Josef K. is arrested one morning for a crime nobody will name, by a court he can never locate, and the case will consume the rest of his life.
A century of readers have called Kafka's The Trial a warning about bureaucracy and totalitarian control. That's not wrong, it's just not what makes this novel land on people who've never dealt with a government office in their lives. Kafka was writing about guilt that doesn't need a crime to exist, guilt that builds its own courtroom and appoints its own judge.
In this episode we cover: the real \"tribunal\" Kafka sat through months before he started writing, what actually happens in the novel, and why Josef K.'s guilt never needed a charge to begin with.
What we talk about:
— Why Josef K. never once says \"I didn't do it\"
— The parable \"Before the Law,\" and the door that was never actually locked
— Kafka's own engagement, broken off in front of three witnesses in a Berlin hotel room
— Why Max Brod disobeyed Kafka's dying wish to burn the manuscript
— The flogging scene, and what it reveals about guilt with no name attached to it
Next episode: Toni Morrison and Beloved.
Keywords: Franz Kafka, The Trial, Kafkaesque, guilt, bureaucracy, existentialism, classic literature, Dead Writers Club
","author_name":"Dead Writers Club"}