44 pages • 1 hour read
Franz KafkaThe Trial
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1925A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “The Arrest”
Josef K. wakes up to find that his landlady’s cook has not brought him his breakfast. When he rings for her, a strange man enters his room while another waits outside the door. The men, who introduce themselves as Willem and Franz, tell K. that he is under arrest. K. demands to know the charges against him, but the strangers explain that they are only warders and as such cannot supply any information. K. is ordered to go back to his room, where he wonders whether his colleagues at the bank are playing a prank on him, as it is his 30th birthday.
K. is soon summoned by one of the warders to meet with the inspector. The warder instructs him to change into a black suit and then takes him to an adjoining room, which has recently been rented by a typist, Fräulein Bürstner. The inspector is not able to give K. any more information than the warders, and after a brief exchange he tells K. that he is free to go to work: Though he is under arrest, he is not to be confined in any way. The inspector and the warders depart, and K. leaves for work with three young clerks from his bank, whom the authorities have summoned to escort him.
Chapter 2 Summary: “Conversation With Frau Grubach Then Fräulein Bürstner”
That evening, K. goes straight home, skipping his usual stroll and his visit to the tavern and the waitress Elsa. He feels troubled by the morning’s events and thinks that he needs to “restore order” (21) in the boardinghouse. K. finds the landlady, Frau Grubach, darning stockings. In the ensuing conversation, Frau Grubach tells K. that she was not bothered by the warders or the Inspector. She has nothing to complain about regarding K., saying that he is her favorite lodger. K. asks if Fräulein Bürstner has returned, explaining that he wants to apologize that her room has been used on his account without her permission. Frau Grubach says that Fräulein Bürstner is at the theater, protesting that she thinks her conduct is inappropriate. This angers K., who storms off and goes to his room to wait for Fräulein Bürstner.
When Fräulein Bürstner returns to the boardinghouse a few hours later, K. goes into her room and apologizes for the morning’s events. While reenacting the scene, he makes a commotion that wakes up Frau Grubach’s nephew, who is sleeping in the living room. The noise alarms Fräulein Bürstner. K. comforts the young woman and kisses her before she sends him away.
Chapter 3 Summary: “Initial Inquiry”
K. receives a phone call at work informing him that an initial inquiry into his case will take place the following Sunday. The caller names an address but does not specify a time, and notes that further inquiries will be conducted at the same place “with increasing frequency” (35) as the case progresses. When the vice president invites K. to a party on Sunday, K. must decline.
On the appointed day, K. decides to arrive at the inquiry at nine in the morning. He discovers that the address he has been given is an apartment building in a poor neighborhood. The building is full of people, and there is no indication of where the court may be. K. devises a ploy to look into every room, knocking on the door and asking after a carpenter named Lanz. When he reaches the fifth floor, he is about to give up when a woman leads him inside into a crowded meeting hall with a gallery. A man whom K. identifies as the examining magistrate reprimands K. for being an hour late but agrees to examine him anyway.
In the inquiry that ensues, K. speaks at length against the inscrutability of the court’s proceedings (especially after the magistrate mistakes him for a house painter). As he speaks, half of the crowd cheers and applauds him while the other half remains silent and unmoved. K is soon interrupted by a commotion from the back of the room, caused by a young man and the woman who led him inside. As K. tries to investigate, the two sides of the crowd move together and K. realizes that all are wearing identical badges. He realizes that they were toying with him by pretending to be divided on his case when in fact everybody in the room is part of the corrupt system he has been condemning. K. leaves the room, but not before the magistrate warns him that he has thrown away the advantage of an interrogation.
Chapter 4 Summary: “In the Empty Courtroom; The Student; The Offices”
K. does not hear again from the court but returns to the address on the following Sunday anyway. He is shown inside by the same woman, who informs him that the court is not in session that day. K. speaks with the woman who tells him that she is the wife of the court usher. They live in the apartment rent-free when the court is not in session. The woman explains that the commotion that interrupted K.’s speech the previous Sunday was caused by a law student who has been trying to seduce her. She offers to help K., whom she apparently finds very attractive, claiming that she may be able to sway the examining magistrate because he, like the law student, has taken an interest in her.
The law student enters and the woman goes to talk to him, telling K. that she will soon return. As K. watches the student and the woman, he thinks about her proposal and decides to take her up on it, hoping their relationship will turn romantic. At last, K. becomes impatient and confronts the student, who grabs the woman and begins to carry her away. K. offers to help the woman, but she tells him he must not do so—the student has been sent to bring her to the examining magistrate. K. watches furiously as the student carries the woman up a staircase leading to an attic.
The usher arrives and complains to K. about the situation with his wife. He offers to show K. around the court offices, which are upstairs in the attic. K. initially hesitates, but soon he is overcome by curiosity and accompanies the usher. The offices are even more stuffy and run-down than the rest of the court. K. tries to speak with one of the accused, but the man is so confused and anxious that he is hardly able to respond. As he continues to follow the usher, K. grows faint and asks to be led out. The voices attract a woman, who offers K. a chair and explains that the stuffy air of the court offices has a similar effect on many first-time visitors. She introduces K. to the information officer—a well-dressed official with whom she shares an office—and the two lead K. outside.
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The opening chapters of Franz Kafka’s novel set the stage for the surreal and nightmarish journey of the protagonist, Josef K., as he begins his futile struggle against Inaccessible Systems of Power. K. finds himself in the grip of an inscrutable legal system—one that accepts no authority but its own and has no apparent regard for reason or justice. K. himself, to be sure, is not without flaws: He is arrogant, ambitious, and impatient (especially toward those he regards as his inferiors). But K. has also committed no crime as far he (or the reader) can tell. Indeed, the only possible explanation for his arrest—as the novel’s very first sentence establishes—is that “someone must have slandered” (3) him. In sharp contrast to the clean-cut and meticulous K., who dresses well and is employed as the chief financial officer of a large bank, the court and its officials are repugnant, suggesting internal as well as external corruption. The warders who arrest K. eat his breakfast and virtually ask him for a bribe; the initial inquiry is held at a run-down unit of an apartment building, while the court offices are in the even more run-down attic of the building. The law students and magistrates vie for the affections of the court usher’s wife.
K.’s case highlights The Relationship Between Law and Guilt. The warders who arrest K. inform him that they cannot tell him the charges that have been brought against him, only that “proceedings are under way and you’ll learn everything in due course” (5); none of the court officials, including the examining magistrate, are any more informative, and indeed the charges against K. are never revealed. As K. protests to the usher’s wife, “it’s in the nature of this judicial system that one is condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance” (55). The implication of this statement is that actual guilt or innocence has no relationship to the court’s eventual verdict, as both the charges and the evidence are inaccessible to the accused. The court’s assumption is that nobody is ever entirely guiltless, and from the beginning of the novel various court officials repeatedly remind K. that the fact that he is ignorant of his crime does not mean that his crime is not serious. One of the warders who arrests K. in Chapter 1, for instance, observes of K. that “he admits that he doesn’t know the Law and yet he claims he’s innocent” (9). Guilt arises not from one’s actions but from the court’s judgment, and once assigned it cannot be expunged.
K.’s situation becomes increasingly surreal and ambiguous, as does K’s response to it. The Absurdity of Bureaucracy is apparent from the beginning, as explains the nonsensical conditions of K.’s arrest: “[Y]ou’re under arrest, certainly, but that’s not meant to keep you from carrying on your profession. Nor are you to be hindered in the course of your ordinary life” (17). As K. subsequently goes about “the course of [his] ordinary life,” he oscillates between the feeling that he must “put up a fight” (36) and the idea—echoed by several of the other characters, such as Frau Grubach—that the situation can hardly be taken seriously. He even tells the usher’s wife that he is “not at all concerned about the outcome of the trial, and would only laugh at a conclusion” (59). But K.’s actions suggest that these words are mere posturing. K. comes to the court in Chapter 4, for instance, even though he has not been summoned, and later is on the verge of entering into a physical altercation with the law student. Following his confrontation with the law student, K. reflects that he has suffered “the first real defeat he had suffered at the hands of these people” (64), and that this defeat could have been avoided had he ignored his case and “stayed home and led his normal life” (64). Yet K.’s resolve not to take his case seriously is once again undermined almost immediately when K. accepts the usher’s invitation to follow him to the court offices in the attic—another action that gives the distinct impression that K. cannot help but take his case seriously in spite of how ridiculous he thinks it is. The court thus seems to be baiting K. into a game he cannot win. Trials such as K.’s, as the various court officials inform him, are foregone conclusions. The court’s power grows increasingly evident, even as this power is juxtaposed with the court’s seemingly unimpressive accoutrements (officials who do not wear uniforms, court offices in the stuffy attic of an apartment building, and so on). The sense of surrealism or unreality becomes stronger over the course of the novel.
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