Who was that ‘Somebody’ in The Trial? A Critical analysis of Franz Kafka’s Novel

The prophesies of Kafka’s writings are gripping the world readers more and more despite the advancements in various fields of life. The tentacles of ‘Kafkaesque phenomena’ can be seen in democratic as well as in undemocratic countries. The suppression of voices, ruthless exploitation and the rape of dignity of a common man or a woman is still prevalent despite the rosy picture of seemingly law and order situation in every well demarcated acclaimed national territories of the world. Millions of people are dying on daily basis at the hands of the oppressors just ‘like a dog,’ as in the novel The Trial. Men/Women are subjected to indignity and dehumanization. Kafka’s seminal work is a reflection of the injustices that are meted out to powerless people in an exploitative system. The State machinery that becomes a hunter employs ordinary people to collectively hunt down another ordinary but open individuals. Joseph K. the protagonist in The Trial is a victim of an oppressive autocratic system. A system that employs the landlady, the co-lodger, the captain, the washerwoman, the Nurse, the lawyers, the colleagues, the co-rivals, the priest and the painter to hunt down Joseph K. to the point where he expects to go for self-destruction. The Trial is an unfinished novel. Hence, the mystery looms over from the beginning till the end about that, ‘somebody,’ who must have made allegations against K. The unknown court, the invisible judge, the unreachable system of justice leads the protagonist to the point of , almost insanity. Joseph K., the helpless but dignified individual is trapped in an endless trial on a false accusation. The present paper is an attempt to resolve the mystery of that mysterious ‘somebody’ who made a false accusation against Joseph K. in the novel. The unfinished novel leaves the readers perturbed. The long torturous process of the court trial pricks the conscious of the readers to find out the culprits behind the sufferings of the young ambitious clerk Joseph K. The dirty dance of bureaucracy, the burlesque representation of State machinery, the deep-rooted corruption in court, church, art and culture is well exposed through different characters in The Trial. The paper shall focus on finding the mysterious informer that made the protagonist die, ‘like a dog’.