To all of you who have read the book
What was Josef K. accused of?
shareExactly what he was accused of in the movie.
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MovieChat Forums > Le procès (1962) Discussion > To all of you who have read the book
He never knows what he was accused of.....thats one of the great and absurd aspects of the story.
shareOh ok thanks. Was the film very different from the book? Was he accused of something particular in the movie?
shareThe movie and the book are both inconclusive as to why K. is being tried; there is a sense in both that he might be able to just ignore the trial, and it would have no power over him, but at other times the court seems huge and powerful, leaving K. no control over his fate.
Of course, the question can't be answered definitively, but I think many have argued that K. is on trial only because he feels guilty - he was under suspicion and he somehow accepted the accusations of guilt, even though they were unspecified. I think the movie takes this interpretation, as K. says in Frau Burstner's (sp.?) apartment that even as a child, when the teacher confronted the class about some transgression, K. would be consumed with guilt even though he didn't know what the teacher was talking about. I think we've all had experiences of that, and The Trial amplifies the feeling of guilt dissociated from any acutal wrongdoing. K., I think, feels guilty not for anything he's done, but for who he is, somehow inadequate.
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I think K. and his creator Kafka shared the same feeling of guilt for just existing,the concept of original sin. Also,it is impossible not to notice the parallel between Kafka`s world and what happened during the Holocaust when people were persecuted and rounded up for no other reason than their reiligion. Kafka was Jewish and many of his family were killed.
shareYes it's true that Kafka in some deeper, underlying, meaning wrote about anti-semitism, especially in The trial. But he died in 1924 and didn't experience World War II or the death of his family members in the Holocaust. He couldn't possibly had drawn any parallels between the Holocaust and the trial.
shareIt might not have been exactly about the Holocaust, but the film definitely has existential themes and considers existence as one of the sins.
shareit was also inspired by the real life imprisonment of otto gross, by his own father, the judge hans gross. kafka was in contact with otto and collaborated some with him.
shareK is being trialed because he is human. In the world of the Tribunal, everyone demands him absolute, mechanical perfection. But he can't admit that he's human, and so, guilty, so he's ultimately doomed. He never understands why they condemn him, but everybody else does.
shareAt last, someone who speaks sense.
I can't remember the book well at all. Was it as obviously loaded with sexual issues? In the film, K is kind of ambivalent aside from his conviction (for whatever reason) that Burstner is the girl for him, yet he seems set upon by sexual guilt and a perhaps homosexual indifference to women.
Is this how it seemed to you, and is the book the same in that respect?
"I'll book you. I'll book you on something. I'll find something in the book to book you on."
It is a spiritual trial. A self judgement.
Even Kafka said that he could've never been a good parent, he would've never been capable of raising any children. What would (for instance) the trial of this incapability seemed like?
I'd recommend you to read the book (it's a masterpiece), and also, read the biography of Kafka.
What if his dying wish was to be fulfilled? - from all those pages only ashes would've remain.
PS This novel has a lot of layers.
PPS Sorry about the possible linguistic mistakes.
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It was never revealed in the book either. That's a major point of the story that he never knows the charge.
PRIDE
There are so many interpretations as to why K was accused and of what.
The book being unfinished and fragmented why might not know what these reasons where but it just might be that this accusation could be anything therefore all could feel guilty and identify to K.
Although the movie does refer (most believe) clearly to the Holocaust, the book does not. Some allegories like Death and the "marked man" do not appear in the book.
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He was on trial for being human, for having "original sin".
Kafka might have wrote this novel in response to the tenacious anti-semitism he felt all the time. He felt like people thought he was guilty not because he did anything, just because he was the way he was, being Jewish and all.
To better understand the storyon e needs to read a biography on Kafka. There are many parallels between Kafka himself and Josef. For example, the way he looks at women and treats them for that matter. or look at the similarities between the Kafkas and josefs fathers. It has even been argued the Franz Kafka and josef K. are one and the same. No one knows the charges, and one can only interpret what it is. Whethers there is a real charge or its one long self accusation brought on by guilt for some past sin or imagined one. No one except Kafka knows, as he never intended the book to be published in the first place.
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you know exactly what he was accused of!
... i really loved this movie. its the same story as the book, but seeing it on screen cast some new light on kafkas vision, or my interpretation anyway... 'the trial' is life, and the inherent absurdities therein deter us from taking it as seriously as we ought to. in the scene where k. is wandering away from the men discussing his case, the lawyer remarks "i see a number of courses k's case could take", which symbolizes the existential motif that the fabric of life is composed of the decisions we make. k. distances himself from his trial by declining to invest himself in it, never understanding that this in itself is a decision!
i've read a number of interpretations (many of which are reflected in this thread) and this is the one that makes the most sense. of course, kafka predates and predicts sartre and existentialism, so 'the trial' cannot be read as a treatise on it...
rather be forgotten than remembered for giving in.
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I don't think the women were seducing him in as much as he was using the women around him. He thought he was being clever by trying to manipulate them, but in each case it proved to be fruitless. How many times have men turned to women for comfort or understanding only to be let down? The young girls in Titorelli's studio are completely different, since they're prepubescent and he has no real contact or relationship with them I don't think they're meant to further examine his relationship with women as a whole. But, like some of the other posters wrote, having a little background in the life of the author shines some light on the deeper meanings behind the work. This, of course, is only my opinion, and the film and the novel can be interpreted many different ways.
shareYes Life itself is Trial, and K is guilty both on an inner and outer level because he knows not how to live.
...
"What do you call a joke that isn't funny?"
"One of yours"
..
I think the only real answer is in the opening line: "someone must have betrayed Joseph K. for..." -the book does not tell you the reason. However, I know there are some versions of the book that include some chapters that Kafka decided not to include. They might have some clues? have not read them.
shareNo doubt, as noted by others in this thread, K is consumed by guilt due to the "original sin" concept. Thus, he (apparently like Kafka himself) was consumed and symbolically suffocated by his own obsession with his personal, albeit abstracted, guilt.
However this does not confer particular guilt for a specific crime which is punishable by the law. While Kafka never spells out the specifics of any criminal act of which K is guilty, Welles as filmmaker and "author" of the film version explained K's guilt in a Cahiers du Cinema article in 1965. In the interview, Welles makes it clear that by his very complicity in the "system" and his willing participation in the machinery of government, K is undoubtedly "guilty". He goes so far as to describe K as a "guilty little bureaucrat" and in a sense infers that in modern industrialized society, we are all guilty of the same crime.
It is a most interesting-and certainly to some extent valid-point!
"While Christians cite references to original sin in the Old Testament (such as Psalm 51:5), the doctrine is not found in Jewish theology." -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin
Assuming this is true, why would K be 'consumed by guilt due to the "original sin" concept'?
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The idea of the trial came from a real case where a jew who obviously didnt have anything to do with a murder was tried, convicted and executed .
Kafkas books are always filled with his own selfhate from his father and from the collective mind of prague.
The jews had always been considered like a lower race and they began to see themselves with their opressors eyes. Kafka took all his fathers hate and that collective hate on himself. His neurosis colours everything, you have to se him from his neurosis to understand his writing, and his life that caused them.
But he died in 1924 and didn't experience World War II or the death of his family members in the Holocaust. He couldn't possibly had drawn any parallels between the Holocaust and the trial.
This is true, but antisemitism had been around for a long time.
Some of Kafka's stories have taken a prophetic tone. For instance, "Jackals and Arabs" makes so much sense today, it's almost ridiculous.
It really does not matter what he was accused of, the important fact is that he was accused. There are many interpretations of this and other Kafka stories, but I think the main point about them is power, being subjected to it and being powerless when thrown into the absurdity of the world. His relationship with his father, and that long letter he wrote to him, make this connection pretty obvious: the relationships and shifts of power between people, they are all too real. So Kafka takes his personal experience and extrapolates it to the rest of the world. I think it works well, since so many people can identify with his works. share