The Trial That Forever Is. Review on Trial, The - Franz Kafka

As anyone who has read The Metamorphosis will vouch, Kafka is just too many things rolled into one !! His proclivity for Impressionistic narratives or that for surreal plots actually does him a grave injustice, in that it undermines his razor-sharp humour. It also helps keeps under wraps his greatly troubled personal life.

Like most of Kafka's works, The Trial was written in German and published in 1925 after his death, all thanks to Max Brod, perhaps his only close friend. To think that he asked Max to destroy his works makes one realise how perilously close we came to losing some of the best masterpieces of all times.

The Trial is the story of Joseph K, a Banker who suddenly wakes up one fine morning to realise that he has been arrested by the law for an unspecified crime. The agents not only refuse to divulge the nature of his crime but also leave him in a lurch as to the time & method of a Trial. His only respite is the fact that he is free to move and carry out his routine affaris. K attempts to meet the Magistrate to learn more but is unable to do so. All of a sudden people start behaving strangely around him. Some people move into his neighbourhood while 'funny' activities start taking place in his Bank storerooms. K turns to his Uncle who refers him to an Advocate. However K finds the Advocate useless and gets physical with his nurse, doing himself no good in the process. K then meets Titorelli, a court painter, who paints a very gloomy picture of his chances of acquittal. This is further corroborated by Block, a client of his Advocate, who has spent years fighting his own 'lost battles'. Finally K comes across a Priest in a Church who tries explaining his (K's) situation by means of a an equivocal fable but ends up confounding him all the more. The story ends with K giving up and getting executed "like a dog".

If you are wondering why I have given away the Climax, its because it is perhaps the least important 'take' from the Book. Whats more important is the detail of every Impression that he creates, every picture that he paints. Strangely, the Trial doesnt actually have a Trial in the legal sense of the word. But it knocks you flat on the ground when you realise that often Life itself is the Trial we keep waiting for only to realise this when the Verdict is out and we are on our way to execution !!

Humour is so fatalistic that it almost cuts through the fingers of the author. In one such instance, K meets an attractive woman only to discover that she has webbed hands !! Or the observations that :-

"K was pleased at the tension among all the people there as they listened to him, a rustling rose from the silence which was more invigorating than the most ecstatic applause could have been."

"The right understanding of any matter and a misunderstanding of the same matter do not wholly exclude each other."

The books offers multiple 'layers' of interpretations, the deplorable treatment of innocent citizens at the hands of state institutions being the most obvious of them. The Trial was more than a prophecy on the impending tyranny of Totalitarian societies whether it was the Nazi Germany or the Capitalist US. Remember it was written in the backdrop of WW1 when Civil Rights wasnt even a phrase in the Dictionary :-P Its also a comment on the growing impulsiveness of our nature whereby our actions are more whimsical than rational, giving others a chance to control our destinies. The Book is similar to 1984 in many ways. While 1984 elaborated upon Dehumanisation in a Capitalist society (Orwell had the advantage of writing it in the 50s), 'The Trial' gives a stunning narrative on how people are conditioned by external forces/agents to believe into thinking what they are wanted to. The pall of helplessness felt by Joesph at the hands of Govt. Machinery (/unknown forces) has to be read to be fully fathomed.

The Trail has been dramatised a few times, most notably by Orson Welles (god knows why he didnt play the lead himself) but you have to realise that the charm of a Kafka narrative cant be captured on celluloid. Kafka's stories are like dreams where happenings are inexplicable and things are most assuredly a surrogate for others. They thus reflect the troubled state of mind of the dreamer and are the Key to understanding our psyche and the World around us.

Much of Kafka's penchant for the Surreal is attributed by his detractors to the fact that he was diagnosed with TBin his later days and some say even a couple of STDs. The medicines he took supposedly give him delirium. And his isolation with his parents in particular and the world at large in General, especially during his final years isolation didnt help matters. But if writing a book like 'The Trial' was as easy as this, I'd have contracted TB and cured meself of it several times over and written several stunning Books in the process :-P