Kafka's Joseph K. goes through a confusing and bizarre experience over the course of the novel, learning more and more about the legal bureaucracy surrounding him without ever actually learning anything about it. In a sense, Joseph K.'s experience mirrors the human experience in any society, because it demonstrates how the justification for legal and political authority is ultimately an illusion; there is no inherent justification for human political power, but rather it depends either on the consent of the governed or coercive force, and both of these actually serve to isolate the individual (Panichas 86).

In the case of the former, consent of the governed, the individual is isolated due to the fact that he or she must give up some agency and power to the state, and thus lose some small bit of individuality. The individual essentially becomes a constituent element of the state, and thus, like the...
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