The Trial - Kafka

So why the fuck was he executed in the end?

i can't tell you if you won't co-operate. it's out of my hands.

My perspective is that it was an ultimate libidinal payment.
Kafka was being torn about by his own feelings of guilt for his experience of estrangement and the burden of labour expected by him throughout his life as a young male. Its not so much the execution itself that mattered but the experience of an impending execution that overshadowed him.

LIKE A DOG!
>heh, nuthin personnel kid

that last line is genius.

Because he did nothing to stop it.

My interpretation is that Josef K is a Messianic figure. In Jewish Thought there is a potential Messiah born every generation, but they all fail because of some flaw, In Josef K's case it was passivity.

Remember the law allegory? Why didn't the character in the story at least try to enter instead of just sitting outside like he was told?

Passive in what sense though?
Its not as if he was not very independent and active throughout the novel.

Court orders.

well thats just silly

k. is anything but passive. in fact his action is about all that defines him. his willingness to act despite his complete ignorance of the case.

imo the novel is about the interaction of equals in a society. it begins with slander, slander leads to death. it is about the everyman in society sold out by his fellow everyman. the courts only prosecute. it doesn't matter whta he is guilty of because he has been labeled as guilty. notice most of the novel is about interpersonal communication and power relations between k. and his equals.

But he wasn't executed by the law. Why would he ran away from the police then?

>But he wasn't executed by the law.

I'm fairly certain he was executed by the same organization as the trial, whether you want to call that the Law or not

Isn't The Trial known for being incomplete?

It was never completed but the final chapter was, incomplete books don't necessarily mean the plot doesn't have closure

I wish you cunts would spoiler endings for newfags like me.

Don't browse Veeky Forums while expecting to remain unspoiled then.

>he hasn't read every book in the canon

At the end of the Bible God wins by the way

>using spoilers unironically
>reading for plot

>Reading the Trial for Plot.
>Wanting Spoilers on a nearly century old book.

Passive in the sense that none of his actions are his own. He looks for the help of others, but never stands on his two feet. When it comes time to actually do something for himself (the execution) he shows the same "doglike" subservience as Block and fails to kill himself. He dies with no honor and no will.

>he shows the same "doglike" subservience as Block

But this isn't true at all, unlike Block he chose against great objection to abandon the lawyer and not end up like him, he was strong on his own feet to the end. I think K. went along to the end not from a lack of will to act differently but because escape was simply not in his horizon of options.

He still never enters the Law. The only way he could do that is by making the realization of law for himself, taking a definitive moral stand. That's why he dies like a Dog and not like a man.
He may fire the lawyer but it's a compromise, he still exists in the same social framework he existed in before.

Kafka was obsessed with the interaction between Religious Asceticism and Nietzschean Will to Power. In K's case that would be fighting or killing himself, he does neither, showing he's still caught in the social framework of the Trial.

See that I agree entirely with, but its more a question of not a lack of will but the way in which he frames his scope of action. To me its a question of whether K. did indeed ever feel he even had the very option to will outside the social frameworks he was invested in.

First post most underrated post.