Despite articulating an unnerving account of a bureaucratic system ushering in totalitarianism, what’s initially striking about Kafka’s “The Trial” is just how damn funny it is.
“The woman waved her hand to K. down below and tried to show by shrugging her shoulders that she was an innocent party in the abduction, but there did not seem to be much regret in this gesture.” (Kafka 1994: 47)
The event described is actually rather horrible; a married woman being abducted under the orders of an examining magistrate. It’s one of many warnings Kafka delivers in relation to the abuse of bureaucratic power. However the image is invested with dark humour: a bandy-legged man running off with a woman over his shoulder, the abducted reacting with nothing but a shrug. The frank description, combined with the indifferent body language of both the abducted woman and Joseph K. (the protagonist), transforms something shocking into an unremarkable, even amusing, occurrence.
In my opinion this dark comedy presents, rather than obstructs, the most important message derived from Kafka’s “The Trial”. By laughing, chuckling or even suppressing a giggle we effectively reveal in ourselves the potential indifference that this bureaucratic totalitarianism instils in its oppressed denizens. I laughed at a woman being forced to submit to a state official’s desires; the capacity to accept bureaucratic dominance is in me. This function performed by the text may be absent for some. But for me it is all too clear what reading “The Trial”, my first encounter with Franz Kafka’s work, has exposed.
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