The painter with his artistic eye feels that there could be some truth in it. He feels he could paint several pictures based on those legends. He rules out a definite acquittal while listening to the painter. As he is listening, K. It is so suffocating that he wants to push the window open and gulp the fog outside. The painter continues his tale of the ostensible acquittal, which needs absolute involvement on the part of the accused whereas postponement would mean steady mental tension and strain.
The painter is so confident that he says he could draw up an affidavit of K. The text was handed down to him by his father and would never be questioned. He could than approach each of the judges. He even says he would guarantee his innocence to the judge who would accept it. He asserts that it would be more binding than a formal guarantee. The painter's eyes betray that the judge should not lay such a burden on him.
Every judge might not trust him. Some would like to see him in person. If the judge called him then there was some hope. The painter says that he would advise him as to the course of action he should take. Even if some judges do not support him he could collect enough support from others judges for the affidavit. He could then approach the judge who conducts the trial.
The accused would now have enough confidence, which is more important than the acquittal itself. He would then be free but then an ostensible acquittal also meant only provisional freedom. In a definite acquittal the documents pertaining to the arrest would be destroyed. In an ostensible acquittal the case is never closed. The documents are retained, the "dossier" makes the rounds when a official demands and a record of the acquitted only is attached.
He also says that he knows only the lower cadre of judges but they were empowered to grant only temporary acquittal. The highest court only had the power to grant a definite acquittal.
What is very significant is that there is a long interval between the ostensible acquitted and the rears. Sometimes there is just a gap of a few hours when the accused is free and then he is rearrested. But he could apply for a temporary acquittal. K makes him stop before he reveals anything more frightening.
The judges anticipate arrest. The ostensible acquittal leads to further arrests. This being unsuitable for K. Postponement implies that there is no further progress in the trial. The case stagnates. Kafka began writing in the closing years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, a time when Sigmund Freud emphasized the centrality of the sexual life in human development.
For a man who claimed to be under the lash of a tyrannical father, Kafka nevertheless lived at home until he was He insisted that his job stifled him, yet he never left it until compelled to by illness.
Perhaps for the same reason, he was unable to complete his novels: dreams, especially nightmares, want for artistic endings. Allegories should be short. Horses stare through windows into human habitations, an elderly bachelor is followed around his apartment by two bouncing balls—absurdity reigns amid terror.
When he once read the first chapter of The Trial aloud for an audience, Kafka laughed at the situation in which he had placed his main character. Kafka is credited with prophetic powers, because he predicted, through his novels The Trial and The Castle , the totalitarian regimes that arose after his death, especially that of the Soviet Union, with its arbitrary, insane, crushing—yes, Kafkaesque—bureaucratic apparatus for killing.
But today the stories of fatherly tyranny carry too strong an odor of the moribund doctrine of Sigmund Freud—the Oedipus complex and all that. Kafka reads like Freud fictionalized. However, they refuse to tell him what crime he is accused of. He is not thrown into prison pending his trial, but allowed to carry on with his day-to-day affairs until summoned by the Committee of Affairs. Next, he is ordered to appear at the court in person on Sunday, though he is not informed of the date of his hearing or the precise room in which it is to take place.
He tries to defend himself, pointing out the baselessness of the accusation against him, but this only riles the authorities further.
The judge then takes K. Then, things take an even more bizarre turn as K. They are being whipped by a man because of what K. He introduces his nephew to Herr Huld, a lawyer who is confined to his bed and looked after by a young nurse named Leni.
Leni seduces K, and when his uncle discovers that K. Realising that Huld is an unreliable advocate for his cause, K. Titorelli agrees to help him, but is aware that the process is not favourable to people and Josef K. The man waits by the door until the day of his death, when he asks the doorman why nobody else has tried to gain entry.
In a memorable scene, she presses her huge body against Rossmann, literally pinning him to the balcony railing while they watch a political demonstration on the streets. The scene reveals humans given over to their appetites:Onthe balcony, Brunelda pursues carnality; on the streets, the crowd pursues drunkenness. Though this scene is vividly delineated, it reminds the reader once again of the problem Kafka faces here: What has his protagonist to do with the gross bodily appetites which indeed appall him?
At the beginning of the uncompleted final chapter, Rossmann finds himself at the nature theater of Oklahoma. Had Kafka realized these intentions, this work would have been unique in his fiction for its promise of hope and transcendence.
The extant fragment, however, suggests that Kafka was deviating from his announced plan. The paradoxes continue: The welcoming angels blowing their horns are not angels, or even good musicians, and they are elevated above common humanity with the aid of ladders that can be seen through their gowns.
Rossmann does get a job, but again it is a lowly one, far from a profession. What are the charges? When Kafka speaks of the law, he means what the Chinese philosopher Laozi Laotzu called The Way—that style of living that conduces to right conduct and enlightenment.
Has K. He is certainly innocent of civil or criminal wrongdoing. A respected bank official, his conduct has been apparently irreproachable. Critics diverge in their efforts to understand the nature of the charge against him. According to Brod, K. A third argues that his crime lies in his suppression of his guilt. For yet another, K.
No easy answer emerges. Whether humanity is indeed guilty or is falsely accused by a divinity unable or unwilling to help it comprehend its own essence is never defending his innocence.
What sort of man is K.? Like most Kafka protagonists, he is a bachelor, uncommitted to others. He dwells in a rooming house, ignoring both his cousin, who lives in town, and his mother, who lodges in the country. His friends are mainly business associates; his lover, awoman visited once a week. If so, he could easily have been informed of that by any number of the officials he encounters. Moreover, K. Can the priest denounce him for bachelorhood? The Examining Magistrate or the painter Titorelli for womanizing?
The Magistrates for vanity? Lawyer Huld for placing his profession before his personal life? Rather, Joseph K. The best clue to understanding his situation is the guilt he only halfway acknowledges. Joseph K. Arrested in his own bedroom by intruders who offer to sell his clothing they confiscate his underwear , observed by a couple across the courtyard as well as by his landlady and three of his subordinates at the bank, K.
He has indeed awakened to a nightmare. What authority has this court? It is independent of the civil judiciary system; K. In fact, he discovers, he is being tried in an attic; most of the attics in the city, he learns, house divisions of this omnipresent bureaucracy. Very likely, Kafka is suggesting that most people are under indictment.
The hearing is alternately comic and maddening. At the outset, the judge mistakes the chief clerk of a bank for a house painter.
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