1 September 2021
The trial is a story of a man who is arrested without any specifying reason and has to manoeuvre the complex labyrinth of the judicial process in order to be acquitted. The main theme of the trial is how a complex social system with no practical returns slowly devolves and adversely effects not only the directly and indirectly associated people but also the very society it supposedly serves.
The judicial system is shown to be supported on the hardwork of all the judges and and lawyers. There is no doubt about the perseverence of the people employed by the judicial system. But the complicated and unscrutable nature of the proceedings makes the big picture of the work that they are doing incomprehensible even to the most experienced judges. The judges are so isolated by the sheer amount of unnecessary paperwork they are supposed to do that they cannot even agree on when the actual proceedings start. However, they still carry on with their work howsoever fruitless it mght be owing to the overarching importance of the work they do.
As a result of this unnecessary bureacracy, no practical work ever gets done. Because of the inherent lack of practicality, the whole ardous process lacks well motivated meaning and the judges slip off to depraved antics. This fuels the lack of sincereity on their part which further makes the work all the more futile.
The judicial system can arrest any person without specifying any reason and moreover can get away with without even specifying the details of how the proceedings would go on. All hope of having any questions is shattered as the system works on maintaining a clear hierarchy of workers where the lower level of workers that the arrested get to interact with have no idea about the reasoning of their work.
Moreover, the judiciary is shown to be all powerful and as a system that has no scope of self correcting. The court orders arrest by sniffing out the guilty from the crowd and not to judge whether that person is actually guilty or not. This gives the court an unbalanced level of sanctimony. Even though complete acquittal is possible on paper it never happens in reality. Cases can temporarily stop at partial acquittal where the defendant is given temporary respite from the proceedings. But any judge can at his behest start the process again rendering the trial to start once again. Another possibilty is that cases can be deferred that is restricted to the earlier stages. But this requires constant attention and hardwork on part of the defendant to sustain.
The lawyers do not help in getting acquittal for their clients but forever trap them in their sorry state as they go on carrying forward with the seemingly endless bureacracy of the judiciary.
As a result on this absurd all powerfulness of the legal system, the arrested lose their hope of getting acquitted and spend the rest of their lives navigating the various bureacratic challenges of the trial. The process is so convoluted that even the prospect of acquittal is unimaginable.
In the society everyone directly or indirectly is a part of the legal system. The only success that the system has had was to phlegmatically multiply it’s influence and reach on society. Hence, an arbitrary unchecked societal system goes on to assimilate the entire society in its claws without serving the very purpose it was supposed to and as a result robs countless people of their dignity.
In the end, K. dies and before dying utters the words “Like a dog”. This illustrates, how an innocent man was robed his dignity and was murdered by the very system which should have protected him.
Kafka’s the trial sheds light on how an impractical complex system if unrestrained in its power can spread it’s influence and easily violate human dignity.
A complex system like the judiciary should be regularly examined that it is functioning properly. Most importantly, there should be a way for it to self correct and then learn from the mistakes. The hierarchy of power should be made transparent and the information should be clearly available to the public.
It is very possible that legitimate institutions go awry maybe because of greed or incompetence. The public should be well educated to find out when that happens and have the freedom to take the necessary actions if the need be. Institutions should not be a complex punitive bureacratic machinery but one that exists in harmony with the people it serves.