Franz Kafka’s The Trial explores themes of alienation, powerlessness, etc. Bureaucracy originated within capitalist culture, which started to govern all human beings. Over time, it developed into an overpowering system that began to govern and regulate every aspect of human life. Instead of serving society, bureaucracy created its own way of thinking, its own tools to control, leading to a condition where humans were no longer free agents but mere parts of the system. In simple terms, bureaucracy is a system of organizations and governments through a structured hierarchy of rules, officials, etc. It is designed to create order, efficiency, and fairness by following clear rules. However, it often becomes overly complex, slow, and impersonal. Instead of serving people efficiently, it can create a rigid system where decisions are delayed and individuals feel powerless.
Kafka, having worked in insurance offices and as a lawyer, had firsthand knowledge of how bureaucracy operates. It’s called rationality, its endless paperwork, and the emotional toll on the person. These experiences influenced his writing. The legal and administrative system that arrests Joseph K. is never fully seen. The reader, like K., never learns who runs it or how to fight it. The novel presents a world that is surreal and absurd. The arrest itself is strange: people appear not in a police station or court, but in K.’s own bedroom on the morning of his 30th birthday. A birthday especially one that marks a new decade is a time for reflection and personal growth. Instead, K. begins this new phase under guilt and control.
A similar pattern is seen in the case of Block, the tradesman who is arrested shortly after his wife’s death. In both cases, Kafka shows how the system destroys the boundary between public duty and private life. Kafka also shows that hierarchy plays an important role in this system. K. has a high position in society. He is a chief clerk at a bank, and he thinks he is better than the lower officials who arrest him. Yet he follows their orders. He is watched under surveillance. Even the people who are his subordinates at the bank are secretly observing him.
K. often treats the situation like a joke, but in Kafka’s world, jokes are not funny—they are dark and disturbing. For example, K. is told that there is a hearing on a Sunday, which is usually a holiday. This adds to the strangeness of the legal system, which works by its own bizarre logic. The court is always described as dark, dusty, and airless. K. often feels suffocated, which symbolizes how the system oppresses people. When he looks at the judge’s books, he finds not legal texts but books filled with pornographic images, showing how justice is replaced with corruption.
The presence of law is felt everywhere, even in unexpected places. Example—when K. finds the whipman and the two warders, Willem and Franz, hidden in a closet at his workplace, the bank, K. feels guilty, as his casual complaint has led to their punishment. The whipman has no name, but he’s identified by his job. Individuals lose identity in a bureaucratic system. K. blames the system, saying the court should punish its higher officials instead of low-level workers. But the court is faceless and unreachable. With the character of the lawyer Huld, Kafka portrays the theme of deformity. The lawyer is bedridden, showing the law is itself sick and dysfunctional. K. learns that Huld already knows everything about his case without ever meeting him, showing that information travels mysteriously. Interestingly, it is women who help K. more than men. The washerwoman, Leni, and others provide K. with support.
The court painter, Titorelli, paints portraits of judges he has never met, imagining what power looks like since it’s unreachable. Titorelli discusses the three types of acquittals: absolute, apparent, and deferred. Absolute acquittal is when the person is declared innocent, but it’s impossible. Apparent and deferred acquittals only prolong the process. In both cases, the person remains under the court’s power forever. There is no real escape from bureaucracy once it catches someone.
There is also a visual dimension to the imbalance of power. Kafka often describes the officials as physically larger than K., showing their dominance. The courtrooms are like a vast labyrinth. It has no central building, no single room, and appears in attics, back rooms, etc. No one—not even lawyers seems to know how the court truly works. K. never has a formal trial, yet the novel is called The Trial.