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Guilt has relative existence; in one sense or another, every man experiences
guilt. Whether or not this guilt is worthy of punishment, however, is another
question. For this, modern society has created trials that decide whether or not
a person is guilty. However, sometimes the actual guilt or innocence of an
individual is not the most important aspect of his or her trial. In the novel,
The Trial, Franz Kafka uses his main character Joseph K to show the unimportance
of the actual guilt of an individual. Although K is arrested and summoned by the
courts, he is never informed of his crime, or questioned on his actual guilt.
The trial that K is put through can be interpreted on two levels, the first of
which is a literal interpretation of a criminal trial. The second level can be
seen as the internal trial that he must go through to cope with his own anxiety.
K and his trial are used to represent the eternal guilt of human beings in the
eyes of a bureaucracy, and in this sense, K is guilty. However, the question of
K's guilt is not important to Kafka's intention to show his idea that the
innocent and the guilty [are] both executed without distinction in the end. In
Kafka's beliefs, the courts treat all men as if they were guilty. Joseph K is a
prime example of this treatment.
He is never told about his crime, nor of how
the trial is going. He merely waits until he is summoned, and if he is not, he
is still forced to live his life according to the courts. This is what Kafka
believes happens to all individuals; they are controlled by the society, and
forced to agree with what the society implements upon them. K never found out
what his alleged crime was, and will never find out. However, he was forced to
agree with his own guilt because the society did not give him any other option.
When he was told of his three possible outcomes, none included a statement of
innocence. K allowed the trial and the pressure to run his daily life, and was
never able to return to his normal lifestyle. However, one night, the prison
guard summons K to the church to have a conversation. Kafka uses a story inside
of the story to provide an explanation to why K can never get anything
accomplished when it comes to his case. While K is in the church, the prison
guard tells him a story of a man who tried to enter the courts, and K realizes
that what the guard is saying is the exact reason that K will never be able to
do anything about his case. The man in the story wanted to enter the courts, but
the doorman would not allow him passage.
The man waited his entire life hoping
to get through the door, but he never did. As the man was dying, he asked the
doorkeeper why no one else has tried to enter the door, and the doorkeeper
replied that the door is only meant for that man. In K's case, K wants to learn
more about his trial, and attempt to make a difference, but he can not even get
through the first door of courts to begin. Much like the man in the story, K is
never able to get through the door, and he too dies without ever seeing the
inside of the courts. Kafka openly shows his distrust in society by using K's
death as an example of what happens to mankind when the bureaucracy becomes
stronger than its members. In the beginning of his trial, K was very fearful of
all of the possible outcomes, and relied on other people, such as his lawyer and
numerous women, to attempt to help him with his case. This inability to rely on
himself is exactly what the bureaucracy wanted him to do. However, after a few
months of this, K decides that the lawyer and the women can not help him, and he
must attempt to fight the battle himself. But the courts do not agree with K's
decision, and the trial abruptly comes to a stop when two men come to give K his
ultimate punishment.
They take him away, yet he does not struggle, and in
reality, he is the one leading them. When they finally reach the outskirts of
town, they throw K on a rock and begin to pass a knife over his body. K believes
that he is supposed to take the knife and kill himself, but he will not, and he
forces the two men to kill him. Immediately before he dies, he sees arms reach
out to him from a window far away. These arms are the arms of mankind, and are
telling K that he is finally free of the courts and of the bureaucracy that once
controlled his life. In the novel, The Trial, Franz Kafka uses Joseph K to
represent mankind, and uses K's trial to show the endless struggle between
mankind and the bureaucracy was created by mankind. Kafka believes that the
bureaucracy does not worry about the facts or about the individuals. Everyone
will be executed in the end. To the bureaucracy, K is guilty and worthy of
death, because he lost the trial. He did not lose the literal trial because it
never progressed; he lost the internal trial that he was forced to put himself
through. But K's actual guilt is a question that will never be answered, because
Kafka did not give us an answer. Our inability to know the truth is what forces
us to see what Kafka is implying in the story. Guilt and innocence are not
important when the bureaucracy has the strength to create the laws, the trials,
and the verdicts. Joseph is still uncertain of his crime but even more uncertain
of his innocence. Joseph's incessant evasion of responsibility is what he is
guilty of in this particular chapter. From the beginning of the novel, Joseph
never takes responsibility for himself or the trial. He appears to blame
everyone else for the trial, and passes along the responsibility of helping him
win his case to the other characters in the book. Even in the remaining last
minutes before his death, Joseph refuses to take responsibility for his life
continuing to deny his guilt. For this reason, Joseph dies an empty death,
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