Nihilists believe
that their existence on earth has no purpose. They see themselves as meaningless human beings who just
accept what comes to them good or bad.
Franz Kafka’s story of Josef K. in the book called The Trial, had a Nihilistic type of narrative. Josef K. was a thirty-year-old man who
was on trail for reasons only god would know. He worked as a chief clerk in a bank. On his thirtieth birthday he was
arrested for no apparent reason. The officials told him that he could go about
his daily business, but had to come to court when they told him he had to be
there. Josef K. did not know why
he was being prosecuted because they never gave him any information about his
case.
My assumption
about the legal system is that it is sometimes illegitimate. Like in the book The Trial in chapter 5.
How Josef found the two police officials, Franz and Willem in the junk
room in this building getting ready to be beaten by a whip-man because of his
complaint to the examining judge.
Willem said to Josef, “ If you knew how badly we get paid you wouldn’t
think so badly of us. I’ve got a
family to feed, and Franz here wanted to get married, you just have to get more
money where you can, you can’t do it just by working hard, not however hard you
try” (Kafka 52). They were telling Josef K. that police officials take peoples
things all the time, and that they would not be punished if he did not
complain. They told him how other
officials would look the other way if no one would find out about it. Josef felt bad for them because he did
not request for them to be punished, so he offered to pay the whip-man
off. The whip-man suggested that
there was no way he could be bribed, but the true meaning to that was he wanted
Josef to offer him more money than he did. Eventually, Josef left the junk room and thought about
retuning but was scared he might get caught bribing the other official that he
never went back in.
In chapter nine of
the book, Josef goes to a cathedral to meet with a businessman to show him art
pieces because his director at his job asked him to. The business never shows up and as Josef heads out to leave,
he hears the priest call out his name.
Josef comes close to him as the priest asked him, “ You have been
accused,” so Josef replies, “Yes”
(Kafka 127). The priest
tells him a story about a man wanting to get through the gates of the law. He says there is a gatekeeper there
that tells the man he cannot pass but someday he will be able too. In addition, the doorkeeper tells the
man this that this door is only for him. Later on in the story there was this
parable, “But he seems now to see an inextinguishable light begin to shine from
the darkness behind the door” (Kafka 129). What this parable is trying to say is that at the end of a person’s
life, everything starts to become clear to them that were once a blur. For Josef K., this was when he was
about to die that he realized that if the judges find you guilty, there is
nothing you can do about it but just accept the penalty. Which, for Josef, was
death. To Josef K., life had no
value so he did not even try to fight for his life.
Kafka, Franz. The Trial. Teddington: The Echo Library, 2006. Print.
