The process

The Trial (original German title: Der Prozess) is an unfinished novel by Franz Kafka, published posthumously in 1925 by Max Brod, based on Kafka's unfinished manuscript.

In the story, Josef K. is arrested one morning for an unknown reason. From this moment, the protagonist enters a nightmare to defend himself against something that you never know what it is and with even less concrete arguments, only to find, time and time again, that the highest levels to which he intends to appeal are not but the most humble and limited, thus creating a climate of inaccessibility to "justice"; and to the 'law'.

From the novel comes a famous Kafkaesque story, Before the Law, which became the essence of the 'Kafkaesque nightmare'. In it, a man from afar tries to cross the door of the Law, but a Guardian prevents him from doing so for years. In the finale, as the man is dying, the guardian yells at him: 'No other person could have been allowed to enter through this door, for this entrance was reserved only for you. Now I go and close the door".

Plot

The famous beginning of the story reads "Someone must have slandered Josef K., because without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one morning". A couple of officials arrest the bank manager Josef K., limiting themselves to telling him that he is on trial. From that moment Josef K. is the subject of a suffocating judicial procedure that little by little takes over his life; he is interrogated in infected dependencies of decadent courts, installed in attics on the periphery; He is a spectator of strange situations related to the bureaucrats that surround him and he meets characters who seem to want to help him, but are as powerless as he is in the face of the many instances and levels of the judiciary. As Titorelli the painter points out, everyone is part of the court. The most desperate thing that the defendant K. finds is that he does not even know which court is accusing him. He discovers that the person trying to prosecute him is a kind of alternative court to the city, much more complex and with a line of power that he cannot visualize. He is not able to defend himself because he cannot face the judge who calls him to account face to face, since this call only reaches K. through endless messengers, which give him various updates on the development of his process.

An uncle of Josef's comes from the countryside to help him, as news of the trial against him spreads rapidly. He takes him to a & # 34; lawyer for the poor & # 34; Uncle's old friend, who will assume his defense despite the illness that keeps him in bed. He is a well-connected and positioned man who explains to him how power works, and the few possibilities for the defendants and his defenders to intervene. In K.'s despair, produced by the null observable progress in the defense, he decides to take charge of the process himself, which is worth saying, every day it consumes him more; In this scenario, he turns to a very poor painter who is dedicated to portraying judges, who tells him that he can be of great help, if not to obtain a positive sentence, at least to postpone or suspend the process. Finally, due to confusing circumstances, K. ends up talking to a priest, a prison chaplain, who tells him the famous story of the man before the law. After discussing the legend for a long time, K. gives up trying to understand it and is about to leave the place. The priest allows him to retire, but not before warning him: "Justice wants nothing from you. He takes you when he comes and leaves you when you leave.

One night before his thirtieth birthday, two guards come for him. Without telling him anything, they accompany him to the outskirts of the city where, despite a slight glimmer of hope, they end up executing his sentence. Josef K. in his last moments only wants to lighten the mission of his captors and put an end to the process, somehow assuming an unknown guilt as true.

Characters

Josef K.

Josef K. is a bank clerk with a thriving career at a major bank in the city. His father passed away and his mother receives very brief references in the book, especially in one of the incomplete chapters that are not part of Max Brod's edition. The rest of his human relationships are limited to an uncle who was his guardian years ago, a kind but absent niece, her clerk in the boarding house where she lives, her neighbors in said boarding house, and the bank characters; the director, the deputy director (who is his professional opponent), and a number of minor officials. He also participates in some intellectual gatherings in which he meets the only friend to whom the work refers, also in an unfinished chapter, a questionable Prosecutor. He finally visits an omnipresent waitress and prostitute in the novel named Elsa. Throughout the novel he meets a series of characters who mainly try to help him to no avail. K.'s life reflects the life of modern man, lonely, competitive and superfluous; the process is introduced into his daily life, tearing up his routine and turning him into a man fully delivered to the anguish of gradually becoming part of the court and its hermetic bureaucratic machinery.

The name Josef probably comes from Emperor Franz Joseph I, and K. as seems obvious, is an initial after which Kafka himself, when referring to himself both in life diaries and in manuscripts, hid his own last name (Proper names, the author pointed out, were confusing to him).

The Vice Principal

Superior and rival of K. in the Bank; he is an older man who sees his position in front of Josef threatened. He appears as the ideal of success of modernity within the German society of the time, and works in the story as a counterpoint to the decline of K., taking advantage of his poor psychological situation. Unlike the court and its officials, the deputy director, an anonymous and unpleasant character, is a kind of antagonist to K.

Fräulein Elsa

Prostitute waitress that K. visits frequently. In the book she has a constant presence, although in Brod's edition she is never visited by K. who only remembers her or mentions her in relation to other characters, in order to establish a kind of superiority or belonging to her.

Fräulein Bürstner

K's neighbor in the pension where she lives; Between the two, thanks to the arrest of Josef, who invaded the young lady's room, a brief and superficial one-night romance develops, from which K. tries to hold on to her decline. Miss Bürstner seems to lead a slightly licentious life and the situation she has experienced with K. only makes her uncomfortable. Towards the end of the novel, she reappears as her presence, resolving as a sign of the acceptance of guilt, or desertion to the hope of escape from the protagonist.

Uncle Albert K.

K.'s impetuous uncle from the country. He is K.'s link to his family, and was once his guardian. During his visit, the protagonist's family tension develops, which moves between respect and disgust. The uncle is the one who finally gets K. to take charge of his process and assume an active role in it, hiring Huld as a lawyer and advising him severely regarding his conduct in front of the different characters that surround the court, with whom he insists that must have enormous respect.

Erna

Uncle Karl's daughter, K's cousin. She is a character who does not act directly in the novel, but she is mentioned by her father, to whom she has written a letter informing him of the process against K.

Attorney Huld

An old acquaintance of Josef K.'s uncle who he turns to to help his nephew. He is sick, but that doesn't stop him from staying active thanks to his ties to the court. He is characterized as a man very well positioned within the possibilities of the common man, as well as financially successful, recognized among his peers and with a good heart, since he is known as "lawyer for the poor";. From that point of view, he represents perhaps the best of his profession (except for the big lawyers that no one can have access to) and yet he is a despot with other of his clients.

Huld is a sort of first guide into the mechanics of the judiciary, illustrating the protagonist on how to assume his position in court. During a large part of the book, while he is defending K., he writes a supposed defense document that he never raises in court, and performs a series of unknown acts in aid of Josef, who, faced with zero progress, decides to fire him.

Rudi Block

Block is also a defendant merchant and a client of Huld's. His case has been going on for five years. He is no longer more than a shadow of the prosperous man he once was, and he spends his days between waiting rooms and a tiny room in Huld's house, where he waits to be called to learn the progress of the defense. of the. All of his time, energy and resources are now dedicated to his case. Despite the fact that he has hired a small-time group of lawyers on the side, and practically lives on the premises of the court, he sees no progress, and is completely subservient to Huld and in general to the process, like all defendants.

Huld tells K. about his experience and with it finally illustrates what his fate will be if events continue as usual. In addition, he recounts the way of life in the courts, showing the development of a folklore among defendants, full of symbols and fetishes that are far from the unattainable but absolute and coherent system of gears of the judicial power.

Frau Grubach

Owner of the accommodation units of the house where K. lives, she highly esteems the protagonist, since she admires him as a well-positioned young man and social ascensionist, probably the best of his lodgers.

Leni

Herr Huld's nurse; she falls in love with Josef K. as she falls in love with every defendant who comes to her employer's house, since the defendant's situation is irresistible to her. The Lawyer considers a thesis in this regard, that the situation of the defendants makes beauty appear in them. She will be K's lover and his informant and shows him his 'webbed parts'. (reference to the motif of the hand present throughout the book).

Titorelli

Court painter, a hereditary position typical of initiates, which consists of maintaining a standard among "judges of the past" and the current judges, who necessarily want to be painted like their predecessors. He offers to help K through his personal contact with the judges, arranging through letters and signatures to adjourn or suspend the proceedings. He is convinced that the court can never be influenced by others or dissuaded from finding a defendant guilty and therefore he insists that he can only help K. if he is innocent. In a hurry, he manages to sell three identically gloomy paintings to Josef.

He lives in a filthy attic surrounded by perfidious girls who harass him; this room, of course, is supplied by the court and is physically part of the building, connecting by a door with one of the corridors of the house of justice.

Miscellaneous

The trial forms part of the backbone of modern literature, contemporary with Joyce's Ulysses, Mann's The Magic Mountain or Journey to the End of the Night by Céline. It represents an important technical advance in the contemporary novel, in terms of narration, construction of characters and positioning of themes and universal identities. It has been considered at times as a political work of anarchist orientation, as an existentialist philosophical work and another series of topics that seem to fall short. The existentialists pay homage to it and take it as the starting point of their movement; Thus, for example, The Plague by Albert Camus is an oblique homage to Kafka's novel.

In the cinema and opera house

The process has been taken to the cinema and the theater several times, as have other works by Kafka. Perhaps the best known version of The Trial (1962) is that of Orson Welles, who allowed himself the freedom to add a different ending to the plot.

Bibliography

• O'NeillPatrick (2014). Transforming Kafka: Translation Effects (in English). University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781442650428.