3 possible readings of The Trial

I’ve started (re)reading Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial (1925, posthumous publication) in the Schocken “definitive” edition. Everyone knows the basic premise of this novel: Joseph K., 30-year-old bank employee in an unnamed city, is wakened by an officious man who tells him he’s under arrest and due for trial, and over the course of the novel K tries unsuccessfully to find out what he’s been accused of and whatis expected of him (for ex., he receives a call at work informing him that he much be present for an interrogation on Sunday, but he’s not given the time – he arrives at the remote street address, which seems to be nothing more than a row of tenements; he enters, wanders through corridors, takes some time before he arrives at the hearing room – a grand open space filled with spectators). It strikes me in the early going that there are at least 3 ways to interpret and understand this novel: First, the psychological. Inevitably, K’s persecution and frustration seem and feel like a vivid high-anxiety dream, as K’s search for information about the supposed case against him seems to follow a painful and disturbing dream logic and the extreme frustration that dreams, at least for me!, often encompass. Second, the political: Hard not to draw comparisons between the oppression of K and the political show trials against the innocent and unaware, usually in oligarchies, dictatorships, and monarchies – and increasingly, as we painfully see, in democracies. Third, the allegorical: As K is put “on trial” in a public setting for undisclosed crimes, there is a sense that all of us are on trial in some way or manner: Have we done all we can or should to rectify injustice, poverty, and cruelty in our world? Will we all face a final judgment in a way that we cannot imagine or articulate? Are we, in a sense, on trial every day, as there’s so much we can do in every living moment that can be helpful or hurtful?