The Trial
Kafka at his most 'Kafkaesque' (The Bus 4.41)
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The Stop
Written between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously in 1925, Franz Kafka’s The Trial is one of his major works and ‘perhaps his most pessimistic.’ The surrealist story of Josef K. - a bank functionary who is suddenly arrested and prosecuted by a ‘remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor the reader’ - has become ‘synonymous with the anxieties and sense of alienation of the modern age.’ Frequently considered to be a prescient ‘anticipation of totalitarianism,’ the novel resonates in its depiction of an ‘ordinary person’s struggle against an unreasoning and unreasonable authority.’1
Like his other two novels - The Castle and Amerika - The Trial was never completed, and had Kafka had his way it would never have been published. Unhappy with the majority of his work, he instructed Max Brod - his friend and executor of his estate - to burn all of his unpublished writing upon his death. However, Brod - knowing Kafka’s habit of destroying his work2 - had taken the manuscript for safekeeping and ignored his friend’s last request. Working from a manuscript composed of 161 loose pages torn from various notebooks, Brod edited and assembled the work into its present form. As Kafka had a habit of titling chapters but not numbering them, there is debate as to whether the chapters were published in the correct order, but - despite changes by both Brod and others in various print runs - Kafka’s original vision for the novel is unknown.
Kafka’s works typically involve ‘isolated protagonists’ who find themselves in ‘bizarre or surrealistic predicaments’ against incomprehensible and inflexible bureaucracies, and the plot of The Trial is no different. Addressing themes such as the relationship between (1) justice and the law, (2) alienation and control, and (3) the difference between the unknowable and interpretation - all examined through the lens of an absurd system devoid of any logical, predictable structure - Kafka’s everyman protagonist experiences first-hand the senseless, disorientating and menacing complexity which we describe today as ‘Kafkaesque.’
Brief Synopsis:
On the morning of his 30th birthday, Josef K. wakes to find himself arrested. The nature of his crime is entirely unknown - both to him and the reader - and K. suspects ‘someone must have been telling lies’ about him. He is subsequently thrown into a into a labyrinthine legal system run by a menacing bureaucracy that offers no explanations and demands absolute obedience.
Desperate to understand his charges and clear his name, K. follows the rules as he understands them, but the court proceedings are absurd and surreal and expectations continue to change. He is forced to navigate a maze of illogical rules, confront contradictory officials, and respond to ever-changing accusations. Paranoia quickly starts to set in, and despite seeking help from friends, lawyers, co-workers and mysterious strangers, he finds no one capable of helping him through an increasingly nightmarish situation.
As his trial progresses through a series of starts and stalls, K.’s life unravels further and further. His job, relationships, and even his sense of self all deteriorate under the constant pressure and uncertainty until, on the eve of his 31st birthday, he is visited at home by two men in frock coats and top hats. Taking him to an abandoned quarry, they pass a knife back and forth to each other, with the implication that K. should take it and kill himself. But he doesn’t - an act his experience causes him to interpret as his ‘last failure’ - so instead one of them pushes it into his heart and twists it twice. K. - never understanding any of his ordeal - dies, in his words, ‘like a dog’ - as if the ‘shame of [his death] must outlive him.’
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to Time Tides, a very short (1:40) animated film from Kanahebi/Hideki Inaba. It’s a surreal attempt at representing the ‘chaos of time and evolution.’ In the words of its creator: ‘The waves of the sea gently ebb and flow, while the mountains silently observe the passing of time. The short life of a bee and the long transformation of continents, both are merely illusions. The flow of time shines eternally in each fleeting moment. Perhaps there are neither beginnings nor ends, nor haste nor delay, not even existence or cessation, in its true essence.’ Absolutely worth the time.
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation is the recent ITV miniseries Mr Bates Vs. The Post Office (2024). First broadcast in January,3 the four episodes depict the extraordinary true story of what has been called the ‘greatest miscarriage of justice in British legal history.’ From 1999 to 2015, hundreds of innocent sub-postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly accused of theft, fraud and false accounting due to Fujitsu’s defective Horizon computer system. Failures in the system were ignored and covered up, the blame being placed on its users. The resulting court cases, convictions, imprisonments, debts, and loss of jobs and homes took a massive toll on those caught up in the scandal and resulted in stress, illness, divorce and at least four suicides.4
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is a selection of five tracks inspired - either directly or indirectly - by Kafka’s themes:5 ‘Bloom’ (Radiohead, 2011), ‘Love/Paranoia’ (Tame Impala, 2015), ‘Flagpole Sitta’ (Harvey Danger, 1997), ‘At Night’ (The Cure, 1980) and ‘Colony’ (Joy Division, 1980). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from Franz Kafka, one of my favourites about the purpose of literature:
‘I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? […] A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
I first read The Trial in 1994, when a friend was caught in a similarly Kafkaesque situation. I found it helped to make sense of the situation, in an existentialist way. I’ve always enjoyed Kafka - his short story ‘The Metamorphosis’ is a favourite - and used him, along with Camus and Hesse, in a unit on ‘alienation’ I used to teach in an advanced English course. For more about Hesse, check out The Bus 3.24 (Hermann Hesse). Sources for today’s Stop include: The Trial (Britannica), The Trial (LitCharts), The Trial (Wikipedia) and Kafka, Franz. The Trial. New York: Schocken Books, 1974.
It’s estimated Kafka destroyed 90% of his written output.
The series is scheduled to be broadcast in the US on PBS in April.
It was watching this series that led me to today’s Stop, as I was continually reminded of the absurd claustrophobia of Kafka’s novel.
Explicit references to Kafka are Joy Division’s ‘Colony,’ which takes its title and inspiration from Kafka’s 1914 short story ‘In the Penal Colony’ and The Cure’s ‘At Night’ which takes its title from Kafka’s eponymous story written sometime between 1917 and 1924. The Radiohead track (Brad Pitt referred to the band as the ‘Kafka and the [Samuel] Beckett of our generation’) conveys the trapped, claustrophobic feel of The Trial, and the Tame Impala and Harvey Danger tracks evoke paranoia in a delightfully listenable way.
You’re just gonna dangle that note about a friend being caught in a Kafkaesque situation, aren’t you Bryan? What a tease!
Loved this one, Bryan! The Trial was the first novel my AP English teacher had us read back in 1987, and it's still one of my favorites. Might have to reread it after reading your post!