The Trial by Franz Kafka
The biggest misconception people often have about the law is that it is logical. Some people (reasonably) believe that proper application of the law naturally results in clear and consistent results, like a well-oiled machine. If the arguments are sound enough, the correct result will be guaranteed, right? If you study enough law, you’ll understand everything right?
No, unfortunately, you can spend your whole life studying and practicing the law and still fail to grasp the full extent of the laws governing society, or the verdicts that result from those laws.
Ultimately we are putting our lives, at least to some extent, in the hands of an amorphous system that is compromised of imperfect individuals judging other imperfect individuals. Despite the law being maintained and made for individuals, it is not beholden to the individual. A judge may hand down verdicts, but those verdicts result from thousands of micro factors. This mass of factors is impossible to comprehend the full extent of: common wisdom, opinions, interpretations, political factors, social policy, personality relationships and so on are intermixed.
The Trial lays that reality bare. Being charged for a crime that no one will give you any details about may seem extreme, yet it’s exceedingly common for people to have no real understanding of the laws at play in their lives or, if they do become involved in the legal system, what the seemingly basic concepts they are fighting for actually mean. Sometimes even the lawyer doesn’t have a clear understanding of what’s going on, and not for lack of trying. The Court staff probably doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s entirely possible that even the Judge may not know entirely what’s going on.
At some point you’d think someone would have to understand everything, that there was some amount of quality control going on. Such systems may exist, but only at the very top of the chain. Those systems are far off, expensive, and impossible for the common person to interact with. Sometimes even that top level of people can make mistakes. There’s no guarantee that at the end of your legal journey, you will find the answers you want and understand what happened completely.
On the back of my edition of the book, it describes The Trial as a “terrifying tale.” I suppose the idea of the legal system being like this can be scary, but I think for anyone who works in it, this depiction isn’t that far off from the essence of what’s really going on. If anything, the exaggerations make The Trial more amusing than terrifying. There’s a nonchalant attitude to the excessive and exasperating banality here that can’t escape the humor laying beneath the dread.
You almost get the sense while reading that the burden of this mysterious trial could not have been placed on a better protagonist than Josef K. He’s stubborn and overly self-conscious in ways that escalate and make the situation more entertaining. His strong-headed nature trips him into unintentionally falling upwards, deeper and deeper into the layers of the legal system taking over his life. Everyone in the story says entirely too much at virtually every time possible, and you can’t help but reflect on the ridiculousness of it all. K.’s annoyance with everyone around him only highlights how silly it is when he willingly ensnares himself in their verbose monologues anyway.
Franz Kafka writes in a way that perfectly conveys the plight of the story. His style suffocates you with long paragraphs and sentences that seemingly have no end. This may boil down to the unfinished nature of the novel, yet most of it feels intentional. The occasional breaks in paragraphs often line up perfectly with relief from whatever convoluted conversation Josef K. finds himself to be engaged in. Reading this book is like dunking yourself in an ocean and only coming up for air when you absolutely have to. Sometimes this style can be difficult to read, but it draws you in regardless.
An excessive amount of value often gets placed on the idea of a work being “finished.” The Trial, at least in the state it was released in, highlights why maybe rather than focusing so much on a work being complete, it may make more sense to think about the essence of what a work is trying to convey. Kafka clearly had more ideas he would have liked to flesh out, more characters and scenarios to include in this story. Would that matter, however? He wrote what he wrote, and the ideas he conveyed are out there regardless. If Kafka decided to finish his book, it is possible that he may not have gone with the ending we have, or at least an ending executed in the same way. That could have changed the core of his book, but would that have made the current ending less valid?
The only difference between what we have and what we could have had is that one version exists. There could have been more, things could have been different, things could have been better. At the end of it all, however, what we have is what is what we put out there, and that’s worth appreciating regardless of any what-ifs.
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
The real killer in a murder mystery is the author. Sorry for the spoilers. No novel makes that truth clearer than And Then There Were None, where Agatha Christie essentially draws parallels between herself and the murderer of the story.
What is a mystery writer if not someone playing God with (fictional) people’s lives? The author kills their cast of characters by providing the situation in which a killer authors who dies and how. There’s an art to building a compelling murder mystery story, and it’s on full display here. Stories like these sometimes feel more like intellectual exercises than a “real” story, or as the murderer puts it, a way for others to see how clever they are.
That can be fun, but it’s also a little morbid to think about. After all, technically the taking of another person’s life is about as serious of a subject matter as it gets. That’s certainly what the killer in this story, perhaps Agatha, seems to believe, as the entire concept of the murder island the story takes place on is to enact the “eye for an eye” principle on various victims who are guilty of murder in some fashion.
You could describe And Then There Were None as a story about death and justice, yet there’s an arbitrariness to it all that makes me hesitate to do so. The story is told by jumping between the perspectives of a wide cast of characters, giving glimpses into each of their stories, personalities, and thoughts on the situation, which might imply some depth to be had here. As the corpses begin piling up, however, that illusion of depth soon fades away and begins to feel superficial.
The characters begin to feel less like characters and more like bullet points. They are their occupation, their general demeanor, and most importantly, their crime. Beyond that, it’s hard to grow attached to anyone, and I suppose that’s kind of a point. This is a story where everyone dies, and you’re supposed to come away thinking that they deserved it. You’re also supposed to think that deep down, most of them believe that they deserve it too.
Mystery stories like this inherently involve some craft to them and that inevitably leads to some artificiality. The sequence of events has to unfold in a way that efficiently kills off the ensemble while keeping you guessing as to who the culprit could be. That everyone on the island truly does happen to be guilty of their crimes, regardless of the ambiguity of their actions, is yet another one of those aspects that feel unnaturally crafted. There’s a fakeness to the scenario that maximizes fun while minimizing drama.
In a sense, the craft takes away from the drama and the humanity. It turns it all into a game. Maybe that’s fine, however. It’s a lot easier to read the story as a game, rather than taking the subject matter for what it is at face value. As long as you’re a God of fictional murders, you can afford to be all fun and games.
Fish Tank 