Kafka Was Right: We are All on Trial Now

Had one of those mornings when everything is to be off? The sun is poking through the blinds as it did yesterday; your coffee is whistling like it used to, and the noise outside the window is still the old hum, the same. But within, there is a great dreadful buzz. Perhaps it is an impending deadline, a confrontation which you are sure you have to have with your boss or perhaps it is just that empty feeling of emptiness which makes the script of life meaningless. You drink the drink stuff full of hope that it will sink the feeling.

Imagine that now fear hath eyes and voice. When you are still in robe, you get two strangers in your bedroom without any siren or noise. One of them tells him, as cold soda says, You are under arrest. No reason, no explanation. This is the wake-up call of Franz Kafka in his work The Trial: the trial of Joseph K. It strikes close since it is not a fantasy, it is the fear we all have in fueling our egos. It is the thought that goes through our minds that, what happens is, what happens is that I will be unaware of the rules, and what happens is that the world is out to get me. It is one thing as Kafka writes: Somebody must have accused Joseph K, because one morning, having done nothing bad, he was taken into custody.

Imagine that Joseph K, is an ordinary employee of the bank, and he awakes to such a nightmare. He did not commit a law, tax evasion by no means, he did not commit any wrong. There is nothing against me, I know, and what is it? he asks, and they only shrug. The court is secreted somewhere, its laws are password, and nobody knows. It is like getting a rejection email when you had superb interview, they said, it does not match our requirements with no description and request. Or going in to get insured after an accident, and being turned down on the grounds of some insider clause in some minute print that you have never read. We all have come to diffuse that invisible wall.

The trial of Joseph immediately is set in a dingy attic, but in a run down tenement full people staring with sandwiches at it like it were a horrible recital at the community theater. The examiner wibbles on about the Law, but when K. complains, I do not know this law, and even as much as I do know it, I should have no purpose in owning it, they treat him just like he had touched a priest. He is called to a meeting, and then reprimanded over being late to just nothing. Every next step is meaningless. You remember when your records were lost in the office of a doctor, or your promotion request went unmet? Kafka presents not only a system destroyed, but one that, just to prove their own sanity, comes to your mind.

However, what draws the reader, page after page, is that Joseph K. is us. No perfect hero battling a dragon, he switches between arrogant and pathetic. He is holding on to a down-the-line lawyer, who promises to go the distance, or to a painter acquaintance, with contacts, who can open the doors of judges, the same way we are all trying to connect with that one LinkedIn friend who assures that he can close the case. “I’m not guilty,” K, snaps. It is a minimum violation, a little violation, a little thing of that kind, a guard grumbles somewhere, yet nothing to it. “I’m not guilty,” K. insists again. “It’s a misunderstanding”. And in the event it is a mistake, how am I to be guilty of that? That punch in the stomach we say when life throws a parking ticket down our throats, or a college email informing us that we have been unfairly returned to well-known college saying, We regret to inform you.

And the real heart test? The silent grime of persevering. K. has not given up, he shuffles in that wrong attic, buttoning his shirt on any Tuesday. He goes to the bank and through documents, twists the lead to midnight. Certainly, somebody must have defamed Joseph, as one morning without committing anything really wrong, he was arrested, that first line sends the chills you through, but his perseverance is the fire. Similar to you, calling customer service 5th time, with a fake charge, and you are aware that it is going to be hold music and lies. Or coming to a parent-teacher evening with your kid saying he or she is not even worried. Kafka hits the nail on the head: an unlimited hope does exist, but not ours. Yet K. scratches for it anyway. We are also like that-undoing the 10th fail, a second side hustle.

Then the end hits hard, and Hollywood does not save it. Two goons hold him with lightning rope in an unfertile quarry. Gods like a dog! he wonders as the knife slips together. Explain nothing, show mercy nothing-just die. At times life is like this: no pretty bows to injustices. You receive your eviction notice in the middle of the pandemic, or you get the promotion to the nephew of the boss. The trial? It is not about winning, but the damn living stumbling across those interminable corridors, sore in the feet, screaming Why? in an empty space.

It does not mend your wits to read *The Trial; it makes you feel K. The ceiling joists in the attic crowd are front-row. Your throat strangles after authorities who ghost like ghosts. As you bring the book to a close, the silence is revealed to be roaring. It is not dusty old Prague but it is your inbox at 2 a.m., the DMV queue from hell, that fight with your family when nobody listens to you, the questions that keep you up all night.

The mazes of life, with Kafka and eternity, have no faces: machine-like algorithms deem you dead at work, a form consumes your soul, mornings out of dread, the coffee running down the African face. But we walk them anyway. We grind the beans. Dial the number. Hug our people. Build our crap. Shout our queries into the dark. That stubborn shuffle? It is not changing the losing it is the wild crazy throb of humanity. So pick up to the trial, drown, and enter with K. the battle. Your crazy maze is upon us-then what shall you do?

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Written by Sadat Rahman