Franz Kafka’s The Trial portrays the trial of a man accused of a crime he does not believe he committed by a court reliant on influence to the exclusion of evidence. This man, Josef K., becomes inextricably entangled in trying to influence the verdict of his trial through both legitimate and illegitimate channels. Josef K.’s entire experience seems, at times, like a giant nightmare--literally. The tale seems dreamlike because of the narration’s irrelevant and inappropriate physical details, claustrophobic and conspiratorial focus on K., and illogical progressions.
Dreams often contain specific physical details that are irrelevant (and sometimes inappropriate) to the course of events. We see this characteristic in several scenes in The Trial. For example, in the chapter “In the Cathedral,” K. notices a tall auxiliary pulpit above which a lamp is lit, as if there is to be a sermon. He carefully examines this pulpit. He notes that it is superfluous, as there is another, beautiful, pulpit, and that it is badly built: the stairs are absurdly narrow and the structure would force an orating priest to crouch. The prison chaplain ascends the bizarre pulpit unnecessarily, as his intention is not to preach a sermon but to give a single man, Josef K., legal advice. The chaplain explains his ascension, but his explanation (that he needs the distance from K. in order to avoid forgetting his position) seems unsatisfactory. The pulpit, then, is inappropriate, and K.’s focus on it exceeds its relevance. A second example of inappropriate physical detail is found in the final chapter (“The End”). Josef K. is taken from his apartment by two men that are portrayed almost as caricatures, as somber versions of Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee. They are described as “pale and fat” (225). They have identical double chins and seem to communicate silently--in surprise, in reproach--about K.’s behavior. They are ridiculously courteous, arguing politely over who will be the first to pass through doorways, and, more grotesquely, who will be the one to wield the knife fatal to Josef K. They allow K., perhaps, to lead them to the site of his own execution: a quarry. The executioners spend time deliberating over the position of Josef K.’s head against a rock. Here again, the characterization of the executioners and the location of the execution are inappropriate and inappropriately emphasized.
A second characteristic of dreams is the sense that all the characters care disproportionately (and sometimes claustrophobically) about the affairs of the dreamer. In The Trial, this Josef K.-centeredness is evident from the sense that the court is everywhere and that many random people know more about the process of the trial than K. himself does. “Everything belongs to the court” (150), says the painter Titorelli, after pointing out that even the annoying girls sitting outside his door belong to the court, and before K. discovers that the court has offices adjacent to the painter’s room in yet another sordid attic. This point is driven home over and over again as court personnel and people who know about the trial appear in the most unlikely places. For example, the guards who initially arrested K. and attempted to swindle away his undergarments are flogged in, of all places, a junk room in the bank where K. works. K. meets the prison chaplain in the cathedral, where K. has gone ostensibly to give a tour to an Italian business associate (who never shows up, allowing the conference between the chaplain and K. to take place, and implying that the Italian, too, is connected with the court). In yet another example of the omnipresence of people interested in K.’s trial, a manufacturer with whom K.’s bank is doing business knows of K.’s trial, leading to his recommendation to K. that he visit the painter Titorelli, who has access to the court.
A final dreamlike characteristic of some parts of The Trial is the presence of illogical progressions. For example, K’s often sudden and complete changes of impression and intention seem illogical. When K. meets the merchant Block at the house of his lawyer, at first he is jealous of him and feels superior, then decides that “the man had some merit...Leni probably judged him unfairly” (180), and then “could no longer stand the sight of the merchant” (183)--although this fickleness may not be due to dreamlike illogic but to K.’s arrogant and cynical nature. Another example of illogic is the chapter “Initial Inquiry,” which provides one illogical progression after another. First, the court fails to tell K. how to find the interrogation room--negligence which seems to go beyond the ordinary disorganization of the court. Then, when K. gauges the interrogation potential of each room in the building by going from door to door asking for a carpenter named Lanz, a woman unexpectedly tells him that there is a carpenter named Lanz. As if this question were a password, she brings him not to Lanz, but to the very interrogation room he was looking for. That this is the right interrogation room, or even that it is an interrogation room, is not immediately evident, however. He is told that he is late, although he has not been told to come at a particular time. Also, he is asked whether he is a house painter--and his correction of this mistake is treated like a joke. But then all this illogic is ignored and the room is established to be the right one--with no explanation of any of the bizarre elements leading up to this establishment.
The inappropriate and irrelevant details, the claustrophobic self-focus, and the illogic of parts of The Trial, then, contribute to the sense that the book is merely a record of a nightmare. This is relieving--if the trial is a dream, the troubling questions it raises, not only for the inhabitants of K.’s world, but also for us, can be discarded as impossible products of a feverish dreaming mind. But this is a dangerous trap. Dreamlike or not, The Trial questions elements of reality--not just K.’s, but ours--that need to be examined and repaired, or at least understood--elements concerning justice, self-interest, attitude, creativity, and love. To ignore these questions because The Trial seems to be a dream would be a grave mistake.
[Note: Page numbers are based on the Schocken Books 1999 edition (translation by Breon Mitchell)]
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