Kafka's Trial

"Here there is no why"

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz.

Attempting to determine what Franz Kafka really meant in any of his stories is a difficult undertaking, given the absurdity and irrationality of the situations he describes and characters that do not seem to function or react as 'normal' human beings. This is especially true in his unfinished novel The Trial, where the young and successful bank executive Joseph K. is arrested and put on trial without charges and for no apparent reason, then taken out and murdered a year later. He never knows why all of this is happening to him, and perhaps Kafka's main point is that there is no 'why'; there is no reason for any of it, and indeed the characters and society he portrays are not acting in a rational manner. Like Primo Levi in Auschwitz, who was thirsty and broke off an...
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