Well, the novel has a classic Kafka ending; abrupt and a lot of unanswered questions. While I was reading the final chapter, I could see that even up until his death, it seemed as though K. was trying his best to overcome the “state”. He thinks about how he will act in his final moments, saying that he wants to keep his mind “calm and analytical to the last”. I believe that this is K.’s way of trying to show his government that they had not gotten the best of him, he was still in tact as a person.
On the same page, K. says to the two men walking with him, “I didn’t really want to stop”. K. is then described as “shamed” because the two men have nothing to say to this, they just accept it. This also sounds like another subtle, almost passive aggressive, attempt by K. to remind the “state” that he still has something left in him. K.’s feeling ashamed comes off to me as him being upset that his comment did not strike a nerve with the two men. It was almost like he wanted them to be upset that he somehow found some sick “enjoyment” out of it all.
Interestingly enough, though, my edition of the book included a timeline of Kafka’s life. Curious to see if I could find any connections between K. and Kafka’s life, I read over it. The timeline mentions Kafka observing the Eleventh Zionist Congress in Vienna during the year 1913. The Zionist movement involved Jewish people wanting to secure what they saw as their rightful place in Palestine. However, it can still be seen today that the conflict involving the Jewish people and Palestine is still prevalent. I wonder if Kafka derived the government in The Trial from the Palestinian government during his time. He and his family were also subject to antisemitism while living in Prague. This has me speculating as to whether Kafka was predisposed to think of governments as overly oppressive since as a Jew, they had not shown to be otherwise.
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