Before the parable: the reader's trial

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1379286 (Table of Contents)

This study aims to explore in depth the structure of Kafka's ''The Trial'' by starting off from the fundamental question how it shapes the writers's, the protagonist's and the reader's status with respect to the work. The main argument of the study is that the structure of the work is such that it reduces all three parties to a very similar, almost indistinguishable position, the position of not knowing. Thus, the trial is as much a question of life and death to Kafka and the reader as it is to Josef K. What lies at the heart of the trial is the inescapablity and the impossiblity of reading that which has not been written yet; and thus breathing life to the work, ''The Trial''. Kafka, Josef K. and the reader find themselves before the inexplicable parable, and are being called to read, and thus write it. Kafka, Josef K., and the reader are arrested by the same call; the call is nothing other than an invitation to read and thus to participate in the ambiguity, or in other words, in the parable.