Absurdity in The Trial, a Novel by Franz Kafka

“The Trial,” the 1925 novel by Franz Kafka, follows the story of Josef K., an influential bank clerk who wakes up one day to find that he is under arrest for a crime which will not be named to him, and which, to the best of his knowledge, he has not committed. The reader is thrown into a whirlwind of court proceedings, romantic conquests, meetings with lawyers, hallucinations, and more, as K. tries to understand and overcome his predicament. “The Trial” is an exemplary piece of modernist literature, written shortly after WWI and shortly before the Great Depression, it contains many signature literary themes of the modernist era.

The theme which is most prevalent in this novel is absurdity. During the modernist era, the world was full of chaos, from violence, to social injustices, to economic downfall, the environment in which these modernist writers and poets were living was becoming more absurd by the day. This absurdity was then reflected in their writing.

During the course of the novel, K. Becomes so immersed in the absurdity of the legal system that his own actions, thoughts, and logic become absurd as well. From the beginning of the novel, K. and the reader are thrown into an unusual situation.

He wakes up one morning to realise that the adjacent room is full of strange men, who then tell him that he is under arrest but will not answer any of his questions or explain his situation. K. is immediately confused by what they tell him, and especially confused by the fact that he is not taken into custody, but allowed to go about his day as usual.

Get quality help now

WriterBelle

Verified

Proficient in: The Trial

4.7 (657)

“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

K. can not understand how while “… [he] was living in a free country … [where] everywhere was at peace, [and] all laws were decent and were upheld … [these policemen] dared accost him in his own home …” (Kafka, 6). This event sets off red flags in a reader’s mind, as the behavior of the policemen is uncharacteristic of that which is expected of officers of the law in a stable and just country. This pattern of absurd instances in which the complete opposite of what is expected (by the reader) in a common situation occurs continues throughout the novel.

The storyline and it’s events become so absurd that it is hard for both K. and the reader) to tell the difference between K.’s reality, and his paranoia fueled hallucinations. K. becomes so accustomed to these absurd occurrences, that he does not question what he sees, or thinks he sees, around him. For example, one day as K. was about to leave work, “… he heard a sigh from behind a door which he … had always thought just led into a junk room.” After deciding to open the door, K. finds “three men, crouching under the low ceiling … and [realizes) that it [is] actually the two policemen [who arrested him) … and that the third man held a cane in his hand with which to beat them …”(Kafka, 99, 100). The most alarming and absurd part of this hallucination is not the fact that K. does not realize he is hallucinating, but that he does not seem to see anything wrong with the fact that policemen are being beaten for a small complaint against them, and in the end decides to stop fighting to free them and goes about his day. This event shows that K. has started to be affected by the skewed logic around him, and is treating the police officers’ problem the same way the law system is treating his, and marks the point at which K. began to believe in and embrace the absurdity around him.

Alarmingly, as time passes and K. encounters even stranger occurrences, his reactions to said occurrences are less surprised. As K. is pulled farther into the world of law, his logic becomes just as skewed as that of those around him. From not questioning why his arresting officers were being beaten in a junk room in his bank, to buying the normalization of his legal predicament, to willingly going along with what we can only assume is his punishment, being stabbed in the heart by two strange men in the dark of the night. From the beginning of the novel to the end, K. changes from a man who questions everything to a man who will lay down to die without a fight. This is due to the extreme pressure that the absurdity of his condition has put on him. K. has cracked under this pressure, ultimately melting into the chaos and absurdity of the world around him, until there is nothing left of him.