This review has spoilers.
Lost in Translation, Maybe?
The Trial is one of the best known works by Kafka. But it was also an unfinished one. After Kafka’s death in 1924 his friend Max Brod edited the text for publication. That probably explains why there is such a lack of consistency in the novel.
The premise of the novel is a thought provoking one. Josef K., the protagonist, is told he is accused of something. But what he is accused of, even the two people from the court who provide him this information don’t know. “It must be something serious, for why else would the court even bother to initiate proceedings!” they note.
Initially K. is skeptical. He finds their words so illogical that the only explanation, he thinks, is that it is a prank by his office colleagues. But slowly, as the plot unravels, he realizes he is in for the real deal.
Thence, K. becomes indifferent. He thinks the proceedings are a sham, and their very initiation against an innocent person like himself betrays the futility of them being taken seriously at all.
In due course, however, when acquaintances, strangers and even his business clients start expressing interest in the proceedings of his trial, he feels his reputation is at risk and decides to prove his innocence.
What follows is the portrayal of an incompetent judicial setup which works more on the basis of contacts than on the basis of justice. He is told that, for the court, his accusation is proof enough of his guilt, and it is only in legendary tales of the past that any accused has actually been acquitted by the system. The case is decided not so much inside the courtroom, but outside it through maintaining friendly relations with the court officers and the judges with the advocates playing a role of supreme importance in this machinery. So much so that Block, another client of K.’s advocate (who is very respected in his business) whom he meets at the latter’s home, has hired a few other ones as well, notwithstanding the advocate’s reputation. “We should try to get all the help we can,” he says.
Kafka takes up an issue which is as true today as it was a hundred years ago when the book was written, and has probably been true since criminal justice systems began millennia ago. That the influence an accused can wield often overpowers the principles of justice, in his favour.
But I have plenty of issues with the storyline. One often finds himself reading irrelevant scenes which have no bearing on the storyline, or even comical details which seem to make no sense at all. For example, K. has a sexual encounter with his neighbour, Fräulein Bürstner, when he goes to apologise to her for the behaviour of three of his colleagues, yet ends up kissing her on instinct which, quite strangely, she doesn’t mind. If this scene tries to show that she was attracted to him, then the presentation of this detail is rendered pointless by the fact that the next mention, of any significance, of Fräulein Bürstner occurs in the last page of the novel.
Then again, the court attendant’s wife attempts to seduce K., and is then, quite comically, carried off in arms by a student. And again, K. has a sexual encounter with Leni, his advocate’s maid, when he and his uncle visit his home. Remarkably, this happens when the two elders are conversing with the Chief Clerk of the Court, who could help in K.’s acquittal.
These and a couple of other instances seem extremely out of place with the storyline, for rarely does any of these female characters have any contribution in the bigger picture. If these are incorporated to portray K. as a philanderer, then the relevance of this trait is lost on me, in the context of the rest of the book.
And if these were metaphors, pointing towards something else that I have failed to comprehend, then of course the inadequacy is mine.
To add to that, the format of text presented a little difficulty in reading, with conversations often being presented in paragraphs, not in separate sentences one after the other. Maybe this was a hint that the conversations were difficult for K. (or he was not interested in talking with anyone), just as they were difficult for the reader to go through. But I am just speculating here.
When I reflected over all these things, I couldn’t help but wonder whether it was because I was reading a translated version. In translations, you never know how much of the author’s original creation is actually coming through, for it is conflated with the idiosyncrasies of the translator. Yet, the differences can only lie within a limited range, they cannot fundamentally alter the nature of the work.
All in all, The Trial was well below my expectations. The storyline fails to develop into a consistent whole and the irrelevant scenes spoil the continuity. But again, that could be because Kafka could never finish the work. He is brutally honest at places, and often says things that we may have felt in that position , but would never have expressed. And, occasionally, in the middle of long paragraphs, you would find pearls of wisdom, surrounded by the mediocrity of our daily lives and its harsh realities.
The Trial gets a hold on you, only to lose it, and then get it again. Disappointingly, this happens far more often than one would have wanted. Still, when you are in its hold, it provides a good reading experience.