Before The Law

Before The Law by Franz Kafka is a brilliant story revolving around a man from the country who comes to a great door seeking the law. A doorkeeper quickly stops him. The man wants to know if he will be allowed to enter the gate; the doorkeeper says possibly. The man is puzzled but decides to keep waiting and hoping that the doorkeeper lets him enter the great door and allow him to reach is goal. His wait continues and doorkeeper waits as well but doesn’t allow the man to enter. The man keeps asking to be let in but is denied entry. The doorkeeper explains that there are other more powerful doorkeepers that the man would have to go through after him in order to achieve his goal. The man sits there and waits for years but never gets in. The

When the man is dying, the doorkeeper tells him that no one else could go through this particular door because it was made just for him. And thus, since the man is dying, the entrance to the gate or the “law” will now be closed. Through this story Kafka might be trying to reflect upon the vagaries of human life, life has many challenges akin to doors in the story. Should one take on the challenges in life and move on to the next challenge or decide to give up before the many gatekeepers of the law and to die before its door a failure in remorse.

When the man tried to bribe and offer all that he had to convince the gatekeeper to let him through the gate, similar to how people in our society try to act as well. Everyone has a goal that they wish to reach regardless of how big or small it may be. They try to reach that goal by using various methods and altering them if it doesn’t work out the first time. They continuously work towards that goal and sometimes end up tiring themselves out. But, in Before The Law, when the man offered his possessions to the gatekeeper, the gatekeeper accepted them but told the man that he was only taking them so that the man would not feel like a failure, since he

The man spent his whole life trying to discover the secrets of the law and when he failed to do so, the gatekeeper had to close the entrance that was made specifically for him. This was a key part in the story that Kafka tried to explain, everyone has their own destiny in life, and they are allowed to create, follow and change their own paths whenever they choose to. There are people like the man in the story who decide to turn to the law to understand how to live and go on with life by following rules and guidance from people society deem to be in charge. If "the law" is the basis for how society works and without knowing this law one cannot be a part of society, therefore we seek the law to be accepted and admitted by society, but even in society there are people who support beliefs and ideals aligned to their needs and goals whereas there are others who are against it. Thus we see in our society that there are many people who want to understand the law and abide by the rules and others who want and make changes to it. People on both sides try endlessly for years to fully grasp the law or to make changes that may not be possible to make. In seeking the law, we all seek purpose and order in our lives but are obstructed by our uncertainties and fear created in our own minds (like the doorkeeper). We constantly seek approval from others, seek love but don’t find it. We seek a