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Mmmm. I have always felt that the complexity of Kafka's prose is somewhat exaggerated, including at the expense of Fleur's insanity surrounding the image of the writer in the mass consciousness. When you first start reading a particular Kafka piece, the reader, thanks to the memes about the beetle man and “Love is a knife that I dig into myself” that are circulating on the Internet, has a premonition of encountering something incomprehensible, inexplicable, monstrous.
Opening the “Trial”, we jump from place to place and immediately meet the hero, who suddenly discovers that he has been arrested. And if at first he somehow resists mysterious strangers, then later the cycle of interrogations, streamlined phrases and stuffy rooms pulls Josef K. so deep that his attempts to defend himself look increasingly sluggish, confused, meaningless. Starting with the absurd – well, how can a person not know what they were arrested for? and how can the judicial system not give him a clear answer to this question? – the story also ends with it: Josef K. he dies on an improvised scaffold, without understanding what exactly is imputed to him.
Kafka's hero finds himself at the center of any person's worst nightmare: the events in the “Trial” are not controlled by all these similar bureaucrats, but by some mysterious force – terrible in its uncertainty. No one knows what will happen to it tomorrow, what process it will fall into, or how this process will end, Kafka tells us. He mercilessly puts into words our greatest fear – the fear of the unknown. Therefore, by the end of the novel, the reader is in such a state of mental turmoil that, as a rule, he no longer cares what Joseph K. really paid for with his life.
However, unlike Josef K., we can easily resist Kafka's dark genius by putting aside all our fears, rational and irrational, for the time being. And from this perspective, many interpretations of the novel open up. I will give only the most obvious ones.
First: “Process” is a metaphor for human life. It is no coincidence that the action of the novel begins on the birthday of Josef K., and the word “judgment “is consonant with the word”fate”. Unfortunately, I don't speak German, so I can't say that this peculiar paronymy persists in it. From birth to death, a person inevitably feels himself an object of judgment: he is judged by friends, enemies, society, and the entity called God. Probably, in the case of the “Trial”, we should first of all talk about the process of self-trial.
After all, Josef K. is not immediately sent to prison, but is allowed to live a relatively familiar life. He creates a prison around himself, constantly returning to the thought of the process, choking on an overwhelming sense of guilt. Guilt, according to Kafka, generally defines human existence. Yes, and consciousness-too. And then it's up to you to decide whether to view the death of Josef K. at the end of the book-as a punishment or as a reward, a release from torment.
On the other hand, Josef K. may indeed be a criminal. People tend to do bad things and refuse to take responsibility for them. It's hard to believe that by the age of thirty, the hero has not done anything wrong to anyone. However, we do not know the gravity of the crime committed by him: he could have killed a person, or he could have swatted a fly. Any action you take can be considered criminal, depending on who is trying you. Given the presence of biblical allusions in the novel, Kafka clearly hints at Christian dogmas here. This means that the “Process” is also a religious and philosophical work.
In addition, it should be remembered that “The Process” was written at the dawn of the First World War, when society had a premonition of global changes. Some individuals felt that they were involved in these changes, and considered themselves to be the ones making history. Josef K., on the other hand, is passive, a small man who sees far beyond his nose and understands in his heart of hearts that history is being made by ruthless, unruly masses. It is useless for a single person to resist this process.
And of course, the Russian reader who has encountered the native judicial system will inevitably recognize himself in Kafka's hero. Try sharing your dead grandmother's apartment in the center of Moscow with unexpected distant relatives who have suddenly appeared-you won't be so sad, well.