The whole book is something like a dreamlike puzzle. After all, if he’s innocent, he deserves justice, even if he’s a bit of a jerk. I would not be friends or even acquaintances with such a man in real life, but I feel sympathy for him in the story over his complete uncertainty about his crime and the case. Reading further, we see he’s willing to use women, he’s often condescending towards people he thinks beneath him, and he’s not really willing to stick his neck out to help others-even if he would like them to stick their necks out for him. He’s an average man, completely unremarkable until he’s informed he’s been accused of a crime and will need to eventually stand trial-a bachelor with a middling position at a bank (though with a possibly bright future) who lives alone at a boarding house and seems to generically go about his life. is, in many ways, unlikable, and there’s no particular reason I or any reader should really be interested in his case…and yet we are. The book should be maddening, and in some ways it is, but it’s also incredibly compelling and keeps the reader dangling by a thread. Or even if they don’t understand the big picture, perhaps they’ll figure something out. The very premise of the book is that the court is unknowable-it’s in the summary and that’s no spoiler-but enough tidbits are dropped throughout the telling of the story that the reader can’t help but hope eventually they’re going to figure it out. The brilliance of the story is that there is always just enough information provided to keep the reader reading (and the protagonist to keep trying to figure out the basics of his case). It’s a chilling commentary on the opaqueness of the law and a character’s inability to understand it (even an intelligent, privileged character who finds himself with access to a lawyer and other comments), while being completely subjected to it.

The Trial is a discomfiting, surreal story about a man, Josef K., who finds himself accused of an unspecified crime by a court he has never heard of where the authority of the court comes from and who is in charge is never explained, but their power seems absolute.

The trial book franz kafka