discussion POINTS - the trial by franz kafka
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1. What is the significance of Josef K.’s name? Why doesn’t he have a full family name? Is “K.” a symbol for Kafka?
2. Who are the men who arrest and interrogate Josef K.? Are they policemen? What authority do they represent?
3. Why does Josef K. decide to “play along” with his arrest, even though the men who arrest him never show him any proof of their authority and he thinks it might be a “farce”?
4. Why does Frau Grubach question Frauelein Burstner’s morality? Why does this upset K.?
5. Why does K. “assault” Fraulein Burstner, a woman he hardly knows, lapping at her face like a “thirsty animal” and planting a long “vampire” kiss on her throat?
6. Why is it difficult for K. to arrive at his first inquiry? What were his impressions of the whole affair? What happens to the washerwoman during it?
7. When K. visits the court room the next Sunday, what does he learn from the washerwoman?
8. In chapter 5 of the novel K. finds the two guards who arrested him being tortured by a flogger in his bank’s junk room. Why are they being punished? Why does he want to help them? Why is the flogger in such strange clothing? How come he finds the exact same scene when he goes back there the next day?
9. What do you think of the swiftness with which K. and Leni develop an intimate relationship?
10. The second paragraph of chapter 7 describing K.’s conversations with his lawyer lasts for ten full pages (pp. 110-122) and is summed up by the words “In such and similar speeches the lawyer was inexhaustible.” What is the effect on K. and the reader of this interminable paragraph? Does K.’s trial seem endless? How do K.’s worries about his trial affect his work at the bank?
11. What relations does Titorelli the painter have to the Court and K.’s trial? How is this significant?
12. Titorelli is working on a portrait of a Court judge that has a dark figure in the background; he explains that the figure has been commissioned to represent “Justice and the goddess of Victory in one” (p. 145). What does this combination say about the nature of K.’s trial? What does it say about the nature of the judiciary system?
13. What did you think of the interaction between K., the lawyer, and Block? What distinguishes K. from Block?
14. What is the significance of the parable “Before the Law”?
15. What makes K.’s execution so horrific? K. thinks he dies “like a dog!” Why? Does the execution reflect badly on K. or on the Court? Whose side are you on? Does Kafka make it clear which side we should be on?
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1. “Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.”
2. “There’s been no mistake. [Our department] doesn’t seek out guilt among the general population, but, as the Law states, is attracted by guilt and has to send us guards out. That’s the Law.”
3. “Next time I come here," he said to himself, "I must either bring sweets with me to make them like me or a stick to hit them with.”
4. “I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”
5. “They're talking about things of which they don't have the slightest understanding, anyway. It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”
6. “From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
7. “Judgement does not come suddenly; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgement.”
8. “It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.”
9. “The court wants nothing from you. It receives you when you come and dismisses you when you go.”
10. “It would have been so pointless to kill himself that, even if he had wanted to, the pointlessness would have made him unable.”
11. “Like a dog!" he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.”