Kafka

Surrealist author Franz Kafka’s "The Trial" and 20th Century Philosophy/Psychology Kafka's The Trial: Conveying Modern Ideologies....             By the dawning of the twentieth century, a multitude of emerging scientific and philosophical ideologies were threatening to undermine the previously assumed solidity of rationality in everyday life. Thinkers were beginning to take up a brave exploration of the inner world of the mind with all of its irrational and, occasionally, frightening ramifications. It was within such an atmosphere that Franz Kafka, a Jewish employee at an insurance company, drafted his book, The Trial, a frightening look at the life of a man living under the pretext of anonymous guilt in a seemingly topsy-turvy world (Kafka, 268).             Though a piece of fiction, Kafka's work deals extensively with many of the predominant topics of scientists and philosophers contemporaneous with himself. In The Trial, Kafka presents readers with an absurd and surreal world prior to the cultural recognition in theatre and art of the later forms of "absurdism" and "surrealism." As perhaps two of the most widely recognized and influential cultural movements to result from the currents of thought surfacing around the turn of the century, it might be more correct to ally Kafka with the forefathers of these ideologies, namely "existentialist" philosophy and "psychoanalysis." It was Kafka's gift to be able to present the reader with the results of an application of these theoretical systems to everyday life, as in The Trial.             Prior to the turn of the century, artists and philosophers had left behind the rigidly structured, enlightenment-oriented ideals of Neo-classicism in favor of the emotionally-charged, subjectively-oriented Romantic movement around the beginning of the nineteenth century. Though this move towards subjectivity and exploration of the inner self took hold of the art world first (with painters and poets such as William Blake, Henry Fuseli, Francisco de Goya, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, etc.), science and philosophy joined in soon enough in the guise of the aforementioned existentialist and psychoanalytical developments. What this major shift from the objective to the subjective dimensions of reality entailed was a check on the validity and/or universality of rationality and logic, the crowning achievements of the enlightenment period.             Throughout Kafka's novel, there can be seen a number of parallels to the thoughts of the existentialists' forefather, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche, responsible for diagnosing the apparent loss (or "death") of God within the increasingly decadent atmosphere of late nineteenth century Europe, called into question those facets of reality considered to be sacred during God's "lifetime" (Nietzsche, 124). Insisting on a thorough disposal of all ramifications of God's "existence" in the wake of his "death," (including the Judaeo-Christian system of ethics and all residual claims of value and purpose) Nietzsche lays the groundwork for the "modern" mentality, or what Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus would later come to identify as the "absurd" condition of life wherein nothing is sacred or rational and uncertainty reigns supreme.             It takes little attention to detect discreet traces of this sort of existentialist mentality throughout The Trial. While it is known for sure that Kafka read Soren Kierkegaard's eminently existentialist works, such clear confirmation of familiarity with Nietzsche is only to be speculated upon (Hubben, 152). Nevertheless, the reader is offered a fairly comprehensively existentialist view of the world through the eyes of K, the main character of Kafka's novel. K.'s continual drifting from one place or appointment to another, his failure to fully comprehend the apparent complexity and sometimes paradoxical nature of the governing body as well as of his own actions, and his increasing sense of anxiety (considered to be a stipulation of modern existence by Jean Paul Sartre) are all rather successful applications of the existentialist and/or absurdist view that aid in painting the unnerving and disoriented picture of life presented throughout the novel.             As the trial K is undergoing "progresses", and it becomes clear that an end is not in sight, though he (and, presumably, most other convicted trespassers) continues through with it as though progress and finality are actualities, a clear correspondence between Kafka's novel and Albert Camus' philosophical speculations published some twenty years afterwards under the title of "The Myth of Sissyphus" may be easily detected. In Camus' essay, it is decided that man should continue through with the burden of life's psychological tortures and irrationalities although no eternal reward is offered (Camus, 123).             The other major strain of thought that I find resounding throughout Kafka's novel, psychoanalysis, deals thoroughly with the analysis of dreams in order to gain insight into the workings of the unconscious mind which is seen as the true (though indiscreet) "mover" in the sense of psychic life. I found that Kafka's repeated emphasis upon beds (essentially, the site of creation for dreams and unconscious insight), particularly beds that are too big for the room housing them, may be taken as a (conscious or unconscious) symbolic testament to the prevalence of dream-like activity within the novel. The pervasiveness of the dream-like quality of Kafka's novel is, to me, too obvious to require specific notification though two examples readily extend their services in rendering solid evidence. For one, the scene where K appears for his first court meeting in the room crowded with men divided into "left" and "right" sections echoes a common theme in the work of Carl Jung, the industrious pupil of Sigmund Freud. Throughout his accounts of dream analyses, Jung repeatedly points out the significance of left and right divisions in dreams, one side representing the conscious, the other the unconscious mind (Jung, 182). This left/right division is brought up again in a later scene where Kafka states, "…the defendant should always be prepared,…never be looking blankly to the right when a judge was standing on his left…" (Kafka, 164). The fact that such a usually-overlooked spatial distinction is treated with special attention twice in the novel signifies, to me, some importance for the author that he may not have been aware of himself. Also in reference to Kafka's ability to pierce the surface of the unconscious mind is his repeated references to temporal dilation within the court system (where nothing ever really seems to make much progress and history, in the form of past verdicts, is forgotten, lost, or destroyed) as well as the other strikingly dream-like scene depicting K. opening the door to his office closet and seeing the men still receiving their flogging after the passage of a day. These instances of time distortion correspond with the theories of Freud in that he assigned a sort of "timeless" quality to the contents of the unconscious mind that allows for things that were frightening or arousing as a child to frighten or arouse us now, etc. After drawing a correlation between the "timeless" state of Nirvana and the unconscious mind, Dr. Norman O. Brown, an academic descendent of Freud, states, "The abolition of history, or the Sabbath of Eternity…is the attainment of Nirvana" (Brown, 97). This is a testament to Kafka's insight (intentional or unintentional) into the unconscious mind instanced by his repeated insistence upon the legal system's disregard for past verdicts and the possibility of definite progress. Aside from his hints at ideological movements that would, shortly after his death, become culturally-manifested forces, Kafka also touches on a number of other social developments occurring around his lifetime. For instance, traces of the "notable politics" of the mid-nineteenth, middle-class society can be found scattered throughout The Trial in numerous references to K.'s increased chances of success in the wake of seeking the help of influential people, from the woman being pursued by the student in the empty courtroom to the painter, among others. A simultaneous emphasis upon the importance of class distinction is seen here as well. To truly drive home to fact that this novel is based in modern times, a passing reference is made, on behalf of the painter, concerning the rarity of hereditarily-decided occupations, his being one. This statement is a testament to the definite disappearance of guilds and the emergence of the residual Protestant ethic of earthly success prior to Capitalistic business strategies. Aside from touching on contemporary issues, I found at least one instance of foreshadowing an ideology that was yet to develop in Kafka's time. Kafka's odd method of employing the males' job status, rather than their name, to refer to them bespeaks of the later philosophical development known as "phenomenology." Pioneered by thinkers like Husserl and Martin Heidegger, one of the main stipulations of phenomenology is that people tend to view and evaluate the elements of the world insofar as they are useful for accomplishing some task (Melchert, 665). Also, by referring to Mr. Huld, for example, as "the lawyer," a dehumanizing anonymity and insignificance is attached to him, not unlike those conditions of the "new" workplace criticized by such social commentators as Karl Marx and Upton Sinclair. The women in The Trial, though they retain the significance of their names in referencing them (much more so than the men anyhow), are seen as the least human in that they are depicted largely as creatures of sexual satisfaction for men. In conclusion, the ideologically historical significance of Franz Kafka's The Trial can hardly be overestimated. From dealing with and fleshing out topics of his own time to setting the groundwork for future theoretical, social, psychological, and political movements, it is clear that Kafka bore a heavy burden in conducting the production of this novel. Written in a stylized, though fairly straight-forward (particularly considering the bulk of Eastern European, mainly German, writing styles at this time period as quite the contrary) manner, this book makes complex ideas open to casual readers and it can hardly be doubted that nearly everyone would find some cause, from within the novel, by which they would feel compelled to more thoroughly examine the dynamics of their own life.