Maya's 4 Themes

Theme 1

Earlier on this year, the class read the short stories by Kafka. The material was explained through the “three pillars of society”: the church, the state, and family. Further down the curriculum, Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground presented the idea of how the underground man’s consciousness “rendered him incapable”. K., for the majority of The Trial, runs around in circles trying to figure out exactly what he can do to clear his name. However, the government of his country is organized in a haphazard and secretive manner where no one really seems to know what is going on. I believe it can be argued that in The Trial, it is the three pillars that have rendered the individual incapable. 

Theme 2 

In my edition of The Trial, a timeline of Kafka’s life was provided at the end of the book. It details the fact that Kafka was asked to take over his father’s business while living in Prague. This was when he had one of the few mental breakdowns he had and he supposedly considered suicide. Shortly after this event, he wrote his short story The Judgement where a young business man ends his life because he is told by his father that he will never amount to anything. I think it can be argued that if one were to look at a more in depth timeline of Kafka’s life, one could find where he drew inspiration for The Trial. 

Theme 3 

One of the ideas that was presented in the Kafka lecture was that inherent contradictions within the three pillars have those living under them predetermined to fail. When K. meets with the priest in the cathedral, he tells the story of a man giving the “doorman” everything he owns to pass through a gate, but he ends up just dying never having known what’s on the other side. This, to me, seems like a metaphor that Kafka uses to convey the message that we give all we can to comply with the rules of the institutions we live under, but they don’t really reciprocate. 

Theme 4 

The way the judicial system in Kafka’s The Trial operated was extremely confusing and convoluted. As stated earlier in the post, K. spends the majority of his time seeing what he can do to prove his innocence. K.’s extensive journey to understand the court system ultimately ends with his death and a next to nothing amount of knowledge about the judicial system. This can be an example of a certain quality that humans possess; an inexplicable need to understand everything.