The Trial Essay Research Paper THE TRIALby — страница 10

from women? Women have a lot of influence, says K. doggedly. They start to walk around the cathedral, and the priest tells the parable “Before the Law.” The man from the country comes to the door seeking admittance to the Law, but the guard says he can’t come in now. There are plenty of other doors and guards, and he’s just the lowest, don’t you know? So the man sits and waits by the door for years on end, trying to find some way to get the guard to let him in, bribing him, pleading, begging the fleas in the guard’s coat to convince him to let him in. Finally, when the man is about to die, he asks why nobody else ever came to the door. This door was meant only for you, the guard says. And now I’m going to close it. They discuss it at some length. Is the doorkeeper

subservient to the man? The other way around? Did the man come of his own free will? Is he deluded? It is not necessary to accept everything as true, only to accept it as necessary, says the priest. But, says K., then the world is based on lies. K. decides to leave, since he has to go b ack to work. The priest tells him that he, the priest, also belongs to the Court, which wants nothing of him and allows him to leave whenever he wants. Chapter 10: The End On the evening before his thirty-first birthday, two men come to Joseph’s apartment and, their arms entwined with his on either side of him, begin to walk him through the city. Along the way he sees Fr?ulein B?rstner walking along in front of them. He watches her until she disappears into darkness. Finally they arrive at an

abandoned quarry. They take off his coat and shirt and lie him down with a rock for a headrest. They take out a butcher knife and begin passing it to each other over him. He is apparently supposed to take it and plunge it into his own chest. But he doesn’t, instead looking over at a house across the way with a light on. Someone is standing at the window on the top floor, and Joseph wonders who it is. Where is the Judge, the High Court, that he couldn’t reach? He holds out his hands and spreads his fingers. Then one of the men takes the knife and stabs him, twisting the knife twice. “‘Like a dog!’ he said; it seemed as if the shame was to outlive him.” Fragments On the Way to Elsa Joseph is at the bank and gets a call telling him to come to court right away. Instead he

decides to go and see Elsa, his girlfriend, a waitress. Will they punish him? No. Good. And he hangs up. He takes a cab to see her, thinking of his bank business. Journey to His Mother Although he hasn’t seen his mother, a half-blind old widow living in a small town, in three years, K. suddenly decides to go visit her one day at lunch. She’s been getting more pious, which kind of disgusts him. He tells K?hne, an attendant at the bank, what to do while he’s gone and while waiting for him to come back, thinks about the threatening Assistant Manager and the accursed Rabensteiner, Kaminer, and Kullich. Prosecuting Counsel K. becomes good friends with Hasterer, a lawyer. They frequently go to his house with some other friends and talk over dinner. Hasterer is a master speaker,

taking on all comers without breaking a sweat. He has a woman named Helene living with him for a while, who at first stays in bed reading crappy novels but then starts to show up at dinner in a fantastically out of place old ballgown. Finally Hasterer gets bored of her and sends her packing. The Assistant Manager tells K. he knows about his friendship with Hasterer, which somewhat upsets K. The House K. tries to find out where the first notification of his case came from, and with Titorelli and Wolfart’s help finds it. It is, of course, a totally negligible office, existing only to rubber stamp anything the higher ups want done. Titorelli and K. have become close, since K. is always bothering and consulting him about his case. Meanwhile K. is being worn out by his case,

sometimes having nightmares about Frau Grubach’s other lodgers all pointing the finger at him and accusing him, and then him wandering around the offices meeting truly bizarre figures. Or perhaps he dreams about Titorelli, that they were sitting in front of a fire, K. begging him for something and Titorelli granting it, or them running around the law offices. Conflict with the Assistant Manager K. and the Assistant Manager aren’t getting along very well, since K. sees him as an usurper, just waiting to get K. fired and taking his place. The Assistant Manager must see that K. won’t go down without a fight, that he’s still alive and well. The Assistant Manager comes into Joseph’s office one day so Joseph can pitch his proposal for something, and the whole time the