17.2.2009
In what follows, I will extend my interpretation of The Trial,
working towards a more complete understanding of the novel. In earlier
posts I have kept close to the text and primarily analyzed the personality
of Josef K., the main protagonist, and the way he is portrayed in the
first chapter (parts 1,
2, 3 and 4). I will now continue by focusing on
one of the most dense and interesting passages of The Trial: the
story 'Vor dem Gesetz' ('Before the law'), and the surrounding dialogue
between K. and the chaplain, in the chapter 'Im Dom'. As before, I shall
refrain from bringing in a speculative interpretation framework prematurely.
We should look at what we can learn directly from the text first.
1) K. understands the story entirely under the assumption that it
is the tale of a deception; quite naturally, he thinks that it is the
doorkeeper who deceives the man from the country. (It is not really clear
what the deception is about, i.e. what the man from the country erroneously
believes, and how exactly that wrong belief was planted by the behavior of
the doorkeeper.) K. is primed towards this interpretation by the chaplain,
however; and as readers we are of course led into the same direction. The
priming takes place when the chaplain leads into his story with a reference
to K.'s 'Täuschung' about the court of his trial.
The German word 'täuschen', in a reflexive sense (i.e. 'sich
täuschen') means to err, to be mistaken. The chaplain tells K. that he
has a mistaken view of the court: "In dem Gericht täuschst Du Dich"
(292).[1] He then tells his story, with the introductory comment that it is
about this very mistake ("in den einleitenden Schriften zum Gesetz
heißt es von dieser Täuschung: [...]" 292, my emphasis).
But the noun, 'Täuschung', can also refer to an act of deception,
somebody's deliberate misleading someone else. (Actually, that is its most
prominent sense.) It is in this sense that K. takes 'diese Täuschung'
to be the main topic of the story: he sees the man from the country as the
victim of a deception by the doorkeeper. Clearly he also sees his own
predicament mirrored in the story, that is, he perceives an analogy between
the man from the country as victim of the doorkeeper's deceptive behavior
and himself as the victim of the behavior of the court (and perhaps the
lawyers, and others as well). So what was given to him as an illumination
of his own mistaken view of things (without necessarily implying that it
was the result of malicious acting on anybody's part) transforms in his
interpretation immediately into a confirmation of his supposed status as
a victim.
The chaplain is unable to correct this questionable move, although he
attempts to do so. He says: "Ich habe Dir die Geschichte im Wortlaut der
Schrift erzählt. Von Täuschung steht darin nichts." (295) But this
contradicts his own earlier statement regarding what the story is about:
"[...] heißt es von dieser Täuschung", and K. quickly preempts a
resolution of the ambiguity by confirming the equivocation: "Deine erste
Deutung war ganz richtig" (295) — then raising the new topic of the
doorkeeper's fulfillment of his duty, which leaves the confusion about the
'Täuschung' unresolved.
Strictly speaking, the situation is even more complicated here: there is
a difference between what a story is about on the one hand and what
a story might formulate explicitly on the other. Even if the text of the
story doesn't directly state any judgment about a deception, it might
express one by showing what goes on. In this case nobody in
the story, i.e. none of the characters and also not the narrator, will call
anything a deception, but the story as a whole would still be about
such a deception, by displaying one as happening. If the story were intended
thus, K. would be right. But it wasn't. The chaplain should have clarified
this by saying that the story wasn't about any deception at all, but about a
misperception, or an error of judgment. But he fails to bring out this
clarification, and thus allows the ensuing debate to be shaped by the
underlying assumption that it is deception that is the central topic.
(Later on, the chaplain continues on this unhappy path when he argues that
the doorkeeper might even be seen as the deceived one.)
We might ask ourselves, then, what K. and we are missing — what has
the story to tell us about K.'s misunderstanding of the court?
One clue can be found in the interchange preceding the doorkeeper story.
The remark that triggers the chaplain's telling of the story is K.'s
"Du bist eine Ausnahme unter allen, die zum Gericht gehören. Ich habe
mehr Vertrauen zu Dir als zu irgendjemandem von ihnen, soviele ich schon
kenne. Mit Dir kann ich offen reden." (292) This is an expression of trust,
or, by implication, an expression of distrust in the court. What is more:
K.'s behavior to the chaplain is in tune with this statement. He listens
to him, he accepts that his story might have some relevance to him, and
later on he even, uncharacteristically, accepts some of his exegetical
comments that differ from his own opinion (298). Again, quite the converse
is true of K.'s attitude towards pretty much everybody else in the text.
Presumably it is in this distrust, and perhaps K.'s generally low opinion
of everybody involved in the trial, his refusal to seriously engage with
anyone, which the chaplain thinks of as K.'s mistake. We'll have to see
in what sense the story depicts that mistake (as many have presumed
that the story must somehow mirror something that is central for the novel
as a whole), but certainly the story, and the fact of the chaplain telling
it, bring the mistake out by provoking a number of reactions from
K. One of those is what I have discussed so far, namely, K.'s seeing the
meaning of the story entirely in terms of deceptive behavior. I'll turn to
another one next.
(To be continued.)
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[1] All references to The Trial are made by page number
from the critical edition of Kafka's works: Franz Kafka,
Der Proceß, ed. Malcolm Pasley, Schriften. Tagebücher.
Kritische Ausgabe, eds. Jürgen Born et. al., Frankfurt a.M.:
Fischer 2002.
