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MonkeyNotes-The Trial by Franz Kafka
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There is a double significance in K.'s reflections when he walks through, the poor hamlets of the court. The court's officials spend money on their private past times leaving the clerks with little money for their existence. The clerks in their various grades play with legalities like a game and follow its excitement for the game's sake. In seeking justice K. is seeking more than abstract justice. He wants inner peace. K. is mistaken in thinking the mighty magistrates in the portraits are powerful. This is his delusion - a mistaken reality. K.'s existence has a deeper significance in his bondage with the divine. Why should he be judged by these petty officials? But sadly, he forgets his place in the divine framework.

K. is deluded like the accused man begging even the flea in the doorkeepers fur cap. He tries to influence the court officials, the Advocate, the painter, but there is always an obstacle, K. represents the entire mass of humanity, which is deluded in history. K. accuses the doorkeeper in the legend as obstructing the moral or divine order of the world. But then like K. man has to live in the hope of the divine or else there is no hope for his survival. Though K. believes he can fight his case himself, the novel does not, not reflect his self-confidence. It is slowly getting eroded. When the priest says that law is necessary he is pointing to god as the final truth above human judgement.

When K. is arrested, there is a fear in his mind, shaking his worldly routine life. Fear is also an uncertain condition of the mind, which should draw him chosen to a higher spiritual law. It is his self-confidence and control over affairs in the world, which is shaken. He is seeking assurance from Frau Grubach by a definite opinion of his innocence.


So far he has not been particularly nice to women, not even to the cabaret dancer he visits on Saturday evenings. But now he seeks Fräulein Bürstner's friendship. He is less self assured less egotistic that Bürstner is only a little typist. She is his immediate neighbor but is now distant in relationship. He resents Fräulein Montag's acquaintance for her official school principal manner is an echo of his bachelor existence.

When K. is summoned to the court he visits the court because he wants to be freed of charges filed against him. In an allegorical manner he is also suddenly awakened by the call of god. When K. is warned that he has come take to court it is a reminder of the new earnestness in the turn that life has taken. It is a reminder of the constant presence of god's eye. He is mistaken for a painter. It also shows that it is his inner being which maters and not the outer definition of his existence. But his dogmatism does not free him form his guilt and accusation.

Women play an important role in K.'s attempts to free himself from his arrest. He is trying to desperately reach out and maintain his contact with existence as also escape from his loneliness. His relationship with Fräulein Bürstner is casual. So his arrest takes place in her strange room. It opens new pathways in his soul. His conscious life so far has been very superficial. Though he tries to make love to Bürstner it is against his will; again casual. He is incapable of understanding the "feminine soul". He cannot physically possess her as he could with the barmaid, Elsa.

Similarly he fights over the court attendant's wife. He tries to assert his ego and "manliness". But it is seen that he seems to be a man who cannot control his own life and is again the accused.

His relationship is with the third woman, Leni. His affair with Leni is not fully satisfying but he is the accused, uncertain of his future.

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MonkeyNotes-The Trial by Franz Kafka

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