Disappointment and Dystopic Fear in Franz Kafka’s The Trial

This thesis would like to investigate the ways in which Franz Kafka explores the themes of disappointment and dystopic fear in The Trial. The situations of Kafka‟s characters have often been compared to the absurd and belittled characters of the post First World War era, the inhabitants of the Wasteland, nihilistic Waiting for Godot- like beings who are helpless before the forces of tyranny, and who thereby succumb to despair in the search of justice. We will glance through Kafka‟s The Trial from a Lacanian psychoanalytical approach by applying Jacques Lacan‟s Three Orders; The Imaginary, The Symbolic and The Real in understanding the destruction of the individual. The individual can be destroyed either psychologically or physically or both in Kafka‟s works, through extreme duress, the compulsion to conform to the expectation of the System, or murder. This is not self-destruction. It is unwilling victimhood in Kafka‟s works, although it is often with little will to self-preservation given the great power of the „system‟. The modern state, with its sophisticated apparatus of social control can diminish the power of the individual to the negligible. One of the foremost novelists of the 20th century, Franz Kafka became identified with a mood that characterised his work, namely a world portrayed by him as bleak, uncertain, threatening and unreal, with Kafka, so much so that the term „Kafkaesque‟ came into use to describe reality whenever it resembled Kafka‟s fictional world. In the progression of his works we believe we can see an unfolding philosophy the initial premise in Kafka‟s early work that the fear of the father is a source of angst and alienation the later works, particularly The Trial equate patriarchy with the System with far more unpleasant consequences as the System has the power not only to oppress, but also to kill. Sense of social mission in the novel reaches its peak in the destruction of Josef K. In conclusion, the thesis wish to establish that in fact The Trial presents a critique of the period in which Kafka wrote that is hopeful and uplifting. By depicting the nightmarish confusion and ultimate downfall of his protagonist, Kafka seeks to alert and forearm his readership in opposition to European totalitarianism, and to celebrate the unconquerable human spirit.