“One morning, without having done anything wrong, Joseph K. was arrested.”
Franz Kafka always begins his writings in a way that shakes the reader. In The Metamorphosis, Gregor Samsa wakes up as a vermin. ("One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a vermin") In The Trial, Joseph K. wakes up to find himself arrested for no reason, no explanation, no clear accusation or no justice. Only fear and confusion.
The story runs with Joseph K. as he tries to understand what is happening to him. He goes from place to place, meets strange people, enters dark courtrooms and endless offices, in order to find one clear answer. But the more he searches, the more lost he becomes. He never truly reaches the center of the system that controls him, neither the Judge nor the High court.
What touched me most here is, how real this feels. Maybe it is not the arrest itself, but the feeling of being trapped by things we do not understand such as rules, expectations, society, anxiety, even our own thoughts. Kafka has turned that silent human fear into a story.
Some say that Kafka has penned about the meaningless world being an atheist, dealing with absurdism, or influencing from the thinkers like Nietzsche. But Kafka is beyond labels. He writes the emotions we struggle to name!
Even though this novel was written long ago, it still addresses us. His world is strange, uncomfortable, and sometimes painful, but it feels close to our own. So, the world is Kafkasque.
Sometimes life itself is a Trial. 😌
Tharushi
19.04.2026
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