Maya's Reaction to Ch. 4

         As of now, I think that my brain has exhausted its capacity for Kafka. After reading another four of his works along with The Trial, I struggle to make it through the reading. I persevere, though, because I am eager to find out what K.’s fate will be. I sort of feel that as the novel progresses, the further Kafka drifts away from the main point that K. is currently being tried. This may be me speaking out of frustration, but I feel as though the events in the readings are more random than actually adding to the plot and creating forward motion so that the story can eventually finish. A word that has recently kept popping up in my head while reading is “existential”. To me, The Trial has a very strong sense of the whole existential premise: “Are we really here right now?”, “Is this really happening?” 

        Moving on, K.’s personality is elaborated in this section of reading. Honestly, K. comes off as obnoxious. His dealings with Ms. Montag and Ms. Grubach show this perfectly. Ms. Grubach is the first person in the novel who outwardly accuses K. of being too sensitive. After this, K. becomes very defensive as he did with the police at the very beginning of the novel when he is first arrested. K.’s behavior is almost like that of a spoiled child; a brat, if you will. When Ms. Montag and the captain are speaking to each other, he just leaves without saying anything because he thought they were not paying attention to him and that they were being exaggerative. But, this could be something that stems from the anxieties that K. obviously struggles with. K. begins to show distrust towards the others in this chapter and begins to believe that even the looks they give him are malicious. So, is K.’s behavior due to some sort of perceived self importance, social ineptness, or just general anxiety due to his trial? 

         Though the beginning paragraph of this reaction is more negative than the others I have written, I will hopefully be able to get myself out of my “Kafka rut”. It is slightly more difficult to read now being that it is at a much higher level than the other class book we are currently reading, The Kite Runner.