Kafka and Camus

"Sin without God": Existentialism and "The Trial"
Author(s): John A. Dern

Source: Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Spring 2004), pp. 94-109
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41207030
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"Sin without God":
Existentialism and The Trial
John A. Dern
Gwynedd-Mercy College
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus hazards the idea that "the absurd,"
or the "divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting" (6), can be
defined as "sin without God" (40). For Camus, the awareness of the absurd car-
ries with it the need to reject it, to revolt continuously against the chaotic mean-
inglessness that informs human existence. Against this chaos, man has erected
illusory bulwarks under the headings of religion and philosophy, systems that
strive to explain the inexplicable, that valúate the valueless. This is not to say
that no value exists; rather, it is to say that only one value exists: "life is the only
value; it is ideas that are valueless" (Wilson, The Outsider 37). In other words,
the exaltation of life, the struggle to retain it in the face of death, represents the
only proper course of action. As Dylan Thomas so aptly puts it, "Do not go gen-
tle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light." Using a line
from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Colin Wilson concisely
summarizes this existential stoicism: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated"
{The "New" Existentialism 14).1
At some point in his life, argues Camus, every man faces the great question
of existence, the question oí purpose:
It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, street-car, four hours in
the office or the factory, meal, street-car, four hours of work, meal,
sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday
according to the same rhythm - this path is easily followed most of the
time. But one day the "why" arises and everything begins in that weari-
ness tinged with amazement. (12-13)
This "weariness tinged with amazement" is properly that feeling of nausea de-
scribed in Jean-Paul Sartre's novel La Nausée and Camus's L'Etranger. More
important, it represents the beginning of consciousness (Camus 13). At this
point, the incipiently absurd man has two choices: the "gradual return into the
chain" or the "definitive awakening" (Camus 13). If one chooses the "awaken-
ing," then another dichotomy ultimately presents itself: "suicide or recovery"
(Camus 13), and "recovery" depends upon the absurd man's ability to live in a
state of never-ending revolt. To commit suicide, on the other hand, is to resign
oneself to the absurd, to give in, to commit sin.
In Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, the main character, Joseph K., is an ab-
surd man, a man whose "stage sets" have collapsed. In this respect, Kafka's di-
__
lemma mirrors Camus's: "Both artists see man as a stranger bound to an indif-
ferent world: totally responsible for and singly witness to his own existence"
(Rhein xi). In fact, Camus himself refers to Kafka as an "absurd writer," one
who "propounds the absurd problem altogether" (137). As an "absurd writer,"
Kafka illustrates the existential dilemma brought on by recognition of the absurd
by highlighting the resultant "distance" one discovers between the general and
the particular: "His secret consists in being able to find the exact point where
they meet in their greatest disproportion" (Camus 138). Doubtlessly, absurdity
introduces itself into Joseph K.'s world with the opening line of the novel:
"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done
anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning" (1). This absurdity K. experi-
ences as he awakens, the metaphorical significance of "awakening" lost neither
on Kafka nor his existentialist critics: "The awakening of Joseph K. at the be-
ginning of The Trial symbolizes the awakening of the Self. The moment he
opens his eyes, his being is called into question" (Goth 59). Indeed, even K.'s
landlady, Frau Grubach, recognizes the existential quality of K.'s arrest: "You
are under arrest, certainly, but not as a thief is under arrest. If one's arrested as a
thief, that's a bad business, but as for this arrest - . It gives me the feeling of
something very learned . . ." (19). Frau Grubach implicitly recognizes the meta-
physical nature of K.'s "arrest," the intellectual stoppage of his existence. K.
now may proceed toward absurdity or retreat from it.
Kafka proceeds to detail K.'s dilemma naturalistically, focusing on the mi-
nutiae of K.'s existence as he highlights the chasm that has opened between
those particulars and any notion of purpose. Like a diaphragm, K. vibrates back
and forth between Camus's two choices: he can "return into the chain," or he
can definitively awaken. K. yearns for truth, but he also yearns to alleviate his
nausea, and this is the dilemma he confronts throughout the novel:
He thinks himself guilty and he feels anguish. His first reaction is to es-
cape. He concentrates on everyday work and his professional life as he
tries to pretend that nothing has happened. But at the same time he tries
to put his life in order under the law by finding out where the court of
justice is located, for he must prove his innocence. Hoping to be justi-
fied, he puts the law into motion. Finally, he must acknowledge that he
is unable to satisfy the postulate of the quest of Self. (Goth 59)2
K. seeks the truth, and, Camus's doctrine of revolt notwithstanding, he should
come to understand that, for an outsider like him, "truth must be told at all
costs," that "Even if there seems no room for hope, truth must be told" (Wilson,
The Outsider 15).
However, the novel's ambiguity wreaks havoc on any attempt at a strictly
existentialist rendering of its conclusion:
For Kafka ... the spiritual "seasickness" of his protagonists is not nec-
95
essarily the truth of human reality. Kafka's protagonist is inclined to
accept a reliable and harmonious universe which only his unfortunate
peculiarity, his "sickness," prevents him from perceiving. He is eager to
concede that it might be his perspective that dissolves the calm beauty
of a world in which expectations are fulfilled as a matter of course, and
no gap exists between individual consciousness and being. (Sokel 171)
Kafka's Joseph K. never satisfies himself about purpose; he resigns himself to
the absurdity he sees before him, leaving open the two possibilities of universal
meaninglessness and personal impotence. In short, then, Kafka's The Trial does
not satisfy Camus: hope under any guise (especially one's own impotence) is not
the absurd man's business; rather, "His business is to turn away from subterfuge.
Yet this [subterfuge] is just what I find at the conclusion of the vehement pro-
ceedings Kafka institutes against the whole universe. His unbelievable verdict is
this hideous and upsetting world in which the very moles dare to hope" (138).
Joseph K.'s "crime" is that he seeks truth; his "sin" is that he gives up the search
and resigns himself either to ignorance or death. From an existentialist's point of
view, he resigns himself either way to the absurd, to "sin without God."
Orson Welles redeems Joseph K. If Franz Kafka is an "absurd writer," then
Welles is an "absurd filmmaker," for Welles takes on the formidable task of
putting Joseph K.'s dilemma on the screen in his cinematic version of The Trial.
Generally, Welles adapts the novel faithfully, beginning with K.'s morning
"awakening" and proceeding through to the character's ultimate confrontation
with the absurd. Camus' s dichotomy plays out as feelings of revolt well up in K.
and then ebb as his desire to "return into the chain" itself returns. However,
Welles wholly rewrites the ending of the novel. Throwing aside any ambiguity,
Welles shows Joseph K. in utter revolt against his fate, as he tells fellow director
Peter Bogdanovich:
He rejects defeat. That's how he dies. Oh, you mean, why he dies. We
don't know why they're executing him. It's a murder, but so's an exe-
cution, and it has the quality of both - of an assassination and of an
execution - as indeed it does in Kafka; that's very true to the book. But
not his defiance at the end. That's mine. (274)
Interestingly, Welles implicitly recognizes what Frau Grubach recognizes - that
is, that K.'s "crime" possesses ineffable qualities, that it cannot be attributed to
something petty or mundane. More important, Welles satisfies Camus by having
K. passionately reject his fate to the very last second of life. Indeed, K. forces
his antagonists literally to destroy him at the end of the film, recalling Heming-
way: "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." In the novel, K. clearly is de-
feated.
Fascinatingly, Welles does the right thing by Camus - but for the wrong
reason: Welles did not have Camus or existentialism in mind when he rewrote
96
the ending of The Trial; rather, he had the Holocaust in mind:
In the end of the book he lies down there and they kill him. I don't
think Kafka could have stood for that after the deaths of six million
Jews. That terrible fact occurred after the writing of The Trial and I
think made Kafka's ending impossible. If you conceive of K. as a Jew,
as I did. ... It just made it morally impossible for me to see a man who
might even possibly be taken by the audience for a Jew lying down and
allowing himself to be killed that way. (Welles and Bogdanovich 274)3
Despite his different reason for changing the ending, Welles nonetheless "fixes"
Kafka for Camus. From an existentialist's point of view, any thought of personal
impotence or resignation has been removed. Death is the enemy; the Self is the
hero. Of the multiple ways to perceive Kafka's highly ambiguous novel, Orson
Welles inadvertently fell upon the most existentially felicitous.
Interpretations of The Trial - both book and film - vary considerably. Ca-
mus, obviously, sees the book as everyday life played against supernatural anxi-
ety (127). Critic Phillip Rhein classifies interpretations of the novel under three
headings: "the theological, the psychoanalytical and the sociological," although
he also acknowledges "a great deal of overlapping of positions in these three
categories" (1). Welles, in a proem to the film, calls its logic that of a nightmare,
and film critic Amy Täubin opines that "It's the nightmare aspect of the novel
that Welles captures with great ingenuity." However, Täubin and critic Bosley
Crowther also perceive K.'s dilemma as temporal rather than metaphysical:
"Evidently it is something quite horrific about the brutal, relentless way in
which the law as a social institution reaches out and enmeshes men in its com-
plex and calculating clutches until it crushes them to death" (Crowther). Indeed,
Welles' s biographer Charles Higham attributes similar sentiments to Welles
himself: "Welles saw the book in highly individual terms: in his vision, the vil-
lain was the bureaucracy that threatens К."Д298). In fact, Welles thought of The
Trial as "the most autobiographical movie that I've ever made, the only one
that's really close to me" (Welles and Bogdanovich 283). Like the filmmaker,
the novel is highly complex and lends itself to multiple interpretations, the latter
in large part because of the "Protean aspects of the symbols" (Rhein 86).4
Whether his quest is perceived as temporal or metaphysical, one thing is clear
from the novel: "K.s search is a search for truth. The various interpretations of
the meaning of truth to Kafka may be questioned, but it is generally agreed that
K. is in search of a truth that he never finds" (Rhein 77). However, the film can-
not claim the same level of ambiguity thanks to Welles' s rewrite. If interpreted
existentially from Camus's point of view, then K. does perceive truth in the film.
The majority of both novel and film details K.'s existential struggle, his at-
tempt to "return into the chain" as it contrasts his need to discover truth. When
he focuses on his quest for truth, K. often experiences inchoate moments of re-
_
volt, but he just as often lapses into a need to explain existence through the secu-
lar ideology of the law, sexual relationships, art, or religion. In a stream of con-
sciousness, K. quickly realizes that, although he has been "arrested," "he [is]
still free" (Kafka 5), and his freedom markedly contrasts that of the warders who
waylay him. They are operating solely on a temporal plane, whereas K. is oper-
ating well beyond them, which their own unenlightened commentary makes
clear:
You haven't treated us as our kind advances to you deserved, you have
forgotten that we, no matter who we may be, are at least free men com-
pared to you; that is no small advantage. All the same, we are prepared,
if you have any money, to bring you a little breakfast from the coffee-
house across the street. (Kafka 7)
In their ignorance, the warders confuse physical freedom of movement with
existential freedom, the baseness of their backwardness readily apparent in their
greed ("if you have any money"). The warders simply obey blindly, without
examining or questioning the "authorities" who govern their actions: ". . . we're
quite capable of grasping the fact that the high authorities we serve, before they
would order such an arrest as this, must be quite well informed about the reasons
for the arrest and the person of the prisoner" (Kafka 6). "This is the Law," a
warder finally summarizes, "How could there be a mistake in that?" (Kafka 6).
K., aware of the warder's circular reasoning, rejoins, "I don't know this Law,"
and he adds a moment later, "And it probably exists nowhere but in your own
head" (Kafka 6). Admittedly, K.'s moment of truly independent thought here is
qualified almost immediately by his desire to "acclimatize himself to the
thoughts of the warders if he cannot twist their thoughts "to his own advantage."
K. often seems mercurial, especially in the early stages of both novel and
film, because he is experiencing anguish, or "fear of nothing": "Nothingness or
non-being is at the root ofthat anxiety so peculiar to Kafka and Sartre. How can
one defend oneself against non-being?" (Goth 56). Orson Welles, expanding on
his description of The Trial as a "nightmare," similarly describes the anguish of
his Joseph K.: "[Dreams] can be specific, but some aren't, and this wasn't, be-
cause it is the very formlessness that is the horror of that story. It is supposed to
project a feeling of formless anguish, and anguish is a kind of dream which
makes you wake up sweating and whining" (Welles and Bogdanovich 282). As
Jean-Paul Sartre himself writes of people in K.'s predicament, K. "is condemned
to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet, in other respects,
is free" (23). K. has "awakened" to this condemnation, has begun to experience
the metaphorical nightmare Welles describes and depicts so well on the screen:
the nightmare that results from the contemplation of one's contingency.
Moreover, this experience ultimately extends from what Sartre calls "for-
lornness," that peculiar sense of isolation that follows the realization that God
98
does not exist (Sartre 21). And K. is isolated. Welles, for instance, shows him
walking briskly to his office in a monolithic building amidst rows and rows and
rows of busy typists, the harmonious clacking of their machines highlighting the
typists' status as automata.5 K. is the only individual on the screen because he is
the only one who dares to question dogma. Welles, like Kafka, depicts the indi-
vidual versus unseen powers, and from the beginning of the film, like the novel,
K. experiences extreme difficulty in coming to terms with their harsh - even if
implicit - accusation of "individual." As he incredulously tells Frau Grubach in
Welles's version, "It's so abstract 1 can't even consider that it applies to me."
Anguish and forlornness inform K.'s early consideration of suicide and his
subsequent bouts of nausea. Considering his predicament early in the novel,
Kafka's K. sits by himself in his room and ponders the efficacy of suicide, but
ultimately rejects the idea: "To take his life would be such a senseless act that,
even if he wished, he could not bring himself to do it because of its very sense-
lessness" (8). Unfortunately for this K., he considers half of Camus's "suicide or
recovery" dichotomy before he has even decided to "return into the chain" or
definitively awaken. Suicide seems senseless to him in his inchoate state of re-
volt because he still entertains hopes - and will continue to entertain hopes - of
returning to the chain, not because life is the only thing of value he possesses. In
the end, Kafka's K. will tacitly reconsider suicide and will come to a bitter con-
clusion. On the other hand, Welles's K. does not consider suicide early in the
film. He does sit and conclude that "they" - those unseen powers - want to de-
moralize him, want him to relinquish his newfound individuality, his burgeoning
sense of Self. He summarily rejects the idea. He, too, will consider suicide, but
he will do so at the proper time, after his meeting with the advocate in the cathe-
dral, after he has decided that returning to the chain simply is not an option.
Throughout both novel and film, K. experiences bouts of existential nausea
as his awareness of Self grows. This nausea results from the sense of contin-
gency K. feels as he tests various ideologies in an attempt to discover the truth
of his situation. For instance, one bout occurs when he visits the law offices in
an at attempt to expedite his case - that is, to try to discover meaning in the so-
cial structures erected by man. As the stifling atmosphere of the offices over-
comes K. in Kafka's version, a "girl" offers to take him to the "sick-room":
But K. had no wish to go to the sick-room, he particularly wanted to
avoid being taken any farther, the farther he went, the worse it must be
for him. "I'm quite able to go away now," he said and got up from his
comfortable seat, which had relaxed him so that he trembled as he
stood. But he could not hold himself upright. "I can't manage it after
all," he said, shaking his head, and with a sigh sat down again. (68)
In a later episode, K. becomes ill as he visits with the painter, Titorelli - that is,
he pursues an aesthetic solution to his problem: "He had begun to feel the air in
_
the room stifling, several times already he had eyed with amazement a little iron
stove in the corner which did not even seem to be working: the sultry heat in the
place was inexplicable" (148). Welles films this latter scene magnificently: a
faint, sweaty Joseph K. (Anthony Perkins) disrobes, bothered as much by the
pressure of the dozens of young girls' eyes that peer through the cracks in Ti-
torelli's attic as he is by the heat.6 In both versions, a stunned K. emerges from
the attic into the law offices. Titorelli explains, "There are Law Court offices in
almost every attic, why should this be an exception?" (164).
The ubiquitous "Law" informs virtually everything in both versions of The
Trial and is the unseen power behind virtually everything. K. tries to use his
reason to approach it through various ideological media, but he never is able to
reconcile his reason and his experience. At these moments, K.'s sickness arises
from his attempts to rationalize the irrational, to focus his reason on what cannot
be reasoned. In short, he thinks too much: "The soul is sick because it is divided
against itself, knowledge against life. Our ignorance is wiser than our knowl-
edge because our knowledge has become separated from our life" (Greenberg
65). The heroes of Sartre and Camus7 suffer the same disjunction as K., a dis-
junction founded on the falsehoods promulgated by their fellow human beings:
They, as individuals, are kept from a clear insight into the real nature of
things by the superimposed structures of a false society. They oscillate
between the worlds of authentic and unauthentic existence and try to
govern their lives according to two contradictory sets of rules: one for
the practical and social world and the other for the exercise of their own
intelligence. (Rhein 63)
To the world around him, K. is an aberration, an individual - that is part of his
crime; however, K. himself is not fully cognizant of this aspect of his crime
throughout most of the story. His desire to "return into the chain" contrasts with
his semi-conscious need to discover truth, a need that manifests itself primarily
in his moments of revolt.
Both Kafka and Welles intersperse K.'s attempts to "return into the chain"
with instances of revolt, instances of conscious rejection of what he is seeing or
hearing. In both versions, these instances of revolt accumulate and become more
severe until the moment of existential crisis at the end of the story. Their cumu-
lative effect finally impresses K. with a grave sense contingency. This contin-
gency manifest, both endings can be interpreted as Camus' s "definitive awaken^
ing," the point at which the absurd man must choose to die or recover, the latter,
ironically, by thinking: "Although our thinking has become the enemy of our
life, only through our thinking can we recover our life" (Greenberg 65).
One of K.'s earliest moments of revolt occurs shortly after his arrest, as he
faces the inspector in the room of his fellow lodger, Fräulein Bürstner. The in-
spector urges K. to "think less about us and of what is going to happen to you,
1ÕÕ
think more about yourself instead" (Kafka 12). He also accuses K. of talking too
much. K. is incensed:
He was thrown into a certain agitation, and began to walk up and
down - nobody hindered him - pushed back his cuffs, fingered his
shirt-front, ruffled his hair, and as he passed the three young men [co-
workers from his office who were brought along by the warders] said:
"This is sheer nonsense!" (Kafka 12)
Welles does not include this particular scene; indeed, he abbreviates Kafka's
lengthy first chapter for obvious reasons. However, he does capture the essence
of K.'s revolt. The "certain agitation" described by Kafka, for instance, easily
describes the state portrayed by Anthony Perkins as he confronts the witless
warders and the infuriatingly condescending inspector. K. barely can contain
himself, for instance, when one of the warders uses the word "ovular," which, K.
informs him, is not a word at all.8 K. can make no headway in explaining some-
thing this simple either to the warders or the inspector, a difficulty that high-
lights K.'s "otherness" and increases his "certain agitation."
Still, K.'s mercuriality characterizes the first half of the story. As quickly as
his feelings of revolt arise, they pass. Within a few pages of the above incident,
for example, Kafka's K. imagines resuming his place in the chain: "Once order
was restored, every trace of these events would be obliterated and things would
resume their old course" (17). Welles's K., too, evinces a desire to restore order
as he pursues his case through accepted channels. Initially, he dutifully attends
when summoned by the court, he visits the law offices, and he secures the ser-
vices of the advocate, Huid. Only when these channels fail to produce the ex-
pected - the longed for - results does K. begin to realize that his existential di-
lemma cannot be solved via human constructs, that returning to the chain is not
a viable option in his case, for his perception of the world has changed utterly,
like the perception of Sartre's Antoine Roquentin in La Nausée:
The world in which they live keeps its every day [sic] appearance, yet it
is seen from a nihilating viewpoint; severed from the order of causality
impressed upon it by society, it suddenly shows its reverse side. The
world shows a face hitherto unknown to the hero: vanishing, incoher-
ent, and gratuitous. (Goth 55)
Kafka's reader and Welles's viewer share K.'s confusion thanks to the unique
viewpoint employed by both author and filmmaker. Kafka's narration essentially
is third person, but it is the third person of a centered consciousness. The reader
experiences Joseph K.'s point of view, sees events through his eyes alone.
Hence, the reader shares K.'s bafflement:
Kafka's character-narrator never orients us: he knows only what he
sees; he does not know what happens in other places, does not know
the thoughts and intentions of the other characters, leaves certain capi-
__
tal events in the dark, dwells on minor ones, or, simply, does not un-
derstand what is happening. We, who are reading, entrusted to a guide
so uncertain and so little worthy of faith, understand less than he does.
(Citati 108)
Welles adopts this viewpoint for his version of The Trial. The camera essentially
is a third-person centered consciousness focused on Joseph K. It sees what K.
sees. It does not editorialize. Welles uses no dramatic irony, no visual asides to
help explain the causal relationships between events. For example, when the
court summons K. for the first time, Welles inserts a scene in which Anthony
Perkins must pass through a crowd of people, all of whom are standing com-
pletely still and wearing numbered signs around their necks. Does this scene -
which is unique to Welles' s version - relate to an overall theme of demoraliza-
tion? Does its juxtaposition with K.'s first hearing speak to the self-abnegation
of all those in the clutches of "the Law"? Does it have Holocaust significance
for Welles? All of these interpretations and more may be true owing to the cen-
tered consciousness of the camera.
With the exception of the scene in which he faces his death, K.'s most in-
tense moment of revolt occurs when he dismisses Huid, the advocate. When K.
originally engages Huld's services, he actually institutes a two-pronged assault
on "the Law." One of these prongs involves Leni, the advocate's nurse, who is
sexually attracted to condemned men. Leni represents one of K.'s attempts to get
at the truth through intimacy: "She has a shrewd insight into abandon that illu-
minates K.'s loss of ties with life, sensuality and routine"("The Trial," Variety).
In both versions of The Trial, K. believes he can gain some insight into his con-
dition by connecting - or reconnecting - with another human being, and the
more closely he connects, the more insight he will gain. Alternatively, Phillip
Rhein, who reads male figures like the advocate, the priest and the painter as
"father-figures," argues that K. sees in women like Leni "the potentiality of
freedom from the torment" these "father-figures" inflict (7 1).9 In any case, K.
believes that he has discovered another "other" in women, especially Leni, but
he is finally disillusioned when he realizes that Leni merely has a fetish for the
condemned. Indeed, when K. actually seeks insight from her, this fetish leads
Leni to counsel K. to confess his guilt: "Make your confession at the first chance
you get. Until you do that, there's no possibility of getting out of their clutches,
none at all" (Kafka 108). Basically, Leni counsels K. to "return into the chain,"
something he cannot do. The freedom she implies actually is the ignorance of
those whom Camus believes are asleep, bound by the chain.10
When K. dismisses the advocate, he virtually eliminates any chance of reen-
try. In fact, he comes much closer to seeing the world as an existentialist in Sar-
tre's vein sees it, according to Colin Wilson: "As he looks at this confusing
world that surges around him, he cannot believe that he has any choice but to see
_____
it, in fact, to be assaulted and raped by it" (The "New" Existentialism 10). This
is especially true in Welles' s version, where K.'s final revolt arises relatively
quickly after his dismissal of the advocate. Still, in both versions, K.'s disillu-
sionment with the explanations of mankind takes a great leap forward as K. ob-
serves the utter self-abnegation of the tradesman, Block, whose name alone sig-
nifies his lack of selfhood. In an attempt to show K. how well he actually is be-
ing treated, the advocate has Leni bring Block into the room. The advocate pro-
ceeds to treat Block severely, to berate him in the true sense of the word. Ulti-
mately, Block must kneel before the advocate's bed and kiss the latter' s hand.
The scene revolts K.:
It was humiliating even to an onlooker. So the lawyer's methods, to
which K. fortunately had not been long enough exposed, amounted to
this: that the client finally forgot the whole world and lived only in
hope of toiling along this false path until the end of his case should
come in sight. The client ceased to be a client and became the lawyer's
dog. If the lawyer were to order this man to crawl under the bed as if
into a kennel and bark there, he would gladly obey the order. (Kafka
193-94)
Anthony Perkins's Joseph K. mirrors these sentiments in Welles's version,
commenting out loud that Block has become the advocate's dog. More impor-
tant, it is not surprising that K.'s view of the world hardens so much after this
scene, for Block truly is being assaulted in the manner described above by Colin
Wilson.
Nonetheless, a telling exchange prefaces this scene in both versions of The
Trial, an exchange that highlights the distinction between K. and Block. In short,
K.'s reaction to Block's subservience is not wholly unexpected, but consistent
with K.'s ever-evolving existential awareness, as opposed to Block's insuper-
able ignorance. As he remonstrates with K. about dismissing him, the advocate
in Welles's version, paraphrasing the advocate in Kafka's version, tells K., "To
be in chains is sometimes safer than to be free." He adds that K. has been treated
too well, that K. himself does not understand how well he has been treated. This
leads to the advocate's scene with Block. Interestingly, though, Huld's delivery
of these words - especially by Orson Welles, who plays Huld in the movie - can
be summed up in a comment by Walter Benjamin: "Whenever figures in the
novels [The Castle and The Trial] have anything to say to K., no matter how
important or surprising it may be, they do so casually and with the implication
that he must really have known it all along" (26). K. is different, a true represen-
tative of all the discontent that rages in the reasonable man, of all the doubts that
undermine dogma. He is different, too, because, like Camus's Meursault, he acts
in accordance with his doubts: "They, as representatives of every man, must
seek out, be subjected to, and finally reject all the time-honored answers offered
_
to solve man's enigmatic relationship to his universe" (Rhein 93). К. is a repre-
sentative individual, representative of all that all other men could be. This Huid
knows. For whom would it be safer for K. to be in chains? From one perspec-
tive, K. From another perspective, everybody else.
K.'s moment of crisis - that is, the moment at which he must choose suicide
or recovery - follows his dismissal of the advocate. This dismissal, most poign-
antly in Welles's version, constitutes K.'s definitive awakening. K. cannot reen-
ter the chain after this point, either in the film or the book, although Kafka al-
lows him a last, lengthy theological debate with the priest.11 K., in short, faces
Kierkegaard's existential dilemma and metaphorically responds as Camus re-
sponds:
Kierkegaard may shout in warning: "If man had no eternal conscious-
ness, if, at the bottom of everything, there were merely a wild, seething
force producing everything, both large and trifling, in the storm of dark
passions, if the bottomless void that nothing can fill underlay all things,
what would life be but despair?" This cry is not likely to stop the ab-
surd man. Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. If in
order to elude the anxious question: "What would life be?" one must,
like the donkey, feed on the roses of illusion, then the absurd mind,
rather than resigning itself to falsehood, prefers to adopt fearlessly
Kierkegaard's reply: "despair." (Camus 41; emphasis mine)
Huld's warning about being in chains forces K. to realize that the law, the
church, aesthetics, and sex represent false paths, that Huid himself tacitly ac-
knowledges their falsehood. K., however, seeks truth, and he realizes that "Seek-
ing what is true is not seeking what is desirable." Indeed, K. wants to "return
into the chain" - that would be desirable - but not as long as reentry and truth
are incompatible. In other words, K's duty is to the human, not to dogmatic
falsehoods: "Kafka defends the human by exposing the all- too-human basis of
inhuman authority" (Greenberg 71).
Camus' s solution for an individual in K.'s predicament is permanent revolu-
tion. Suicide is not an option because life itself is the only thing of value one
has, and this value stems from revolt, from keeping the absurd in mind and con-
sciously rejecting it: "Spread out over the whole length of a life, it restores maj-
esty to that life" (Camus 55). On the other hand, "Suicide, like the leap [of
faith], is acceptance at its extreme" (Camus 54). Camus concedes that suicide
"settles the absurd" in its way, but it, like doctrinal renunciation of the absurd,
does so via the defeat of the individual.12 And K. is an individual - upon whom
revolution is incumbent: "Consciousness and revolt, these rejections are the con-
trary of renunciation. Everything that is indomitable and passionate in a human
heart quickens them, on the contrary, with its own life. It is essential to die un-
reconciled and not of one's own free will" (Camus 55). Or, as Maja Goth sum-
1Õ4
marizes it, "Existential choice means choice of life; it includes establishing es-
sence and the necessity for action" (64).
Kafka's Joseph K. ultimately accepts the absurd and suffers defeat;
Welles' s Joseph K. does not. After his encounter in the cathedral (with the priest
in the novel and with the advocate in the film), K. faces either defeat or destruc-
tion, the choice between which is all-important vis-à-vis Camus 's philosophy. In
the film, the advocate makes a last futile attempt to bring K. back into the chain.
Again tacitly acknowledging the absurd, he tells K., "You needn't accept every-
thing as true, only as necessary." Adapting the reply Kafka's K. offers the priest,
Anthony Perkins's K. tells the advocate that his logic "turns lying into a univer-
sal principle." In the movie, Joseph K. leaves the cathedral and proceeds directly
into the arms of the warders who are to execute him. The unseen powers in the
movie have recognized that K. never will return to the chain. In the novel, more
time elapses, but K. still finally proceeds to his execution with the warders.
As the warders lead Kafka's Joseph K. to his place of execution, the latter
experiences his final moment of revolt, one that could have saved him from de-
feat had he nurtured it:
"I won't go any farther," said K. experimentally. No answer was
needed to that, it was sufficient that the two men did not loosen their
grip and tried to propel K. from the spot, but he resisted them. I shan't
need my strength much longer, I'll expend all the strength I have, he
thought. Into his mind came a recollection of flies struggling away
from the flypaper till their little legs were torn off. The gentlemen
won't find it easy. (Kafka 225)
This telling excerpt contains both the sense of revolt and acceptance that mark
the characterization of K. in the novel. At one point, K. concedes defeat by
thinking, "I shan't need my strength much longer"; at another point, he calls
forth the image of flies ripping themselves apart while trying to escape from
flypaper, an image that symbolizes the opposite of defeatism. However, Kafka's
K. experiences virtually no revolt after this point. In fact, shortly after the above
thoughts flash through his mind, he "suddenly [realizes] the futility of resis-
tance" (225). Consequently, this K. becomes a willing party to his own defeat.
Admittedly, as he lies on the ground awaiting his execution, he refuses to take
the knife into his own hands and do the job himself: "K. now perceived clearly
that he was supposed to seize the knife himself, as it traveled from hand to hand
above him, and plunge it into his own breast. But he did not do so, he merely
turned his head, which was still free to move, and gazed around him"(228). Still,
this gesture is very weak, hardly worthy of the heading "revolt"; indeed, K.
quickly admits to himself that he simply has not "the remnant of strength neces-
sary for the deed," implying that he would do it if he had. When the final mo-
ment arrives, K. simply allows the warders to "thrust the knife deep into his
105
heart" and turn it twice. Recalling Block, K. gasps, "Like a dog!" and thinks, "it
was as if the shame of it must outlive him" (229). As Martin Greenberg argues,
"When [Kafka's] Joseph K. dies seeking the judge whom he has never seen, the
High Court to which he has never penetrated - seeking the indestructible some-
thing in himself in which he may trust - he dies in true spiritual anguish . . ."
(73). Although he does not thrust the knife into himself, this K.'s anguish none-
theless drives him to suicide. Through it, he accepts the absurd and thus com-
mits the existentialist's "sin without God."
Welles' s Joseph K. remains sinless. Initially, his final moments proceed as
in Kafka's novel. The warders pass the knife over him, hoping he will take the
blade and kill himself. This is the moment at which Welles' s K. considers sui-
cide: he stares pensively at the blade and clearly thinks about inflicting death on
himself. In fact, he says, "You expect me to take the knife and do the job my-
self? You'll have to do it. You!" Next, he rises to his feet and screams at the
quickly retreating warders, "You! You'll have to kill me!" He then begins to
mock the warders, laughing maniacally at them. He has chosen life. He will not
part with it willingly. Indeed, Welles' s K. clearly understands something that
Kafka's K. does not: "There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn"
(Camus 121). In other words, one must suffer his fate, but one need not accept
it. "A man can be destroyed but not defeated." The warders do not really under-
stand this K.'s burst of selfhood, his refusal to accept defeat. Still, they do de-
stroy him by tossing a bomb into the pit where he stands mocking them.13
Unlike Kafka's K., Welles's K. truly is destroyed, blown to pieces. However, he
dies knowing that he, like Camus's Meursault, has discovered truth:
Near death, they have learned that life with all its inexplicable in-
volvements is not only worth living, but that it offers man his one
chance for happiness. The absurdity of life, which actually has nothing
to do with either society or man's behavior within society, cannot be
denied or eradicated. It is in reality an invitation to a happiness com-
pletely rooted in the knowledge that men live and men die. (Rhein 88)
Welles's Joseph K. realizes his own contingency, but he refuses to make peace
with it or surrender to it, as does Kafka's Joseph K.
Joseph K. is a truly absurd character in both the novel and film versions of
The Trial. In both, his individuality and consequent abandonment of dogma in
all its forms force him into an existential dilemma informed by a need for truth.
As Phillip Rhein argues, The Trial is a novel of "development" in which Joseph
K. "must go through the agonizing experience of affirming that the infinite value
of life lies in the very finiteness of its nature" (88-89). Curiously, however, it is
not at all clear from Camus's perspective that Kafka's Joseph K. comes to this
affirmation. He almost comes to it, whereas Welles's K. does come to it. The
former ultimately resigns himself to the absurd; the latter does not, does not "go
1Õ6
gentle into that good night." Like Camus's Meursault, Welles's Joseph K.
"learn[s] that it [the absurd] [can] neither be ignored nor destroyed but [has] to
be faced with defiance" (Rhein 83). The distinction between the two versions of
K. can be made clearer if one adapts an image Rhein uses to distinguish Kafka
and Camus:
[Kafka's Joseph K. and Welles's Joseph K.] are standing before a
curved shop window while admiring a magnificent collection of art ob-
jects. Each of them is lost in his own thoughts and oblivious to the bus-
tling of the intersection where the shop is located. At one moment,
jolted out of their reveries by a sudden noise, they both lift their eyes
and see the grotesquely distorted mass of men and machines as they are
reflected in the curved glass. Momentarily, these objects appear to be
monstrous phantoms closing in on the two men. Both pause, stare,
shudder. [Kafka's K.] quickly lowers his glance. [Welles's K.] turns
and steps into the street. (Rhein 10)
Acting as Camus would, Welles's K. ultimately confronts the "monstrous phan-
toms" that plague him, and he defies them by facing them and berating them,
superior in his awareness of Self. This Kafka's K. simply is unable to do; in-
stead, he "lowers his glance" or, as Kafka would have it, "merely [turns] his
head."
Notes
]For a comparative discussion of Hemingway and Kafka, see Caroline

Gordon, "Notes on Hemingway and Kafka."
Goth later adds that "a concrete misdeed would permit him to forget his
fundamental guilt. To take an offense upon oneself or to prove one's innocence
allows justification and constitutes being" (6 1 -62).
3Curiously, although Kafka was Jewish, his K. is Christian: "The priest gave
a little nod and K. crossed himself and bowed, as he ought to have done earlier"
(Kafka 207).
4Welles's own "protean" view of the film coincides with the person inter-
viewing him. Of K.'s guilt, for instance, he tells Bogdanovich, "Maybe he's
innocent. It's totally ambiguous" (282). However, The Motion Picture Guide
describes the film and Welles's consideration of K.'s guilt in this way: "The
chief difference in Welles's Joseph K. and Kafka's is in the question of the
character's guilt. While Kafka stresses ambiguity, Welles is clear in his feelings:
'He is a little bureaucrat. I consider him guilty. ... He belongs to a guilty society,
he collaborates with it'" (Nash and Ross 3541). Still, Welles's contradictory
notions about K. simply reinforce the fact that The Trial easily can be inter-
preted, as Walter Sokel argues, from naturalist and spiritualist perspectives:
107
"The difficulty of doing justice to Kafka lies in the equal validity of these two
perspectives which seem to vitiate every statement made about Kafka, no matter
how justified, by the equal appropriateness of its exact opposite" (179).
5Welles filmed the interior scenes of The Trial in the massive Gare d'Orsay.
See Welles and Bogdanovich 246-48.
6Titorelli here astounds K. by saying that the young girls belong to the
court: "You see, everything belongs to the Court" (Kafka 150). This revelation
foreshadows the juxtaposition of Titorelli's attic and the law offices.
Specifically, Antoine Roquentin of La Nausée and Meursault of
L 'Étranger, respectively.
This scene is unique to Welles's version. Ironically, "ovular" is a word, ac-
cording to Webster's New Universal Unabridged Dictionary.
9See Rhein 64-71 for more on the "father-figures" reading.
loln Kafka's version, K. experiences another lessening of his sense of revolt
subsequent to Leni's counsel: "The thought of his case never left him now. He
had often considered whether it would not be better to draw up a written defense
and hand it in to the Court. In this defense he would give a short account of his
life, and when he came to an event of any importance explain for what reasons
he had acted as he did... "(113).
11 Before this debate begins, Kafka's K. entertains hope that he may be able
to obtain "decisive and acceptable counsel" from the priest, counsel that may
point the way to "a circumvention" of his case (212). Kafka's K. vacillates much
more frequently than Welles's K., one reason that his feelings of revolt never
achieve the intensity of the latter's.
12Accepting or settling with the absurd is synonymous with defeat. In order
to avoid defeat, one must keep the absurd always in view, consciously defying it
all the while. See Camus 135.
After this bomb explodes, a giant "mushroom" cloud rises into the air, and
many viewers have interpreted this cloud apocalyptically. Welles, however,
downplays its significance: "I really didn't mean that big atom-bomb thing. It
was a real mistake, a blooper on my part; it didn't register with me as an atom
bomb. It just seemed to me to be all bombs - including the atom bomb - and all
explosions and all destruction . . ." (Welles and Bogdanovich 275).
Works Cited
Benjamin, Walter. "Some Reflections on Kafka." Franz Kajka. Bloom 17-32.

Bloom, Harold. Franz Kafka. New York: Chelsea House, 1986.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. New York: Vintage, 1991.
Citati, Pietro. Kajka. New York: Knopf, 1990.
Crowther, Bosley. Rev. of The Trial, dir. Orson Welles. Perf. Anthony Perkins
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and Orson Welles. Paris-Europa, 1963. New York Times 21 Feb. 1963, sec.
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Gordon, Caroline. "Notes on Hemingway and Kafka." Kafka: A Collection of
Critical Essays. Ed. Ronald Gray. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1962.
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Goth, Maja. "Existentialism and Franz Kafka: Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus
and Their Relationship to Kafka." Proceedings of the Comparative Litera-
ture Symposium. Ed. Wolodymyr T. Zyla. Vol. 4. Lubbock: Texas Tech UP,
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Greenberg, Martin. "Art and Dreams." Franz Kafka. Bloom 63-76.
Higham, Charles. Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius. New
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1968.
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delivertHitNum=2&lStarHit=2&delType=FT>.
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New York: Da Capo, 1998.

Wilson, Colin. The "New" Existentialism. Nottingham
109

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"Sin without God": Existentialism and "The Trial"

Author(s): John A. Dern

]For a comparative discussion of Hemingway and Kafka, see Caroline

Benjamin, Walter. "Some Reflections on Kafka." Franz Kajka. Bloom 17-32.

New York: Da Capo, 1998.

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