I just finished reading it and I wanted to know how people interpreted it. In the end I ended up thinking "The Trial" is just living life itself and the justice system is the world or the universe. K. is accused of being guilty of a crime he doesn't even know he committed, the same way we are all condemned to live life without knowing why. The Court or the justice system itself is described so chaotically with so many contradictions that the reader can't help but feel overwhelmed at trying to understand it all, just like K. The same way the universe or the world or universe can often seem so big and complex and can so easily overwhelm us. I think the door keeper story is basically a big allegory to how we view God and Heaven and religion. The Law is religion, the doorkeeper is the servant of religion, the door itself is the door that leads to heaven and the man is us. I might be way way way way off but I just wanted to get that out there. What do you all think? I think it's kinda lazy to interpret this book simply as a critique of bureaucracy and the justice system itself.
I've never read anything of Kafka and would like to get into his works. Any suggestions as to where I should start and continue?
Thanks :)
Herewith my Tale Of Woe:Dec 1: Ordered $50 watch from Timex as Christmas present for nephewDec 8: USPS notifies that it is Out For Delivery - estimated delivery time updated throughout the day. At 4pm I leave the house to run some errands, return at 4.30pm. See notification that package has been delivered. Check mailbox: nothing. I figure that it will be delivered tomorrow - sometimes this happens, since USPS offers a "deliver by" date to its customers - to avoid getting dinged they say something was delivered when it really wasn't.Dec 9: Still nothing. Open a Missing Mail ticket with USPS.Dec 10: Receive a "first contact" email from USPS.Dec 18: Nothing further from USPS, so I go to the local post office. "You'll have to call customer service". None of the phone numbers they gave me, or the main number for the post office, ever pick up.Dec 23: Go to post office again to follow up. "You've left it too late to track this down. The carrier says that he put it in a box at the front of the building" (fwiw I live in an apt bldg). There is no box at the front of the building, only mailboxes inside the vestibule, that you need to pass 2 locked front doors to get to. I tell them that I opened a Missing Mail case - "Oh, no - that's the wrong thing to do - you should have come here immediately." I ask about the Google application that records the coordinates of the delivery. "Give us your phone number and email address and someone will be in touch."Dec 27: Still nothing. Call main USPS number. Lovely lady (Ariel) takes the call. "Well I don't know why your post office told you this - you should open a Missing Mail ticket. I'll reopen the ticket for you."Dec 28: Nothing from USPS. Go to the Post Office again. "You've left it too late, no-one is going to remember where this package was delivered to." Can I get the delivery coordinates? "Leave your contact details, maybe someone will be in touch."Dec 29: Email from customer service mgr at Post Office: "Our records show it was delivered to the right location. You'll have to report the package stolen to the police, and contact the seller for a refund." Respond: please can you send me the delivery coordinates. Nothing. Call the number for the customer service mgr. There is no reply - no voicemail, nothing.
NYPD won't investigate a stolen mail allegation without proof that it was delivered to a specific address, and Timex won't refund me unless USPS confirms that the package was misdelivered.
Edit: 3.25pm ET 12/29 - I
... keep reading on reddit ➡Als ich eines morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand ich mich in meinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Schriftsteller verwandelt. Was nun?
In spite of everything writing does one good, I’m calmer than I was two hours ago with your letter outside on the deck-chair. While I lay there, a yard in front of me a beetle fell on its back and was desperate, couldn’t get up again, I would have liked to have helped it, it would have been so easy, one step and one little push would have done it, but I forgot it over your letter, nor could I get up. Only a lizard made me conscious once more of life around me, its path led over the beetle which was already quite still, thus – I told myself – it hadn’t been an accident but a death-struggle, the rare spectacle of natural animal-death; but on slithering over it the lizard had turned it right side up and, though it continued to lie dead-still for a while, it then suddenly ran up the wall of the house as though nothing had happened. Somehow this probably restored to me also a little of my courage, I got up, drank some milk and wrote to you.
— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena, trans. Tania and James Stern (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), p. 25
Am I the only one who sees it?
What books made you feel that way?
It's a great book. The first out of three chapters is a bit confusing (especially if you read it in foreign language like me) but don't get daunted by it, it gets better in the following two chapters. The last one is really emotional. I was on the edge of crying the whole time while reading it.
I looked at this book from two somewhat different angles.
The first is how society and government treat old people, not suitable to work. This would be quite topical during the rise of capitalism with basically no social welfare. Looking at it this way made me appreciate the way, my grandparents or disabled members of family are able to live, without the terrible struggles that Gregor went through.
The other view (and this part may contain some spoilers, so beware), I situated myself in the people surrounding Gregor, instead of Gregor himself.
My father has diceased when I was 14, being in hospital for a month, while the last week he was in coma as well. I couldn't stop myself from thinking, what if we treated him the same way as Gregor's family treated Gregor during his last moments. I even shed a few tears.
To sum it up, great book, worth reading, 9.85/10 would recommend (the 1.5% are the people that just don't handle being emotional well)
This craving that I almost always have, when for once I feel my stomach is healthy, to heap up in me notions of terrible deeds of daring wit food. I especially satisfy this craving in front of pork butchers. If I see a sausage that is labelled as an old, hard sausage, I bite into it in my imagination with all my teeth and swallow quickly, regularly, and thoughtlessly, like a machine. The despair that this act, even in the imagination, has as its immediate result, increase my haste. I shove the long slabs of rib meat unbitten into my mouth, and then pull them out again from behind, tearing through stomach and intestines. I eat dirty delicatessen stores completely empty. Cram myself with herrings, pickles, and all the bad, old, sharp food. Bonbons are poured into me like hail from their tin boxes. I enjoy in this way not only my healthy condition but also a suffering that is without pain and can pass at once.
Arkadaşlar ilk defa Dönüşüm kitabını okuyorum. Ne diyebilirim ki Gregor Samsa bildiğiniz Türk gençliğinin bu garabet zamanda yaşadıklarını özetliyor gibi. Kitabı okurken insanın ülkede olan bitenler göz önüne alındığında zaten bozulan psikolojisi daha da karamsar bir hava ile yerle bir oluyor. Ortalama bir Türk evinde yaşanan gerilimleri bu kitapta bulmak insanı oldukça şaşırtıyor. Kitabı bir de bu bakış açısıyla okumanızı tavsiye edebilirim. Ne de olsa bu rezil ortamın ağırlığı hepimizi bir böcekmişçesine ezmiyor mu?
“I have continually an invocation in my ear, “Were you to come, invisible judgment.”
I don't think people are really ready to confront the world without a sense of knowing when they are in such an absurd and no-win situation so as to retreat.
