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.
FragmentsChapter Summaries & Analyses
Fragment 1 Summary: “B.’s Friend”
K. has been trying to speak with Fräulein Bürstner again for several days, with no success: The young typist has been avoiding him. He sends a letter apologizing for his behavior, but the letter is not answered. One Sunday, K. sees that another boarder, Fräulein Montag, is moving into Fräulein Bürstner’s room. He asks Frau Grubach about this, and she explains the situation, relieved that K. is speaking to her again.
K. speaks with Fräulein Montag in the dining room, and she tells him that it would be best if he stopped trying to get in contact with Fräulein Bürstner. She explains that she is speaking on Fräulein Bürstner’s behalf. K. thanks her coldly and leaves as the captain, Frau Grubach’s nephew, enters the room and greets Fräulein Montag politely. As the two converse, K. cannot resist knocking on Fräulein Bürstner’s door and even peeking his head inside to see if she is in. Fräulein Bürstner is not there. As K. leaves, he sees Fräulein Montag and the captain standing and talking in the doorway of the dining room, from where they would have clearly seen him enter the room.
Fragment 2 Summary: “Public Prosecutor”
K. often dines with important legal professionals. The debates that take place within this group are often dominated by Public Prosecutor Hasterer, who has become a close personal friend of K. Through this acquaintance, K. himself soon comes to be “acknowledged as an expert in business” (245). Sometimes Hasterer would invite K. to his apartment and the two would sit drinking and smoking. For a few weeks, Hasterer had a woman named Helene living with him, but she grew increasingly jealous and intrusive of the pair until Hasterer kicked her out. One day, the president of K.’s bank tells him that he saw K. the night before, walking “arm in arm” (249) with Hasterer by a church. K. confirms that this had happened, and that he and Hasterer are good friends—something that surprises the president.
Fragment 3 Summary: “To Elsa”
One evening, K. receives a phone call at the bank instructing him to come to the court offices immediately. He is warned that he has done considerable harm to his case and that he must not disregard the summons. K., who had been planning to visit Elsa after work, asks what will happen if he does not come. He is informed that the court will “know how to find you” (252) and that he will not be punished for failing to come willingly (though he might be coerced). Content with this, K. decides to “incite” (252) the court authorities to come after him and to take a cab to meet Elsa, as he had originally planned.
Fragment 4 Summary: “Struggle With the Vice President”
K.’s rivalry with the vice president of his bank continues to occupy him at work. The vice president often behaves as though their relationship is good, but routinely sabotages K., while K. does his best to show the vice president that he “[is] alive, and that, like all living things, he might one day show surprising new capabilities, no matter how harmless he appear[s] at the moment” (256). One day, the vice president comes into K.’s office to hear a report. As K. is reading the report, the vice president becomes distracted by a perceived flaw in the balustrade of K.’s desk, which he tries to correct by banging on it and eventually sitting on it.
Fragment 5 Summary: “The Building”
K. decides to find the office from which “the initial notification of his case had been issued” (259). He finds the address easily enough, though Titorelli, who gives him the address, tells him that this office is “not of the slightest importance” (259) as it is merely an extension of the Office of Prosecution, which is itself inaccessible. K., however, mocks Titorelli by behaving as though he knows something about the office building that Titorelli does not know.
K. has been growing more distant from the other boarders of Frau Grubach’s boardinghouse. One day, he thinks he sees the boarders walking outside as a group, but he avoids them.
Fragment 6 Summary: “Journey to his Mother”
Two weeks before his birthday, K. suddenly decides to visit his ailing mother, whom he has not seen in three years. K. has been receiving updates on his mother’s condition from his cousin, who writes in his letters that though her vision is failing, she has become more pious and is very lively when it comes to attending church. K. sends his assistant to Frau Grubach to pack an attaché case for his trip, hands over some of his business to a colleague, and informs the president of his intention to visit his mother. As K. is going to the cab, Kullych the clerk approaches him with a letter. K. tries to wave him off, but Kullych does not understand the sign, so K., annoyed, tears up the letter. As he leaves, he reflects that “perhaps it was a good sign that just before leaving, he had convinced himself he could still seize a letter from a clerk, even one who was connected with the court, and tear it to pieces without a word of apology” (266).
Fragments Analysis
Kafka never completed The Trial. He worked on the novel between 1914 and 1915 and then abandoned it for unclear reasons, moving on to other projects. When Kafka’s close friend and executor Max Brod prepared The Trial for publication after Kafka’s death, he excluded chapters he deemed more fragmentary from the published manuscript. Later editions and translations, however, have often included these “fragments,” which contribute to our understanding of the work even as they more strongly highlight the novel’s unfinished state. The fragments are sometimes hard to pinpoint in relation to the rest of the novel, introducing characters in passing who are never otherwise mentioned (such as Wolfhart in Fragment 5). The fragments also develop characters mentioned in the completed chapters only in passing, including K.’s prosecutor friend Hasterer (Fragment 2) and Fräulein Bürstner (Fragment 1).
The fragments pick up on the key themes present throughout the novel. In particular, the fragments revolve around K.’s continuing struggle to function in his work and personal life as the trial consumes more and more of his mental and emotional resources. The court’s hold on K.’s psyche is apparent even in the moments when he appears to forget about it. In Fragment 4, “Struggle with the Vice President,” for example, K. “scarcely thought about the court at all” (254) and turns all of his energies to his ongoing rivalry with the vice president of his bank. This fragment is even comical, describing the vice president’s attempts to distract K. from his work by tinkering with the balustrade of his desk, but it’s clear that K.’s paranoia about his job is an outgrowth of his well-founded sense of persecution at the hands of the court. In Fragment 3, similarly, as K. goes to visit Elsa he “gradually forgot about the court, and thoughts of the bank began to occupy him fully once more, as in earlier times” (253).
The Absurdity of Bureaucracy is also felt in the fragments. In Fragment 5, “The Building,” K. is able to find the address of the office that issued his arrest warrant, but this office is merely an extension of the “vast” Office of Prosecution, “which was of course inaccessible to the parties involved” (259). When K. asks what will happen if he does not comply with the court’s summons in Fragment 3, “To Elsa,” he is notified that the court’s officers will “know how to find” (252) him. In Fragment 4, “Struggle with the Vice President,” K. has come to recognize the court as a “huge and totally obscure organization” (254), even if he still holds on to the hope that this organization can somehow be “seized, pulled up, and destroyed” (254). A new aspect of K.’s trial is explored in Fragment 5, “The Building,” which describes how K. has learned to manipulate low-ranking figures, such as Titorelli, who are associated with the court:
He took pleasure in these small victories; he felt then that he understood the people on the periphery of the court much better; now he could toy with them, almost join them himself, gaining for the moment at least the improved overview afforded, so to speak, by standing on the first step of the court (260).
K. expresses his resentment of the court in acts of defiance so trivial that they only emphasize his powerlessness. He takes a perverse pleasure in causing the court “no small difficulty” (252) by visiting Elsa instead of appearing before them. Later, in Fragment 6, “Journey to his Mother,” K. is even more aggressive when he tears up a letter from one of the lower clerks of his bank even though he knows him to be “connected with the court” (266), and regretting only that he cannot go further and give him “two loud slaps on his pale round cheeks” (266). The gesture of tearing up the letter makes no difference, while the actual violence takes place only in his imagination.
Many of the fragments also continue K.’s preoccupation with women. Fragment 1, “B.’s Friend,” describes K.’s persistent attempts to see Fräulein Bürstner again after kissing her in Chapter 2. It is likely that Fräulein Bürstner—who is mentioned on a few occasions in the novel and features prominently in K.’s reflections just before he dies—was intended to play a larger role in the finished novel (she is central in Fragment 1 but also appears in Fragment 5). As in the completed chapters, K.’s preoccupation with women often interferes with his case. In Fragment 3 (“To Elsa”) in particular, K. ignores a summons to the court to see Elsa, even after being expressly warned against failing to make an appearance at the court.
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By Franz Kafka
