Significance of Opening Parable

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for the purposes of this film, the law and justice are synonymous.

what we discover in the parable is that the man wasn't seeking "the law." He was seeking his own ideal or romantic vision of "the law." A man who feels he has done no wrong or has been done wrong, feels that the law will ULTIMATELY vindicate him absolutely. But that is fantasy. We all know that "the law" is not perfect, it does not conform 100% to any one person's ideal, it is not envisaged the same way by everyone and what is fair to one is not necessarily perceived as fair to another thus the "door" is both particular to everyman yet unavailable to anyone because it is not real. It is for all intents and purposes, an illusion in our own minds... a mechanism we've constructed to convince ourselves that we live in a just society. Yet so long as we believe there is a chance that it is real, we'll sit at that door waiting for entrance.. something that can never happen. When Orson Welle's character "The Advocate" tells this story in the middle of the movie to our protagonist, he's telling him "you are a fool. You see justice as you envision it and not as it is."

The entire story of "The Trial" is an allegory (very much like M Knight Shylamalan's "Lady in the Water." And I do believe M Knight was inspired by The Trial when he wrote that). Everything you see takes place within a single man's mind as he struggles to maintain his own ideals in the face of cold hard reality that good people do suffer unjustifiably and bad people do live like kings undeservedly. Do not put your faith in justice because you will eventually be disappointed. See the world as it is. Be a pragmatist. Our own minds will murder our inner Josef for the sake of the whole. Consider students fresh out of college/university starting off in the world thinking they can change the world or make a difference by doing the right thing and keeping their noses clean... after some time they all undergo their own personal inner "TRIALS" where their inner Josef is killed in order to succeed OR SURVIVE! in the real world.

In the end of The Trial, the inner pragmatists defeat Josef (the idealist) and the actual human being who is enduring this inner conflict (The Trial. Le Procese as in "the thought process") ultimately forsakes his ideals in order to survive, succeed and prosper in the real world. The reason it is so difficult for them to kill Josef is because they are killing apart of THEMSELVES! They are reluctant to kill that idealist within. Every character in The Trial is a part of the personality of a single individual (or serve to help define and flesh out parts of that personality) and we are all loath to kill off our own idealism.

Good guys finish last.

"The parable seems to be about a man who seeks the law but is never granted it and eventually is denied it entirely. The Trial seems to be more about a man seeking justice, something very different from the law in the film, is never granted it, but rather is murdered. "

Actually, K isn't seeking justice. The Law- or people who claim to be agents of the Law- comes seeking him. After that K is seeking acquittal, not justice.

The parable strongly resembles the plot of Kafka's novel The Castle- the ending- someone is refused admittance at a gate which only existed so that he alone could get in- is identical.

Re: Significance of Opening Parable

Just saw this for the first time, tonight. I'm in awe and felt I had to communicate some of my feelings about it within the first few minutes of the closing credits.

So, as for the parable, I found it interesting that the "guard" seemed to simply have this power, but it's not said where he got it or who gave it to him. We're supposed to simply believe he's the guard? Who said so? Who appointed him? Maybe it was just some nobody? Maybe the man seeking justice is simply trusting?

Or...

Maybe it's a metaphor for the man seeking justice but simply putting up a roadblock to his own success?

Maybe justice, like democracy, faith, or other things we aspire to, is something we have the opportunity to have ("to simply enter the door"), but we don't take advantage of it because we let people, circumstance, or our own weak choices, hold us back.

So in the end, we have only ourselves to blame.

And, if this film is even partly about "power", the ultimate power is in fooling, compelling, or letting people screw themselves, in effect.

I probably came to this conclusion because I thought of my own film script, a dark comedy called "None of the Above" (on Amazon.com), which I've personally referred to as "Brazil for Elections", based on its slight similarity to Terry Gilliam's "Brazil".

If you're familiar with that one, you'll see it shares some of the imagery and allegory of this earlier story from Welles. I'd expect Gilliam was highly affected by "The Trial" for his film.

What's interesting is that "Brazil" doesn't register with that many audiences, but I'd imagine "The Trial" registers with even fewer.

Pity.

A very important film.

So, first of all spoilers alert

I think the opening parable relates directly to the film and is in fact analogous to the film.

The parable basically consists of someone, the guard, saying "I have great power and you must do as I say" and another person sitting there and taking it, never once really challenging the guard or making the guard show that he has power, much less the right, to deny the man access to “justice” or otherwise force the will of the guard (the self-proclaimed authority figure) onto the man.

So too with the film. Throughout Joseph encounters people who claim to be a part of a system of justice (the film’s authority figure): the inspectors, the judges, even the advocate. Along the way he encounters MANY fellow accused basically standing there and waiting (almost EXACTLY like the man in the parable). While Joseph K doesn’t literally sit outside the door and wait for the system to grant him justice (which, again, does it even have the power or authority to withhold or dispense justice?), on a metaphorical level he does. You might think he tries to fight the system, by seeking (ineffectually) to learn the details of the laws, seeking an advocate, and even choosing to represent himself. He stands before the interrogation and goes into a tirade about how wrong the entire situation is, but in all of this he remains a voluntary participant in the proceedings, subjecting himself and bending to the will of the system.

SOILER:
Even at the end, when he is taken to the hole, he doesn't really resist. Two large men lock arms with him, but it's very clear he walks the entire way with them. He isn't dragged, he isn't kicking and screaming, he walks with them, and he is even kind enough to partially undress and lay down in the hole for them. He doesn’t even shout for help. He doesn’t speak at all until he’s in the hole and so far away from anyone that no one but the two thugs could hear him and even then he doesn’t seek to save himself. Heck, if they had wanted to, he'd have let them slit his throat without resisting: he’s a proverbial sheep here. As it is, even after they leave he never tries to climb out of the hole and makes ZERO effort to extricate himself from the situation, maniacally shouting that it is for THEM to kill HIM and he won’t kill himself but it is evident that he never once considers that it is for HIM to save HIMSELF by refusing to submit to this spectacle.

The central question is: what if Joseph K or the man in the parable simply refused to take the claimed power of the authority figure (the “justice” system or the guard respectively) at face value?

For instance, what do you suppose might have happened if Joseph K had just refused to answer the inspectors' questions, demanded that they leave and nothing more? What right did they really have to be in his residence and asking him these questions? What if he had simply not gone to the interrogation, but rather gone home? What if, when he saw the two thugs blocking the door at the end (kind of like the guard in the parable, actually) he had tried to push past them rather than stop between them? What if he had just run off or thrown the dynamite out of the hole (I think he even picked it up with several seconds left and I was sure he’d chuck it out, until I saw it go off still in the hole)? We'll never know. It seems many here, like Joseph K and the man in the opening parable, are assuming that there was no hope of resistance: that you've just got to do what "the Man" says.

I think the entire point of both the parable and the film is that no, in fact, you don't. You don’t have to live your life by someone else’s leave just because they say so. Just because someone claims the authority to deny you your rights and your freedoms doesn't mean they truly have the authority. Joseph K and the man in the parable both surrendered their rights without a fight. Because of that, we'll never know if the guard in the parable or the judicial system in the film held real, recognized authority. This doesn’t mean that we should not allow ourselves to be governed. It’s not a call for anarchy, but at the very least if we’re going to allow someone to dictate to us what our rights are, it ought to have to demonstrate that it is a real and genuine authority figure.

Bottom line: if you have a right that you willingly choose not to exercise under the mere threat of violence, that right can be taken from you.

Lots of good interpretations in this thread. Many are very close to what was said in the original Kafka. If you want to know Kafka's idea of the opening parable, find the book and read the last few pages of chapter 9 "In the Cathedral".

In that chapter K has a dialogue with a court-appointed priest who tells him the story. The priest mentions that it is part of "the scriptures" but whether he's referring to legal scriptures or holy scriptures we don't know.

He tells the story to K, basically as it's presented by Welles verbatim. K reacts by saying,"So the doorkeeper deceived the man."

The priest argues, saying,"There's no deception" and goes on to defend the guard for being a man of duty & honor (thus ducking the question of why the man wasn't simply admitted). He even goes to the point of saying the guard is a nice guy for bending down to hear the man when the man was dying.

So K concedes and says,"So you think the man was not deceived?"

Again the priest ducks the question and switches gears saying, "I'm just showing you the various opinions..." and goes on to talk about one interpretation that the guard is actually the victim. In other words, the court priest does everything to further confuse K and glorify the actions of the guard & the law.

Ok with all that said and having watched the film, here's my interpretation. The parable is designed to show how convoluted human justice is (and I agree with the other poster who said "justice" is used synonymously with "the law"), how inaccessible it is due to it's many bureaucracies and legal labyrinths, but ALSO how inaccessible it is due to the individuals's willingness to play the game. The man from the country basically believes and does everything the guard says without questioning his authority or his correctness. It's the same way with the story of K. He, like the good corporate man he himself is, went through all the proper legal channels, dotted all his i's and crossed his t's, played their corrupt game and was eventually swallowed by it, consumed by the legal machine and led off to slaughter without so much as a struggle because, almost to the very end, he's a good little cog in the machine who follows orders. Note that Welles changed the very ending, the manner if K's death, because as Welles said, "I couldn't stand it, I couldn't let him go without a fight."

But yeah, other than that last 5 seconds which Welles added for his personal reasons, the opening parable, as well as the story of The Trial, shows the folly of human justice as well as those who meekly go along with unjust situations. Could the man from the country have found justice by rushing past the guard despite all the warnings, rules & regulations? Well, we won't ever know because he never tried. "This door was intended only for you. And now I'm going to close it."