The Trial is Franz Kafka's best-known novel, published in Berlin in 1926. The original manuscripts were collected and prepared for publication by Max Brod, the author of Kafka. closest friend, two years after the author's death. Brod says the manuscript had no title, but Kafka still called it “The Trial.” Kafka considered this book unfinished, even though the last chapter was already written. Kafka thought he needed to add a few more facets to the mysterious trial, but Brod said that if he didn't know that Kafka wanted to continue this work, he wouldn't be able to realize that the book wasn't finished. plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The novel tells the story of a banker who, one day, is arrested by two police officers for a crime he has not been told about. the reader. This unusual arrest on anonymous charges leaves the hapless Joseph K confused and lost in the mazes of the legal system. Desperate and overwhelmed, he imagines scenarios and tricks that end up leading him to experience the legal nightmare and the absurdity of life. No longer knowing who to trust, he composes his own "defense" in which he accepts the crime and asks for forgiveness, thus signing his punishment and eventually his execution. In the last chapter, Joseph K. is killed "like a dog", stabbed by the two guards who first arrested him. On the political level, the citizen is accused of something he never did. In the end, he is not charged according to the rules, but all he has to do is show up in the courtroom and he ends up killed "like a dog", without even knowing the accusation against him, without ever having seen the judge. This is a citizen of any unquestionably authoritarian country. In the context of the Habsburg monarchy, where Kafka's novels are often set, perhaps every citizen feels guilty before the law, guilty of something no one can say. In this case, The Trial can be seen as a critique of the bureaucracy and the overall political and social situation of the monarchy. According to this political interpretation, The Trial is a prophetic novel, born from the horrors of the Second World War. Millions of people were killed tragically, like Joseph K., and Joseph K. is one of the first genius representatives of that era, when human rights were formally written, but never executed. Kafka was always fascinated by the complexity and paradoxes of law. On a legal level, the law is created for the common good of society and must therefore be respected, regardless of its understanding or knowledge. This theory is illustrated in Kafka's parable “Before the Law”. Before the Law tells the story of a man who wants to understand and have access to the law, but the guardian challenged him to access the law. The man eventually grows old while trying to access the law, and before he dies, he asks the guard once more if he can pass through the gate. The gatekeeper responds that this door was just made for man and that since man is now dying, the door (and the entrance to the law) would now be closed. In other words, it can be called "the door of death"; which is a paradox, why would the door of the court be the door of death? It is the law that brings man there and still the law that does not allow him to approach it. Joseph K's last thoughts before his death were: "Where was the judge he had never seen?" Where was the High Court he had never reached? Kafka suggests that the law is abstract and inaccessible, that the people subject to it do not know about it’.