Since its original publication date in 1925, Franz Kafka's The Trial has resisted interpretation. At first glance, the seemingly simple and serial sequence of events in the novel does not pose any problems to the reader. Although the incidents involving Joseph K. are in themselves particularly strange and almost fantastical, the reader is able to follow them. However, in the penultimate chapter of the novel, the reader encounters an absolutely confusing story about a man's entry into the "Law". The chapter, and the story it contains, pose a problem for those who wish to ask "what is The Trial about?" While it seems reasonable to be able to extrapolate the “larger meaning” of the novel itself from a story contained within it, both parts of the novel resist analysis that results in a clear-cut conclusion. The story “Before the law”, the text of the discussion between the priest and K. in the chapter “In the cathedral”, is open to a wide range of interpretations and when faced with this story the reader and K. become frustrated at the lack of a solid and logical conclusion. This experience, however, is by no means isolated to this particular chapter; within the Process there is a systematic denial of definitive and unequivocal conclusions. Over the course of the novel the reader actively tries to reach a series of conclusions about the “meaning” of “Before the Law” and K.'s trial, while simultaneously seeking an illuminating connection between the two. In the end, however, Kafka's story leaves him with nothing concrete and, consequently, without a solid interpretation. “Before the Law” frustrates the reader not because it is particularly complicated, but because it appears to be simultaneously full of contradictions and paradoxes but, upon careful examination, no inconsistencies appear to be present. Although it comes across as a rather unsatisfying conclusion, “Before the Law” serves very well to summarize the problems readers associate with The Trial; there is no rhyme, reason or calculable projection of the end of K.'s court proceedings and, in the end, the significance of his innocence or guilt is completely suspended. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Many of the problems associated with interpretations of The Trial arise from the translation of the title of the work itself. The German title is Der Prozess, for the intuitive English reader, “the trial”. The differentiation between the two terms “trial” and “trial” speaks directly to the difficulty of understanding inherent in the novel. The trial, according to the nuanced English word, indicates both a judicial process, i.e. discovery of evidence, declarations by the parties and moderation by a judge, and finally an absolute judgment at the end of this process. As you can see, there is a clear contrast between the trial itself and what is expected at the end of it, a judgement. It is precisely this disconnect between what the reader is given and what the reader intuitively expects that exacerbates The Trial's problems. While it is (to put it mildly) strange to find courtrooms and stages inside apartment complexes and nymphomaniac women stalking defendants, the reader can handle it, and while these events are very strange, they are not deal breakers. What really disturbs the reader is the lack of a decision, the conspicuous absence of "definitions" that indicate K.'s acquittal (or even his innocence or guilt). K.'s acquittal seems, after speaking with Titorelli, almost impossible to obtain. According to the painter there are three ways one can progress through the justice system; acquittal, although it is the most resultdesired, is a historical anomaly. The painter says that K.'s innocence should guarantee his acquittal, however, and that the judges need not see anything other than evidence of this. K. however says that this is a contradiction; K.'s innocence seems (at least to him) entirely evident and he has yet to be acquitted. Furthermore, before the discussion of the acquittal, the painter spoke at length about how judges can be influenced to obtain a favorable verdict. “These contradictions are easily explained,” replies the painter. “We are talking about two different things here, what the Law says and what I have personally experienced; you must not confuse the two." (153) Although it seems true that there is no contradiction per se present here, the reader detects something a little disturbing; the Law, it seems, is not always respected – but who is the Law? Is it just those gigantic, long and complicated tomes that contain all the judicial precedents of the last hundred years, or is the Law the people who pass sentences and hold the courts in the same way that K. fails to solidly grasp the ethereal nature of the justice system, the reader cannot fully conclude who or what strictly composes the Law. This lack of resolution causes the shock associated with K.'s execution at the end of the novel and, although it is a kind of “final judgment.” ”, does not derive from any easily recognizable method of justice. For, in The Trial, there really is no such thing as justice; the reader encounters no notions of traditional, or at least rational, legal justification anywhere in the text. The reader's frustration inevitably comes to a head in the penultimate chapter, "In the Cathedral." At the point immediately preceding the introduction of the story “Before the Law”, the reader is aware that the novel is near the end. So far the reader has not been presented with anything even remotely resembling a final decision on K. and his status as a defendant; surely, the reader is assured, there will have to come some sort of epilogue that will clarify exactly what is happening in this book. Unfortunately, the story that seems to readily explain the content of The Trial only serves to perpetuate the ambiguous qualities of the novel itself. The story "Before the Law" is about a man's attempt to enter the "law". The story, however, never provides details about who is to blame for the man's inability to enter, and the reader is also never told what "the law" is. It seems that the identity of “the law” is perfectly obvious, but in line with the different translations of “der prozess”, “the law” does not necessarily imply justice and final decision. The “law,” then, is perhaps just a process that has no definitive conclusion (beneficial to the party or not), just like man's experience in his attempts to gain entry. As the discussion between the priest and K. shows, there are many ways to interpret the story. Initially K. is convinced that the man has been deceived: "the doorman passed on the decisive information only when it could no longer be useful to the man". (217) The priest, however, shows that the doorkeeper was not actually deceiving, but was only doing his duty by answering as many questions as he could. For the doorman to have deceived the man, says the priest, a contradiction must arise from the “two important statements” provided by the doorman; “'who cannot allow him admission now'; and the other: 'this entrance was intended solely for you'” (217). To the reader (and to K.), however, this does not seem satisfactory: both sides still think that the guardian has hidden important information that could have immediately allowed the man to enter justice or dissuaded him from wasting his life. waiting for the opportunity to enter. Thepriest goes on to discuss other opinions on the story; that it is actually the doorman who is deceived and that he is subordinate to the man, or that both are actually deceived. The priest, however, never commits to a single interpretation of the story; he is simply “indicating the various opinions that exist on the matter.”(218). However, he is quick to warn K. "not to pay too much attention to opinions", which, as the reader will surely have understood, is a particularly inappropriate warning. Why discuss opinions if K. didn't pay attention to them? In the course of the discussion, however, the priest provides two statements that are free from bias, that is, they do not tend to support any distinct interpretation of the text according to which it was the doorman or the man who was deceived. First of all, the priest specifies that "the commentators tell us: the correct understanding of an issue and the misunderstanding of it are not mutually exclusive". (219) Unfortunately, this statement is not touched upon by K. for the rest of the conversation and, although at first glance it seems to propose a contradiction, or at least a paradox, it is actually very useful for unpacking the story and the Trial. as a whole. The discussion between the priest and K. that follows the story is based on the assumption that a person (most likely the man, potentially the doorman) is being deceived. Although the priest has perhaps adequately explained K.'s initial reaction to the story, the idea of ​​deception gives rise to the dialogue that follows. The notion of deception implies a deceiver and someone who is deceived; K. thinks that it is the man who is deceived by the doorman, while the priest offers arguments in favor of the opposite. Both interpretations seem viable, but the real question is not who is being deceived, but whether there is any deception in the story. What at first glance appear to the reader and K. to be contradictions, such as "correct understanding and misunderstanding which are not mutually exclusive", in reality are not at all. Instead of the man or the doorman, it is the reader who is deceived by the proposition of sentences that initially seem like negations. At first, a contradiction is welcoming, because it carries with it a definite “one or the other” quality. Kafka, however, in keeping with the perplexing nature of the justice system that pervades the rest of the novel, systematically reveals the ambiguous nature of the ensuing discussion and of the story itself. To begin talking about the first of the "contradictions", it is better to define the words that have the most meaning, which in this case are "correct" and "misunderstanding". “Correct” implies an objective standard in which there is an issue The “misunderstanding,” however, is subjective: matter X can be misunderstood in various ways. Misunderstanding, however, does not directly imply inaccuracy; it just means that you have not understood matter X in the usual way. Perhaps even more so, one can perceive matter X completely backwards and find oneself in a paradox, but this absolutely does not exclude that understanding matter and therefore mutually exclusive). Furthermore, there appears to be a difference between the “correct understanding” and “misunderstanding” parts of speech; although the first appears to be a noun (due to the word "the"), the second sentence could be a noun or a verb, i.e. the process of misunderstanding. K., in his discussion with the priest, is engaged in a process of understanding (or misunderstanding) the story – however, due to the enormous number of possible interpretations available, it seems that he does notThere is such a thing as “correct understanding.” Or perhaps, even more, all interpretations of history are “the correct understanding” even if they arise from an obfuscation of the facts of history. In this way it seems that “Before the Law” does not resist any interpretation, as it provides fertile ground for myriads of analyses! The effect, however, is a reflection of the problem persisting throughout the rest of the novel. If every understanding is practicable, then there is no “this is wrong and this is right” and therefore the “correct” understanding can result from a total misunderstanding of the text. The priest's second statement concerns truth and necessity. After discussing the final interpretation of the story, according to which it is not possible to express any kind of judgment on the doorman's actions in his capacity as a servant of the "law", K. declares that to accept that particular opinion one must consider everything he has as true said the doorman. The priest replies: "No... you don't have to consider everything true, you just have to consider it necessary." (223). K., clearly discouraged, replies that it is "a depressing opinion... Lying has become a universal system". (223) The distinction between “truth” and “necessity” is unfortunate in that it leaves the reader with a third option that invades the generally accepted true/false dichotomy: not false. In the story “Before the Law,” the doorman does not provide the man with all the relevant information about the events that are happening or could happen in the story. Indeed, it seems to give only half of what would be pertinent to man; that “you can't enter now” could be followed by “but you can do so in five minutes or X time” or, even worse, “and you will never be able to enter in the future”. These are possible additions to the initial statement, and could be useful to the man – but the doorman does not utter them. Does this make him a liar, that is, a spreader of falsehoods? Or is he telling the truth, but by leaving something out – and by neglecting to say something, is he lying? Unfortunately, there is no way to get to either end of the truth, and so the gatekeeper's initial statement must be this third thing – not false. Once again, no definitive answer can be given to the doorman's statements to the man waiting to enter the law – K. and the priest cannot even agree on what should seem like an easy question; whether the doorman lies or not. We cannot reach concrete conclusions because, as K. says, "lying becomes a universal system"; there is no way to detect what is definitively true or false using evidentiary support because every aspect of the story generates multiple viable interpretations. The guardian, as the priest explains to K., must have contradicted himself in his two important statements in order to be able, strangely, to contradict himself and therefore deceive the man. The two statements of the doorman, "who can't let him in now" and "this entrance was reserved exclusively for you [the man]", at first sight seem incongruous because it doesn't seem to make sense that even an entrance made for only one person would be eternally closed to him. If indeed a contradiction emerged from these statements, then it would be clear that the guardian, intentionally or otherwise, deceived the man. But it's not so clear, because the gatekeeper says he can't let that man in “now”. The implication from this statement is that the man, although he was denied entry at that time, will be granted entry at a later time. The fact that he is ultimately not granted entry is troubling and seems, once again, to speak to the vagueness of what the gatekeeper says. The second statement made by the doorman concerns the properties attributed to the entrance. The guardian states at the end ofI say that "the entrance was intended exclusively for [the man]". When the reader is initially faced with this statement, he or she feels a slight anger that this information was withheld from the man. Even worse, the reader cannot understand why, when entry was intended for that man, he was never admitted; it seems impossible to decipher the reasons (if any?) why the man was never granted entry. However, there is something very clear in the conversation that takes place between the doorman and the man; when the man asks the gatekeeper why no one else has ever asked to be admitted “to the law,” the gatekeeper doesn't actually answer his question. Because of his response, we assume that the man was asking about this entrance and why no one else ever stopped by to ask to be allowed in, and the reader is met with a potentially sufficient response in that this particular entrance was only intended for this particular man . Here, once again, the reader is provided with a “not false”; it is not false that entry was reserved only for that man because the readers of the novel have no evidence to the contrary, but it does not seem necessarily true either, because the man was never admitted. Perhaps the guardian, having possibly omitted the last half of the previous sentence, forgot to finish this last statement – ​​that, perhaps, the entrance was intended only to test the man, or that this entrance was intended exclusively to the man to wait for eternity. These possibilities are extrapolations and are not individually supported by the text of the story, but their potential applicability only serves to show that “Before the Law” is a microcosm of the systematic lack of definiteness that pervades the rest of the novel. Furthermore, it is possible that the second important piece of information that the doorman gives to the man is just the result of the man practicing forensics for so many years. It is possible to imagine that, at the beginning of the events of the story, the man was in fact provided with all the information that the doorman could have communicated to him. From then on, it took the man's clear commitment to sitting and remaining near the entrance to demonstrate that he was ready to enter "the law," and perhaps he even did. In line with the erratic and unreasonable themes of the rest of The Trial, in which the courts appear to be a corrupt and illogical system, “the law” in the story may simply be a mirror of the frustrating process K. finds himself in throughout the novel. The man was subjected to some sort of trial without his knowledge and, after demonstrating his commitment to respecting the law, he was ultimately denied access; a truly unexpected outcome, but, once again, an outcome in keeping with the unpredictable and surprising nature of the “law,” the doorman, and the justice system of the novel. Another question worth asking is what would have happened if the man had simply ignored the gatekeeper and entered of his own free will. The doorman pronounces the last words of the story and, after saying that the entrance was reserved exclusively for that man, declares: "Now I'm going to close it". (217) Now, it seems, that the entrance was always open but the man was intimidated by the doorman; perhaps this was the “test” by which man was to be judged worthy of attaining “the law”. Since the story ends without the man responding to the guardian's statement, the reader must assume that the man ultimately fails to achieve his goal. The differentiation between the gatekeeper's presence at the gate and the (apparently) physically open entrance raises further questions about whether or not the gatekeeper lied to the man by telling him he could not enter. Nothing in the, 1998.