The Trial - Frantz Kafka

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br br exclude quoted exclude bibliography br br download br print br mode br show highest matches together show matches one at a time quickview (classic ) report "The Trial " by Franz Kafka Biography The word "Kafkaesque " has come to signify alienation , and is applied to storylines in which the protagonist is pitched into a milieu that is domineering and yet indifferent . In this respect it is natural to explore the life of Franz Kafka in the hope of gleaning the source of this theme . Did Kafka himself feel alienation that strongly ? He was born into a Jewish background , but shed his faith early . His father was by profession a butcher , but successful enough to qualify for the middle class . Being born and raised in Prague , Kafka found himself at the blines of many cultural influences . He was a Czech at the time when the Czech nation sought release from the over-bearing Austro-Hungarian Empire . Yet he spoke German , and therefore did not entirely belong with the Czechs either . As a non-believer he was definitely alienated from the Jewish community , and yet to German eyes , and among Germans , he was a Jew . From barely his origins we are already able to identify many strands of alienation in the identity of Kafka . He was the eldest among three brothers and three sisters , though his other two brothers died in infancy . He bore unhappy memories of his childhood , and never was able to shed resentment towards his father , whom he remembered as crassly materialistic and overbearing . He was educated in a gymnasium school with a rigid and austere regimen . He went on to study Law , and indeed obtained a doctorate in it . In terms of career too , Kafka was torn between divergent tendencies . He felt his natural occupation to be a writer , and yet having set himself on the road of middle class ascendancy , with a good education as springboard , he wasn 't entirely able to tear himself away and commit himself to writing . He published very little in his lifetime , and that with sparse success . Most of his clandestine writing appeared after his premature death in 1925 , and his entire reputation is posthumous . He held positions in law and insurance , and took an early retirement in 1922 , finally committing himself to writing . He succumbed to tuberculosis only three years later . From this brief overview it appears that much is Kafka 's life does indeed point to a genesis of alienation . Plot : From the very opening of the novel The Trial we are plunged into a surreal world . The protagonist Josef K . wakes up one morning to find that he is under arrest . The two officers that have come to take him in appear sordid...