The Absurdity of Kafka's The Trial

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The Absurdity of Kafka's The Trial

As I read through Kafka's The Trial I was struck with a fusion of frustration, ubiquity, and the overt absurdity of the story at hand. The most surprising aspect of this conglomeration of feelings was that beyond my overriding reaction of confusion there was and undeniable sense of understanding. As I explored this paradoxical juxtapositioning I came to realize that my relation to this seemingly nonsensical accumulation of conflicting ideas was that I, or rather we as humans are exposed to the bearucratic absurdities illustrated so diligently by Kafka in our every day life, and through no fault but our society, history, or cultures effect on our lives. Once I had established this I could then be able to synthesize the alliteration of the absurd that Kafka presents from the examples that we are faced with in our lives.

Franz Kafka's The Trial is a fictional account of a man who is indicted to a crime that in all actuality has not occurred, or if it has Josef K. (the stories main character) has was unaware that his actions, if their were any, were against the law. One morning Josef K. wakes up to find a team of "officials" in his boarding house. He is told that he cannot leave his house until the examining magistrate speaks with him. These officials then proceed to eat; his breakfast, invade another boarders' room and is told that there is a trial being brought against him. There is no explanation of the charges at hand and no clear delineation of whom, how, or what this trial is about. After a brief account with the examining magistrate he is told to arrive at the courthouse the following Sunday. Herr. K proceeds to this courthouse of sorts the next Sunday to be confronted by a ramshack...

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...presents, be it that most situations are of a more realistic nature.

By the time I finished The Trial I had undergone a total revision of my perception of Kafka's use of the absurd. At first I was hampered by the excessive use of erroneous alliteration and was unable to decipher the motivation behind such baseless inconsistencies, but by the conclusion of the novel I was struck with Kafka's ingenious exposé of the true paradoxical correlation between sagacity and the utterly absurd. Through tact and literary manipulation the deliverance of such a transformation was truly articulated and implied in as such away as to completely envelop and situate Kafka's audience in the trials and tribulations of Herr.K's tragic experience, the affect being that of direct relation and therefore uniting the illogicality of the absurd with the irony that was twisted from the absurd.

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