Criticism And Symbolism In Franz Kafka's The Trial

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Recommended: Introduction about the novel trial by franz kafka

Maryam M. Elhabashy
Mrs. Valerie Watson
English 9 GT
11 April 2014
Research Paper
Kafka’s The Trial is recognized both as a psychological thriller and one of the most complex religious allusions ever published. Published in 1925, The Trial is classified as both absurdist and psychological fiction. The dominant theme of The Trial involves the obvious struggle found in establishing one’s innocence. Franz Kafka’s The Trial is not autobiographical; and includes the literary elements of symbolism, characterization, and themes; and has received extensive and thorough criticism.
The Trial is a parable written in third person (limited omniscient) depicting the trials of a man trying to establish his innocence for a crime he did not commit. The entire book revolves around one main character, Josef K., a young, ambitious, and well-reputed banker who is arrested without having committed a crime. The story begins with his arrest. He is outraged and defiant towards everything the officers and inspector tell him. For the next year, Josef K. does everything in his power to win the surreal case against him. The court is stolid and indifferent towards K.’s evidence, and his friends abandon him. The narrator captures K.’s crippling defiance against the unjustifiable and senseless battles waged against him by the court, the law, and the society. He is eventually conquered by his own self-doubt in trying to establish his innocence within the framework of a law that he admits to his captors that he does not know. The novel is less about the struggle between K. and his unjustified captors and more about the struggle between K. and himself. In the end, he surrenders the battle and is stabbed to death the night before his thirty-first birthday (Kafka 1...

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... (Muir)”
However, there is no such thing as a perfect writer. If there was a perfect book, there would have been no criticism aimed towards it. The Trial, like all other works of human literature, has flaws. Many of which have been analyzed by multiple critics. Many readers as well as critics ridicule Kafka for his limitation on what the reader has knowledge of. Tabitha McIntoch-Byrd explained in an essay that the reader is thrown into a bewildering world beginning with the first sentence of The Trial. She critiqued the story and mentioned that no question that may be answered by a reader is ever confirmed, and that this style of vague open-ended writing makes The Trial too vague from all aspects (McIntosh-Byrd).
It is not only the critics whose opinions have been challenged, philosophers that see in The Trial a new realm of philosophy have also been contradicted.

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