One of the most struggling things in reading this book is figuring out what “role” I’m really supposed to play. The text is confusing and strange, and I’m left feeling just as bewildered about The Trial as K. is about.. well, the trial. In that way, our first readerly role would be in the position of K. himself. We have no idea what’s going on or what the world we’re entering into is like, only that this strange arrest has been placed onto a man named Joseph K., and everyone else in the world seems to think it’s nothing out of the ordinary.
The nature of this novel makes it very hard to “submit” to the text. However, the only way you can get through it is if you do just that. There is a clear parallel here with how K. must act; he resists the authority that’s telling him what to do without giving any explanation, but he has no choice but to go along with what he’s told to do. As the story progresses, K. gets more and more weary at the workings of his trial, and it starts to take a toll on him emotionally and physically— and at that point, we readers are right there along with him. Even the structure of the words on the page itself, arranged in large blocks of continuous text with little to no paragraph breaks or breaks for dialogue (whether initially formatted that way or not) which make the pages that much more daunting and confusing. It would seem that the ideal narrative audience for this book is someone who is extremely well at adapting to this kind of offensively inaccessible language. And I’m pretty sure that person doesn’t really exist.
However, in this same vein maybe I am just having difficulty in finding a submissive readerly role that I can actually subscribe to. I went into reading this book with the advice to “let it be weird”, so I was already expecting it to be difficult to get into. This could be acting as a barrier to me; it’s easier to fall into the idea that this book is intrinsically unreachable instead of constructing the reader who can reach it. Assuming that it’s going to be impossible to be the reader the text wants me to be sort of ensures that it will be.
Provided that’s true, the authorial audience (as in, the audience Kafka had in mind while writing this book) would have to be someone who WOULD get lost in the working of this world and the plot of this book, because we’re meant to be just as lost, exhausted, and hopeless as K. is. This book is commentating on this kind of extreme corruption, this dystopian system of unwritten rules and regulations that exploit the innocent for inconceivable reasons.
The message of this book seems to fall pretty deeply in line with the general thought of existential nihilism— as I understand it, the idea that nothing we do matters and that we’ll all be subjected to powers completely beyond our control until we die, so
there’s no point in trying to change our fate because we are insignificant to the workings of the universe. Or something like that.
In the end of the novel (which by the way, Kafka never truly “finished”, which may explain some things), Joseph K. is taken away by anonymous officers of the court and brutally stabbed in the heart. He dies, alone, still searching for help and for answers. K.’s last words are a shocked exclamation about his execution; “Like a dog!’ he said: it was as if he meant the shame of it to outlive him” (211). No matter what K. did, we as readers are left with the feeling that this is the fate that would have become of him. As Amanda correctly predicted in the second blog for this book, this story absolutely did not have a happy ending for Joseph K.
As a final note, I want to bring up the question of who the strange figure is meant to be at the end of the novel, as K. is approaching his death. The narrator describes it as “a human figure, faint and insubstantial” and then goes on to ask, as if in K.’s mind, “Who was it? A friend? A good man? Someone who wanted to help?” (210). In my mind, the unidentifiable person could symbolize the reader: in the distance, potentially wishing to assist K. for we know he was wronged, but unable to do anything at all.
How Writers Read... 
I couldn’t help but think of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech called “This is Water” while reading your blog post, Cayla. I wish I could figure out why and I’ve been looking up different schools of philosophy trying to make one fit. But that’s not really my area. Anyway, this speech kind of goes on about the idea that everything we experience is filtered through our own perspective and it’s hard, if not impossible (in real life) to successfully make your way into someone else’s shoes. I think that’s why this book was so difficult for me. It treaded this line between being way too real and so fantasy like that I couldn’t submit to either reading.
I guess what I’m saying is that K’s experience is only his own and we can’t really get there. We experience K’s experience through our own perspective, whether that is reading on in disbelief or questioning K’s (Kafka’s???) choices and actions.
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In James Phelan’s Living to Tell About It he talks about Lyric progression and explains that “our judgements and emotions focus not on characters choices and what they mean for what does and does not happen to them but rather on the progressive revelation of characters and their static situations” (p.12). The reader’s understanding of K. in The Trial is formed by his static situation of being subject to the court, in which he gains piecemeal revelations regarding this situation. The reader does not know what choice occured to create his supposed guilt in which he is arrested. Therefore we can not base our judgements on that, but rather gaining meaning from his progressive revelations.
In response to who the person at the end might represent, I think it may be hope, or rather meaning to his end. There was a light, a open window, and a stretched out hand. Each of these things has a hopeful connotation to it. But what would that hope, or meaning be? K. ponders is it “a good man”, “someone who wanted to help”(p.210)? Perhaps it’s hope for humanity in general, he last words are “like a dog” suggesting an inhumane death, and lack of respect for the significance of humanity. That may be the point though, concerning Nihilism. His conclusion would then be that there was no meaning to his existence and the world he lived in, which shames his behavior to have thought there was such meaning, “it was if he wanted the shame of it to outlive him”(p.211). Even though this is K.’s conclusion, I feel Kafka (if my theory is correct) leaves that idea of meaning as a possibility even though K. sees it as “faint and insubstantial”(p.210). In relation to these thoughts I had a quote pop into my head by C.S. Lewis “If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning”. Perhaps this idea of meaning is at the root of that possibility presented.
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Cayla, I think you might be onto something with the unknown figure being the reader, though I wouldn’t say that we wanted to help him. As I read through this story, I grew more and more to dislike K, as he felt like he was above everyone and everything in his life. It made me wonder why would someone ever write someone so dislikable as the protagonist? When his death arrived, there was a part of me that wanted to believe that this was some sort of poetic justice. “Those with a wicked heart get what they deserve,” or something like that. But that’s when I read your post, and how this ending is centered towards existential nihilism. In this case, it would make sense. A man who had a seemingly good life, only to die on the street ‘like a dog,’ would be the ideal way for it to end. It shows that no matter how successful you are, we could all die in the street.
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