Trial

I took it more to be about a kind of self-persecution than about 'life', as it were. The guilt K feels but finds no explanation for rings true with some of our darkest, most persistent feelings. As a philosophy of futility, the message is trumped by Vonnegut's 'we're here to help each other through this thing', of Camus' 'Myth of Sisyphus' - at least, in my view.

"...no more than futile pleas in an absurd courtroom where the laws are never explained and the verdict is never in doubt."

Really well put. What I love is that the end is still hard-hitting, despite the fact that it could be no other way. A bit like One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, maybe.

While the text itself is easy to read and the primary message clearly understood, expect to leave this book frustrated if you can't be bothered investing some thought into it.

The Trial by Franz Kafka radically changed my view of the world. I first read it when I was in my mid-twenties. Until then I'd never viewed existence in terms of innocence and guilt (guilt for acts we can't remember or name), as the death sentence none of us has earned yet cannot avoid. All our efforts to achieve signification, to make good are no more than futile pleas in an absurd courtroom where the laws are never explained and the verdict is never in doubt.