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Summary: Simply Brilliant!
Review: Franz Kafka's, "Trial," is nothing but a brilliant piece of literature. From the moment you open the book you are hooked to the peculiarity with which you find the main character. Throughout the book one is left with a feeling of awe and wonder at what the author portrays to the reader. Even for those that don't catch the deep sense of meaning will not leave without realizing the author's brilliance. The book opens the eyes of a reader like no other book can. The author makes the reader experience something so deep and so vivacious. The world is seperated between those who have read Franz Kafka's "The Trial," and those that have not!
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Summary: Intriguing
Review: Purposefully frustrating, "The Trial" has you, like its tormented protagonist (Joseph K.), wondering what the heck is going on. This frustration, however, serves to propel the reader forward. As a lawyer, reading Kafka's description of how cases drag on for years with countless motions and affidavits being filed sounded strangely familiar. It made me wonder whether he was making a statement about how ludicrous the law is in reality, as opposed to how ludicrous the law is in his fictionalized world. So deep on so many levels, "The Trial" takes you on a thought-provoking and confounding journey through an out-of-control legal system, and its devastating impact on an ordinary citizen.
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Summary: A Puzzling Affair
Review: Franz Kafka's The Trial is a complex tale that is propelled by its use of symbolism.The plot is exceedingly simple but understanding the plot and uderstanding The Trial are two completely different things. Joseph K, a banker is arrested at his house one morning. He is told that he that he is allowed to continue with his daily life and will not be detained. K is not told what crime he has been accused of. As the novel unfolds we are drawn into K's world. At first he is an arrogant man who believes that he is innocent of everything. As time progresses he begins to panic and becomes guilt stricken. There are many symbols in The Trial which may baffle or confuse the reader. I can say that I did not fully understand them as they could really mean anything. Some puzzling symbols include: The Apple in K's apartment, the whipper in his buliding, the gatekeeper at the end. If you do not understand The Trial you can still find it excellent. There are so many different possible interpretations that just thinking about them is enjoyable. A good read.
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Summary: I prefer Albert Camus -- less sterile symbolism there
Review: Kafka's peculiar brand of existentialism proved a bit overly abstruse and symbolic. The elements of this puzzling allegory that I did try to interpret - the religious framework in which Kafka seemed to always place his philosophy, his obsession with the Law metaphor, his terror at being unable to find that ultimate Law it represented - ultimately proved not so much incomprehensible as completely alien to me. Yes, God is scary and powerful precisely because we can't get access to him. So what? I would have preferred less of the complicated allusions to Laws and Castles and more detailed exploration of the author's views -- like in Camus's _myth of Sisyphus_.
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Summary: Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K.
Review: It's worth noting that this book was unfinished. He only considered five of his books (according to his friend and literary executor, Max Brod) to have "counted" and asked for the rest to be burned when he died. Following Kafka's plan, there should have been many more stages of the trial developed before the end. Also, Brod arranged the order of the chapters to the best of his ability based on knowledge that he'd gleaned from Kafka during his lifetime. These factors may account for some of the gaps and disclarities in the novel rather better than its own surreal qualities do. I can only wish that I had the ability to read the finished novel, because this is a wonderful and complicated book. It's often made out to be a simple parable, but it's far from simple. K. is more than just an innocent man (you can even argue that his lifestyle marks him as more corrupt than we're given to know) and the process is more than all-powerful and unstoppable. The logic of the book is like a dream and has the same crazy sense-- people go in and out through doors that require them to cross beds, women fall in love with condemned men because of the air of doom-- it carries very well the idea of a machine that clearly has its own rules that the individual is not given to understand. Even with the limitations of its unfinished state, the Trial is still and important read.
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Summary: Thinks...
Review: "A bizarre, fascinating story set in a nightmarish world - It was almost Kafkaesque!"
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Summary: Intriquing, Catchy, But Maybe a Bit Unsatisfying
Review: I cannot claim to be a fan of Kafka,but still I enjoyed this book very much. The book grabs you from the start--the sudden arrest of the main character, Joseph K. for mysterious reasons--and keeps going from there. This central mystery is matched by equally mysterious characters, who like the arrest are unexplainable. This is not your typical novel. The setting seems vague, the characters seem irrational, the plot twists unusual. At one level, all this surrealism is quite enjoyable, amusing, and fascinating. On another level, it can be quite frustrating. You're never quite sure what you're really reading and the resolution, if you can call it that, doesn't feel very resolved at all. Still, after you have finished the book, you may ponder various parts for awhile, never really understanding them completely, but enjoying the search for meaning nevertheless, and isn't that what a good book is supposed to do anyway?
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Summary: THE TRIAL OF KAFKA
Review: IT IS THE JUDGEMENT OF SELF, A RESTRICTION OF SCRUTINY
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Summary: Kafka: Greatest Writer Ever
Review: Kafka will never be matched again, his genius that fills his work terrifies and stimulates us even today. In The Trial, he writes what he is best at: paranoia and surreal absurdity. Josef K. wakes up and like Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis, finds himself in an odd position, he has been arrested for no apparent reason. From this amazing beginning Kafka weaves a claustrophobic tale that though filled with darkness, still has much of Kafka's humor (e.g. the whipping scene). The fact is, this book needs to be read by everyone. While fiction, some of the things that happen in this book are beginning to come true now, especially the boundless power of a system that can't even be comprehended by the people in it. From this comes the book's horror factor, not ghosts and monsters horror, but a horror that comes from having no power against an enemy to powerful to even know anything about, let alone fight. This book is amazing, just like everything else Kafka wrote. Amazing use of psychology, surreal characters that come out of nowhere, great use of strange and dark humor, and of course Kafka's imagery (like the cramped halls of the court, the faces in the crowd, the girls that beg to be let into the painters room). So don't think that this book is too depressing to read, everyone should pick this up immediatly and learn why I think Kafka is the greatest writer to ever live.
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Summary: Take Your Time Reading This Book
Review: If anyone can help me with this one, please e-mail me back. What does the law represent in The Trial? And also what is the nature of the law in The Trial. All that i know is that it has nothing to do with the judicial law.
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