Guns and Guts

Book Review: The Trial

December 11th, 2008

The Trial
Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Schocken (May 25, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0805209999
ISBN-13: 978-0805209990

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After reading several of the books on my list, there will be no more opining about how great they are. They are all great. These books are on a top 100 novels list for a reason. Undoubtedly some will not be so great to me, and I will make note of that fact. The Trial is not one of the not so great to me books on the list. It is of course great, as one would expect. Oops, I said it.

This is the story of poor Josef K. A tightly-wound bank manager that has a very normal life. My impression is that he has a stringently normal life. He works, he goes home, and he goes back to work. Occasionally he throws in a romp with his favorite prostitute, and that is the extent of his life. The story starts on a not so normal morning for Josef K. He awakens to find two rather bumbling agents eating his breakfast and placing him under arrest.

This would be disheartening for anyone of course. The strange twist is that they don’t know why he is under arrest, and tell him he is free to go about his business while under arrest. He is to go to his job, and continue his daily routine until he is notified to appear for interrogation. Throughout the story the enormity of the system he is being forced to deal with becomes more and more apparent. There is no way for him to find out what he is being charged with, how his case is progressing, or even who his accusers are.

This is a cautionary tale. It warns of the horrors of totalitarian bureaucracy. The court that Josef K. finds himself embroiled in, is a terribly complex system of redundant parts that serve little or no purpose. The court moves like molasses, and apparently ignores most input from lawyers and defendants.

Only those who have the appropriate connections have a chance to influence the court’s overly pompous judges. Years are wasted by the defendants trying to figure out if they are successfully influencing their cases, and what exactly their cases are about. It drives many of them to madness.

Another aspect that Kafka illustrates very well about totalitarian regimes is their amoral status. This lack of any morality is multifaceted. The court has no problem with driving its victims insane. The employees of the court are also treated unfairly. There are no rewards for doing good work, so the majority of the time, the employees strive to fly under the radar, and not ruffle any feathers. Mediocrity is the goal.

The most shocking element is the lack of interest on the part of the public. They seem happy to go about their daily business regardless of the fact that this nightmare has risen up amongst them. All of them are subject to having a case arbitrarily brought against them, yet they don’t seem concerned. They assume the government is doing it’s job, and that the defendants must have done something wrong, or if they were innocent, surely the court would find that out and drop their cases. The court is so massive that no one seems to know anything about it, and it has been installed so long that it is just accepted, almost as if it had always been.

This translation seemed very good. I don’t speak or read German, so this is just a guess. The translator did a good job, as there are no strange sentences or structures that don’t make sense. The book was an enjoyable read, and I found myself not wanting to put it down. Highly reccomended.

Categories: Books, Entertainment | Tags: novel, reading list