June {2011} Discussion -- THE TRIAL by Franz Kafka

[Stewart]

Silver wrote: "Stewart wrote: "There is no reason for one to feel guilty if they are not aware of having done anything in which would lead them to be guilty of. "

I am not saying that he was caught doing anything. I am suggesting a universal guilt that is felt.

You say that there is no reason to feel guilty if...

That is the point. It is beyond reason. It does not behave the way that we think it should. It baffles and bewilders us. No matter how hard we try to get away from it it is still there. It is not fair.

[Silver]

Stewart wrote: That is the point. It is beyond reason. It does not behave the way that we think it should. It baffles and bewilders us. No matter how hard we try to get away from it it is still there. It is not fair...."

But I don't think most people would feel guilt unless they actually believed they had a done something to be guilty about (rightly or wrongly so)

If someone does not feel as if they have done anything wrong than they would not feel guilty about it.

One has to be aware of some wrongness they have committed, or have the perception of having committed a wrong in order to feel guilt about it.

I don't think people just randomly feel guilt

[Stewart]

Silver wrote: "Stewart wrote: That is the point. It is beyond reason. It does not behave the way that we think it should. It baffles and bewilders us. No matter how hard we try to get away from it it is still the..."

Have you ever felt something that you thought you shouldn't have felt, that there was no reason to feel?
The problem with feelings is that they don't behave they way we expect them to.

[Ellen]

Maybe it's because I'm half-Jewish & half-Irish Catholic but guilt is my default setting.

[Stewart]

Ellie wrote: "Maybe it's because I'm half-Jewish & half-Irish Catholic but guilt is my default setting."

That is the sort of guilt I was wondering about; whether it had anything to do with this book; whether the struggle in the book is related to the struggle within ourselves between that which we know and that which we feel.

[Ellen]

That, at least, has a lot to do with how I read the story and what makes it meaningful to me.

[Silver]

Stewart wrote: "Have you ever felt something that you thought you shouldn't have felt, that there was no reason to feel?
The problem with feelings is that they don't behave they way we expect them to.

I guess it is just hard for me to relate to the whole guilt thing because that is one feeling of which I am not easily substitutable to and maybe this has to do with the fact that I did not have a religious upbringing.

So it is hard for me to imagine why one would feel guilty if they do not believe they have done anything in which they feel was wrong.

I can understand one feeling guilt over something in which they ought not feel guilty about but the person still needs to have that perception (even if it is a false or wrong perception) that they are guilty.

I am not saying you have to have actually done something wrong to feel guilty, but in order to feel guilt don't you at least have to believe you have done something wrong?

If your conscious is not conflicted by anything you have done, than how can you feel guilt?

[Ellen]

Have you really never done anything to feel conflicted about? Do you treat everyone you meet every day with complete respect at all times? Are you never thoughtless? Do you go beyond not hurting to actually be helpful? Are you always truthful but self- and other-protective?

Just to mention a few areas I often feel conflicted & mildly guilty about.

And K is someone who gives very little thought to how he treats himself & others, to what his deepest needs are. So he has more unconscious baggage than others may have.

[Silver]

Ellie wrote: "Have you really never done anything to feel conflicted about? Do you treat everyone you meet every day with complete respect at all times? Are you never thoughtless? Do you go beyond not hurting to..."

No I do meant to imply that. I am not saying that I never feel guilty about anything or that my conscious has never been conflicted by something I have done. But what I am saying is that if I do feel guilty about something there is a reason for my guilt, it is because I am aware of having committed a wrong, or because I believe I have committed a wrong.

I don't just go around feeling guilty if without any cause. I have to acknowledge to myself that something I did was wrong in to feel guilt about it.

What I am saying is that for one to feel guilt about something than they must believe they have done something wrong.

One cannot feel guilt, if they lack any awareness of having committed a wrong doing.

Even if someone has not literally done something wrong, within their own mind they must believe they have committed a wrong for the feeling of guilt to be there.

[Ellen]

I guess what I'm saying is, Yes I can.

At least, there is not a single day in my life where I can't find something to feel at least a little guilty over. "I shouldn't have said that" "I should have said/done ___" Or just a vague sense of dis-ease that I did something.

It's great that you don't have that feeling but many people do. Especially people raised to 1) make everybody happy and 2) not ever feel angry. Those 2 life choices alone guarantee guilt.

I was only joking a little about ethnic background being a part of this. Both Catholic and Jews believe in the positive power of on-going guilt feelings (preferably undefined).

Also, I've been thinking about Kafka having "failed" his father by being a writer and not a businessman so he had guilt and anger about that. There is guilt for letting down one's family-& then there's guilt towards oneself at meeting their expectations at the cost of one's own authentic self.

In the Judeo-Catholic world, the one constant is guilt. The basic lesson is not "If you don't feel guilty, you probably didn't do anything to feel guilty about." Oh no.

It's, "If you don't feel guilt, think harder. You should."

[Silver]

To bring this dicussion back to the story. The question than becomes, does K feel guilt about the way he has treated other people in his life, about how he lived his life and his interactions with other people. Or does K lack any awareness that he may have cause to feel guilt? Does K not understand or see those things which he may be guilty for?

Is the Trail K's subconscious mind forcing K to acknowledge the guilt he has carried around oppressed within him and a way to force him to evaluate his life and see the ways in which he may have lived a better life, may have done more for others, treated others better? And is the final recantation at the end K finally falling under the weight of his guilt and finally realizing that he had no right to his claims of innocence?

Or is the Trial being imposed upon him by some outside, superior perhaps divine force and is K's true guilt really his arrogance proclamations of his innocence? Is K being punished outwardly for his inability to acknowledge the fact that he may truly have something to feel guilt about? The fact that he is incapable of acknowledging any possible wrong doing in his life and relations towards others.

[Stewart]

K's struggle with the law mirrors, I think, our own struggle with our innermost feelings of guilt. Everything he says of the law, every criticism that he makes, could fairly be made of that part of ourselves condemns us to feeling guilty, though we do not believe ourselves to have done wrong.

[Stewart]

Perhaps K sacrificed himself.

[Ellen]

I like that idea. Both your posts make a lot of sense in Kafka's universe.

[Mike]

Again, it seems to me you are reading too much into this story. K actually was killed, wasn't he? Therefore, the actions were not in his mind nor by an outside superior force. I think the more we think about it, the wilder the author's objective becomes.

[Ellen]

I think that this is a story that demands a great deal of "reading into"-as in all of Kafka's work. As I've said, I think that the story operates simultaneously on several planes, including the literal and the psychological. There is more than one kind of death.

I think an artist doesn't rationally choose an objective but that it "chooses" him or her. The greater the artist-& I think of Kafka as one of the very greatest-the "wilder" the objectives may be, although they are often only partially conscious.

Discussing a work of art forces us to reduce it to other terms. The ultimate answer to any question about a work of art is the entire work.

If the artist could have summed something up in a statement of 25 words or less, there would have been no need to create a work of art.

[Silver]

Mike wrote: "Again, it seems to me you are reading too much into this story. K actually was killed, wasn't he? Therefore, the actions were not in his mind nor by an outside superior force. I think the more w..."

There is no absolute proof that K's death/killing occurred in the actual physical world. It could have been a symbolic death or metamorphic. If it was within his own mind than it could have simply been a part of himself dying to than allow him to live a better, new life.

There is no way to know that he was in fact actually killed by another person and that is death was a literal death. We do not have any real witnesses to his death and no funeral held afterwards.

[Mike]

This reminds me of the idea that if a tree falls in the forest and there is nobody around to hear it fall, did it make a noise? I have to admit that I have never read any other Kafka book. Maybe I should and then I might make more sense of The Trial.

[loafingcactus]

I had thought this was going to be a dark story of existential meaninglessness, and had no idea that it was a somewhat beautiful story by the end. A Christian overlay of meaning works well and of course Kafka used a priest, but I think it suggests meaning in any cosmology. If we are not judged in some way, our actions have no meaning. If we are judged in some way, there is meaning and even possibly beauty. The acts of kindness sprinkled through the book mean something, however with that comes the inevitability that negative actions mean something as well. As for the death, we are all on a march toward death and it is mysterious to us all in some way, as is how we are judged and by what measure.

[Stewart]

I noticed that when k was first in court the right hand side of the room was easily won over but the left wasvery reserved. Just wondered if this was a right brain left brain sort of thing.

[Kathy]

This book was hard to read. I felt like I was in one of those stuffy rooms that the author kept describing. It irritated me how you at times felt that he was finaly going to find out what his crime was and the character got distracted. And it was mostly always because of one of the silly women who were around only to please other men. So frustrating. I did not respect the main character at all and felt him to be so egotistic and actually wanted him to be arrested.

The book reminded me a little about life. How we never know why we are put on this earth, always searching for a reason why. We are made to feel quilty even though we don't know what we feel guilty about. That there is some higher power above us out of reach, that we have to win over and convince that we are in fact worthy of innocence. That somehow everyone around us is more together than we are, and know more about life than we do. When we do get some hope of finding out about something important we often get distracted with primal human behaviours such as sex, pride or greed. And in the end realise we haven't learnt anything at all.

[[deleted user]]

Admittedly, I read The Trial some time ago along with some of Kafka's shorter works. I am eager to reread it when time permits. What I enjoy about Kafka is his use of the absurd/surreal not to destroy reality or create a new world but to distort the lense of our world. With this work, he looks at the judicial system and I remember thinking that it may reflect the arbitrary nature of any civilizations legal system. Maybe my view is too broad but that was the overall message as I saw it. I wish I could go into detail but having read it some time ago that is all I can offer to the conversation.

I do think someone drew a parallel to Catch 22 and I think that's valid. This may be darker in some ways and more absurd, but definitely satire.

[FrankH]

A great story -- but about what? So much of the novel carries the markings of a subconscious mind assembling fragments of a souless, bourgeois life -- the protocol at the office, the workings of the court, the intense preoccupation with the clearly defined roles and social strata of clerks, lawyers, businessmen -- then fabricating into a bizarre construction that makes no sense, except as a dream and a nightmare. We have dimly-lit attics of ordinary houses being used as courts and law offices; Titorelli, the painter, who has memorized how each
judge in a pantheon of nameless judges are to be painted; policemen being whipped in strange places for misconduct; Block living in the house of his solictor; Leni's brazen behavior and strange sexual attraction to K and, later we learn, to all the defendents. And much of the character interaction has this odd, surreal give-and-take, as when K finds he must purchase, as recompense, Titorelli's paintings, each successively presented to Josef as the exact replica of the one before it. But whose mind and dream is it, Kafka's or Josef's? The narrative constantly shows K listening patiently to his advisors -- the lawyer, the businessman, the artist -- and trying to sort through the'logic' of his 'case' and the inner machinery of the courts, all driven by layers of process and influence and all progressively more absurd. Until the final two chapters, The Trial felt to me like a frightening satire directed at a bureaucracy on steriods, which, in turn was created by a culture of good burghers, like Josef, equally compartmetalized and obsessed with appearances and status. But the final two chapters change everything. The sinister priest, a functionary of the courts and of God(?), participates in silent, final judgment and with Josef's execution, the question arises: Is the dream finally a product of a criminal that, like the absurd system expressionistically rendered here, cannot grasp -- and dare not say -- the true nature of his crime?