Ryan's Fifth Reaction

In the next section of The Trial Kafka continues his streak of bizarreness and confusion of both the main character and the reader.  While I read this section, I felt as if Kafka was toying with the reader through situational irony in which what I thought was going to happen did not end up happening. For example, while walking through the office of the court officials K. tries to not attract attention because he does not want to be questioned. However, two officials walk up to K. and as a reader I expected the officials to question K. and for K. to react defensively like he usually does. One of the officials ends up being extremely courteous as K. is suddenly overcome by a sickness and needs some sort of medical attention. Also, the two officials basically make fun of K. and speak about him as if K. were an object right in front of K. I expected K. to become furious and lash out fueled by anger and pride; however, K. simply just sits there and does not say a word. Kafka is trying to confuse the reader and make the reader uncomfortable by making the novel unpredictable. Kafka also focuses a lot on the importance of appearances in this section. For example, while K. is walking through the offices, he does not want the court usher to walk behind K. because it might appear that K. has just been arrested and K. does not want the other people in the office to think that. Also the court system decided that the only person that should be dressed nicely is the “information giver” because he is the face of the court to the public. It makes sense that the face of the court should appear nice, but the court does so very blatantly as everyone else does not dress nicely at all.