Kafka And The Trial In The Horizon Of Law

During the 41 years in Kafka's life,there are not too many literary works left.He is unknown in his lifetime.His reputation,however,is rising rapidly after his death.There are only three novels in his life:Amerika,The Trial and The Castle and all of them are unfinished.The Trial,as a mature work of Kafka and the only one of three novels that has an ending,is apparently very important.For a long time,the study of The Trial seems contradictory:Although research methods and research vision are more innovative,the law which plays an important role in the text-narration and procedure has failed to get enough attention.In the research,the law,as the starting point of the narrative,has become the vaguest concept.On the one hand,it means a real entity;On the other hand,it's also regarded as a mysterious and elusive phenomenon.And the trial procedure,the basic framework of the novel,is generalized as a sign of the absurd world and the chaotic order just because its meaning is hard to unravel.Therefore,the textual analysis is only limited to the introduction of the plot.The paper will take The Trial as the core research text,combined with The Judgment,The Knock at the Manor Gate,and In the Penal Colony and The Refusal,revealing the significance of law in Kafka's writings.At the same time,the paper will draw on the research fruit of "law and literature" movement,started in 1970s of American and later spreading to the world,to analyze the meaning of the law in The Trial,how "law"gives the defendant's embarrassing identity and puts him in a dilemma of guilt pending,and why he can't enter the door of the law on the basis of close reading.Undoubtedly,"Law" plays a dual role in the text at the same time:the metaphor of the illiberality and the sign of the hope.The former is invading K's living space through the power of lower court;the latter endows a series of actions of K with sublime meaning through the higher court,never appeared in the text.Kafka loves writing in his lifelong time but lives under the shadow of his father."Law" in The Trial has some similarities with Kafka's patriarchy.The paper believes that by using the criminal law as a framework,Kafka carefully constructs a seemingly bizarre case.Techniques such as the exaggeration,deformation and parody of the reality are employed to display human's absurd situation and living circumstances under the background of modem society.As Auden has said:"Kafka is important to us,because his predicament is the predicament of modern man".Kafka's The Trial describes a seemingly absurd case,but the intention has nothing to do with the law,or the system of law.Through describing Joseph K's action,the author reveals the living predicament and the spiritual anxiety of modern people in the perspective of modern civilization and fully shows his concern with the fate of human and the modem society.