Kafka must have been to Guantanamo

We don't yet have art and literature to help us understand what is going on in this all-new century. Thankfully, work from a previous period of fascism has aged well, and bears re-reading

by Matthew Burrows <mburrows@republic-news.org>

It goes without saying that Kafka's books, and especially his most well-known, The Trial, should be read only when you're not already feeling bleak, isolated, and utterly crushed. You will anyway, after ploughing through 194 pages of stifling, terrifying, nightmare-esque legalese-bound text (in this case, the original German version), chronicling the surreal trial of the story's main protagonist, Josef K.

Franz Kafka, a German-speaking middle-class Czech Jew, was born in Prague in 1883 and was the son of an overbearing workaholic salesman, Hermann. It was Hermann who, against his son's will, insisted Franz go into law, which he did most grudgingly and with a bitter taste in his mouth.

One cannot help but see this stamp of disrespect for the justice system throughout the whole book, which is wholly submerged in the belief that man is made for the law, when modern-day democratic impulses scream that it must be vice-versa.

Josef K. is a commercial banker of impeccable repute and stiff middle-class leaning, with prospects for promotion, but the opening line already seals his legal fate, when it states that "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning."

What follows the arrest is anything but what one would call due process. Josef K's life takes twists and turns, mostly for the worst, as the reader hangs on desperately to find out who the accusers are and what the alleged crime is.

Kafka's disdain for the cruelty of the system is hammered home time and time again, but one cannot dismiss this 80-year-old work as one-dimensional. One is never sure just how cruel the capricious system to whom K is subservient actually is, as so much of the layered bureaucracy is dark and hidden behind shadows.

As the main protagonist, K is immensely complicated himself, and carries the heavy neuroses of his author and puppet master, Kafka. Contact with women is riddled with sexual tension and laced with eroticism and sometimes even latent misogyny, though this is a gray area.

K has immense trouble seeking advice, even though much is offered from friends and relatives. His case seems to labour under the crushing weight of an old boys network in places full of stale air. But one can't help feel K's own staleness throughout, as he too does little to add weight to his innocence.

Without giving too much away, one must admit there is a truly ridiculous amount of bureaucracy that K is saddled with, but there is also a masochism and a clear lack of urgency at the right time for the man who is accused (angeklagt.) While Kafka could be making a general point about the absolute corruption of the law, he too makes a case that too often man caves in to it pathetically.

In the end, one is left with little sympathy for K's fate and too many unanswered questions about personal obligation and standing up for your rights and using your due process.

For example, does K try to fight and come up short, or is he simply acquiescent and an apologist in the face of an absolute injustice? Why does he make a mockery of his uncle, whose help would have made the most sense, but then take strange refuge in reckless women and untrustworthy lawyers and painters? And if Josef K was slandered, why do we never hear about him trying to make serious inquiries as to why this happened?

On the other hand, why is K never told what his rights are and what his actual crime is? Where is the accountability for a fair trial?

The only answer lies in the era, perhaps, as this book was written at a time when real or perceived injustice at the hands of the cold, dark state was every bit as real as when George Orwell dealt with it in his 1984 (written in 1948, and surely influenced by Kafka).

With both Kafka and Orwell dead for 130 years between them, their influence is still incredible. Kafka's works in particular are compelling yet psychologically twisted and never far from the neurotic. Protagonists are helpless and feeble, benighted, physically weak and powerless. Kafka himself was this: he died at age 40 of tuberculosis.

Josef K, despite his rank at the bank in The Trial, never instills anyone with any confidence that he will do much beyond act as puppet to both the justice system and cunning puppeteer, Franz Kafka.

In these days of Guantanamo Bay, post-9/11 global justice, this is an absolute must read that will leave you screaming WHY?

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