The story of Franz Kafka’s The Trial follows Josef K, a bank clerk, who is arrested by unidentified agents. He is neither detained nor told what crime he has allegedly committed. He is entangled in a labyrinthine legal system, with arbitrary rules, faceless bureaucrats, and unsettling and surreal proceedings. In the end he is executed in a quarry.
Is the novel a metaphor for the kind of existential anxiety and search for meaning we feel in an incomprehensible universe.
Or maybe the meaning is staring us in the face but we do not grasp it, with each of us seeing everything as a game of ‘what does it profit me?’
The opposite of that would be to care for the other, to want to give the other that which raises them to deeper sensations of existence.
Better than that would be for everyone to know that everyone cares for them, has their back. Ah, if that was the case I could relax. We could all relax and begin to live.
But in this world of what does it profit me, what is worse than Kafka’s trial? What can be worse?
Well, there is one sense in which Kafka’s character could derive some meaning from his situation. That is that he is accused. To be accused it to be recognised.
Josef K’s ‘crime’ may be obscure and even nonsensical, but at least he is regarded and recognised by others. He is someone in the scheme of things.
What is worse than that is to simply not be recognised at all. You do not exist. The machine grinds on and you do not figure in the process. You are not a non-person scrabbling for a purchase, a hold on the outer surface of something that is smooth without holes or entrances or edges to grip.
Try as you might, it rejects what you want to achieve, which is to make contact with, to connect with other human beings.