Craft Essay #8 - The Trial

Craft Essay #8:
The Trial by Franz Kafka


Miriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines “Kafkaesque” as “of, relating to, or suggestive of Franz Kafka or his writings; esp. having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre or illogical quality.” As defined, “Kafkaesque” is a term we can apply to everyday occurrences in 2009: attempting to navigate the labyrinthine recorded message menu of a utility company will qualify. But how does Kafka create—with technique—this “nightmarish” quality, or what translator Breon Mitchell calls the “sense of slight unease” (p. xvii) that has inspired and maddened so many readers?
First and foremost, there is the contrast between tone and content. A young man, Josef K., is caught up in the bureaucratic maze of The Law, having been accused of an unspecified crime by unspecified accusers, his life and job hanging in the balance, the unknown lurking around every corner, and all this is narrated in the most straightforward, unemotional, logical tone possible. What makes these illogical events “nightmarish” is not just the events themselves but the fact that the (third-person) narrator describes them as if they are absolutely normal. K.’s first “inquiry,” held in the back room of a dingy apartment in a nondescript block of apartment buildings, perfectly exemplifies this contrast. Here is K.’s initial glimpse of the setting:
K. thought he had walked into a meeting. A crowd of the most varied sort—no one paid any attention to the newcomer—filled a medium-size room with two windows, surrounded by an elevated gallery just below the ceiling that was likewise fully occupied, and where people were forced to crouch with their backs and heads pushing against the ceiling. (p. 41)

K., with whom the narrator is closely aligned, does not seem surprised by the weird fact that the gallery is so close to the ceiling that the spectators are forced to stoop. Instead, in the next line, he merely notes that “the air is too stuffy.”
The novel is chock-full of such scenes. Unnoticed people suddenly make themselves known (the Chief Clerk who lurks in the lawyer Huld’s bedroom [p. 102]); peculiar architectural details abound (that gallery on page 41, the extra stair at the law offices [p. 68], the awkwardly placed pulpit at the cathedral [p. 209]); and bizarre occurrences erupt out of the most mundane circumstances (the two guards receiving a flogging in a storage closet at K.’s workplace [p. 80]). All are described in the most blasé of tones, and while K. may occasionally be startled, his reactions tend to be as logical as the narrator’s: faced with the flogging of Franz and Willem, for example, he simply exclaims that he hadn’t complained about their behavior to the magistrate—i.e., it wasn’t his fault they were being punished!
One of the more unusual tonal strategies employed by Kafka is the near total lack of metaphor and simile. The narrator can be quite descriptive—of both settings (the Juliusstrasse on pages 38-9, the cathedral on pages 206-7) and characters (Bertold on page 61, Leni on page 97)—and yet he resists any impulse toward the poetic or figurative. This technique (or is it a lack of technique?) works on an almost subliminal level—I was nearly halfway through the novel before I noticed it—to keep the story grounded in the reality that the events otherwise lack.
Writers often don’t consider the importance of how their work appears on the page, and how it can contribute to mood. If we are to believe that Breon Mitchell has rendered The Trial “precisely, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence” (p. xvii), then we must assume that Kafka’s long, complex paragraphs are as intentional as the precise, realistic tone. He does not even separate the lines of dialogue, choosing instead to pile them up within the same paragraph. Some paragraphs go on for pages. The effect can be oppressive, as during K.’s prolonged anxiety attack at the law offices (pp. 73-5). In this way, the author creates another unnerving contrast with the logical, orderly tone of the story.
Yet another unsettling technique is Kafka’s brilliant use of the “unreliable narrator” (technically, it’s not the third-person narrator who is unreliable, but because he is so closely aligned with K.—transmitting to us K.’s every thought and feeling—the effect is similar to that of a first-person narrator). Throughout the story, K. maintains a cocky, even arrogant attitude toward his predicament. At the first inquiry, he mocks the magistrate, both out loud (going so far as to call the proceedings “sloppy” [p. 45]) and in his thoughts (K. assumes the magistrate is so knocked out by his eloquence that the official “slowly lowered himself back into his chair as if to keep anyone from noticing” [p. 45]). When he first visits the law offices, K. interprets the other defendants’ behavior as respectful toward him—“‘Everyone stood up. They probably thought I was a judge’” (p. 174). As with all skillfully presented unreliable narrations, however, the reader is way ahead of the character. The gap between reality (K.’s case is hopeless) and the character’s attitude instills in us a feeling of dread, even as we laugh (nervously) at his arrogant pronouncements.
Which brings me to my final observation: The Trial is often hilarious. (Of course, this could be just me. I also find Moby-Dick laugh-out-loud funny.) Huld’s extended riff on the necessity of lawyers (pp. 111-22) is a beautifully sustained comic monologue. K.’s unlikely adventures with the various women he encounters—they all throw themselves at him—are also quite amusing (K. notes this himself: “I recruit women helpers, he thought, almost amazed” [p. 107]—that “almost” makes it all the more funny). Even K’s execution becomes a comic scene, as the two killers (“old supporting actors,” K. calls them, noting how they seem to have been sent by central casting [p. 226]) are nearly stymied by their “nauseating courtesies”: they keep passing the knife back and forth, like the overly polite Disney cartoon chipmunks (“After you.” “No, after you.”) before one of them finally plunges the knife into K.’s heart. The imposition of such slapstick into this scene makes it all the more horrifying. K.’s final, dreamlike observation—of a “faint and insubstantial” human figure with arms outstretched at a far-off window (p. 230)—is as profoundly unsettling as any in the previous 229 pages. K.’s questions—“Where was the judge he’d never seen? Where was the high court he’d never reached?” (p. 231)—wrench the gut. His last words—“Like a dog!”—and the feeling that “the shame was to outlive him” (p. 231) make this one of the saddest endings in all of literature.