shock (Kafka 27). As “everything belongs to the court,” the characters within this theater of incomprehensible guilt fabricate a world devoid of the pleasures of human existence (Kafka 150). Characters devolve into talking heads whose material, semiotic space of language wars with the power of symbolic signification to disrupt any sense of cohesion or rationality. V: Obscured Identities Initially K., the naïve, simple clerk, seeks “to bring his trial to a rapid conclusion” (Kafka 35). Aichele quotes Kristeva who notes “all literature…seems to me rooted…on the fragile border (borderline cases) where identities (subject/object, etc.) do not exist or only barely so—double, fuzzy, heterogeneous, animal, metamorphosed, altered, abject” (Aichele 327). Just as K. loses his identity to become just another defendant, just another cog in the wheel, the people around him cease to speak of any topic other than the Law and his trial. The Law literally becomes personified when the officer notes to the bewildered K. that the law “is attracted to guilt” (Kafka 9). This statement endows the Law with an eerie, omni-present consciousness. Within the statue-like world of the trial, Joseph can find no direct person of power to psychologically identify as “the object” of his complaint. K. has lost his guilt-free identity yet cannot accept the new criminal identity thrust upon him by his unseen accusers. Just as the Gatekeeper describes an endless series of doors and gatekeepers behind him, the legal system, this cosmology of power extends infinitely from warders, inspectors, judges of the courts and the higher courts, the law itself, and eventually a supreme creator being behind the law. “The Law has become so abstract that it has lost any meaningful relationship to individual reason or justice” (Potter 258). VI: The Parable of the Law In K.’s world “one is condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance” raising questions on Catholic original sin and Calvinistic predetermination (Kafka 55). Scholars such as Derrida note that it is “precisely the intangibility, the impenetrability, the beyond, of the reason or being of the Law, which constitutes the story’s truth” (Potter 253). Ironically, and probably much to Kafka’s point, although K. has eaten of the forbidden fruit, he learns virtually nothing throughout his court appointments that ultimately lead to his execution that is reminiscent of the Bible’s Isaac (who was spared through God’s merciful commandment to Abraham not to sacrifice his son). Whether the law be religious or political, the door within the parable becomes a “site of historical struggle” (Potter 255). K. wrestles to interpret the meaning of the parable of the law, as if the answer would magically open the door to his understanding as well as release him from the misery of his trial. Yet, Potter posits an essential question. Kafka does not intend this meeting of the parable of the law to be for K. alone. Consider class issues. What if a poor, uneducated person were brought to trial? Considering contentious gender issues under religious and political law, what if a woman were knocking at the door of the law? VII: The Apocalypse of Truth The final parable of the Law, told to the exhausted K. by a priest in a cathedral, provide a summary of K.’s entire metaphysical experience of the law. Yet, just as K. has failed to understand the mercurial nature of the law, he fails to understand it again through this parable. Enervated by absurdity, K. simply continues debating the meaning of the parable and how the truth can be revealed through rational thinking. However, insightful readers realize Kafka is revealing a form of truth to his implied and actual reader. By the very indecipherable structure of Kafka’s text, the inability to delineate the binaries of truth and falsehood informs readers of the impossibility to know truth. Whether it be personal, religious, or political, Kafka’s novel remains about “the failures of narrative” (McIntosh-Byrd para. 15). In essence, the trial becomes an apocalypse of truth. “Essentially, both K. and the Judeo-Christian subject are forced into a world where existence consists of awaiting judgment for sins they cannot comprehend” (McIntosh-Byrd para. 5). As Kafka exposes this lack of truth, readers are free to examine the accusations of sin from religious authorities. This analogy also extends to political, especially fascist, organizations which control their people through fear of imprisonment, torture, or execution. Atmospheres of paranoia and mutual fear have long imprisoned humanity. VIII: Comparing The Trial: The Metamorphosis and Gilliam’s Brazil The Metamorphosis remains one the world’s most popular novels and is standard fare for formal education assignments. Modern scholars have analyzed the clerk, Gregor Samsa, who wakes to find himself transformed into a cockroach, as symptomatic of autism, having had a stroke, or a recluse due to alienation. Just like Samsa, Joseph K. undergoes psychological changes throughout the legal process. Initially, K. remains engaged, proactive, and inquisitive. Yet, as the trial becomes a war of attrition, K. uncle cries to the indifferent K. “you’ve undergone a total metamorphosis; you’ve always had such a keen grasp of things” (Kafka 94). Samsa exits within the prison of his mute, cockroach shape while K., who appears to have his physical freedom, exists within the diaphanous cloud of the prison of his trial as “the thought of the trial never left him now” (Kafka 111). Terry Gilliam’s film Brazil heightens many of the concerns regarding fascism highlighted with Kafka’s works. Brazil problematizes the “relationship between imagination and fantasy, and about the ability of a society…to constantly transform the energy of the former into the dead weight of the latter” (Glass 22). Like the entropy of K.’s trial obsessed world, Brazil is obsessed with creating a perfect society in the present using any means necessary, by violating any sense of human rights. X: Text Summary and Concluding Thoughts With the sacrificial execution of our hero who stood against the tide of absurdity, “The Trial raises insistent questions about the nature of meaning, interpretation, and reality which ultimately remain unanswered and unanswerable” (McIntosh-Byrd para. 1). Through intentionally distorting space, time, language, and identity, Kafka’s leaves humanity to consider “the kingdom of God as a parabolic image of the disruption of historical security. The teleological continuity of history is revealed to be a fiction, the illusion of realism which conceals the fantastic discontinuities and multiplicities of temporality” (Aichele 329). At K.’s death, which is paradoxically meaningless within his world and eternally fraught with meaning within ours, readers realize we are all undergoing variations of K.’s crucibles that have no temporal, physical, or psychic boundaries. Within this mad society, everyone is constantly on trial, everywhere, within his or her own mind and within society at large. Media presents the world theatre for individuals to watch and form judgments on distant persons from anonymous terrorists to popular celebrities. As every shadowed corner and lamppost becomes a video access point for the all-seeing eyes of CCTV, citizens wonder about boundaries of beneficial surveillance for safety versus the piercing eye of what Foucault called the panopticon. Works Cited: Aichele, George, Jr. “Literary Fantasy and Postmodern Theology.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 59:2 (Summer 1991): 323-337. Web. 5 May 2011. Banakar, Reza. “In Search of Heimat: A Note of Franz Kafka’s Concept of Law.” Law and Literature 22:3 (Fall 2010): 463-490. Web. 5 May 2011. Glass, Fred. “Untitled.” Film Quarterly 39:4 (Summer 1986): 22-28. Web. 5 May 2011. Goldfarb, Sheldon. “The Metamorphosis.” Short Stories for Students. Los Angeles: The Gale Group. 2001. Web. 5 May 2011. Kafka, Franz. The Trial. New York: Schocken Books, 1998. Print. Kronenberger, Louis. “Special K.” The New York Times Book Review. 6 Oct. 1996. 44. Web. 5 May 2011. McIntosh-Byrd, Tabitha. “The Trial: Parable of Western Christianity.” Novels for Students. Los Angeles: The Gale Group, 1990. Mitchell, Breon. Translator’s Preface. The Trial. By Franz Kafka. New York: Schocken Books, 1993. xv.-xxvi. Print. Potter, Rachel. “Waiting at the Entrance to the Law: Modernism, Gender, and Democracy.” Textual Practice 14:2 (2000): 253-263. Web. 5 May 2011. Spender, Stephen, “Franz Kafka.” The New Republic LXXXXII:1195 (27 Oct. 1937): 347-48. Web. 5 May 2011. 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