Review of the play “The Judgment” by Franz Kafka (The tragedy of human isolation in society)

I watched the play “The Judgment” by Franz Kafka, which explores the tragedy of human isolation in society.

 

As it is now, I lived a life far away from theater since I was a child, so naturally, I had few opportunities to go to theater, museums, and concerts, and I had little interest in it. Even as an adult, I was completely ignorant about theater. My experience with theater was limited to a few plays that I was dragged to by my mother’s hand as a child.
However, when I had the opportunity to see Franz Kafka’s “The Judgment” in the theater, I took it. “I was familiar with Franz Kafka as a literary master, but I only knew about his work ‘The Metamorphosis’, and of course, ‘Judgment’ was a work I hadn’t even heard of. I went to see the play in this state of ignorance, so it was only natural that I had expectations, and I couldn’t get out of my drowsiness until just before the play started. I was seated in the third row, right in front of the stage, and I was so uninterested that I was worried about falling asleep while watching the play so close to the stage. This boredom continued until the main character, Joseph K, appeared. The story of The Judgment goes something like this.
Joseph K is arrested on an unremarkable morning (his birthday, if nothing else). He’s a self-made man, a bank manager, and he’s interrogated without knowing English. Joseph K. tries to prove his innocence by meeting with many people, including his tiny father, a famous lawyer, the woman next door, a painter, a priest, and a judge, but he finds no salvation anywhere. In the midst of all this, his smooth and normal life is ruined. The mental stress and restraint caused by the constant interrogation by the police and the criminal-like attitude of the people around him leads to his own frustration, and finally to his death.
Kafka’s ‘The Metamorphosis’ also seems to deal with the sudden changes in a person’s life, the people around him, and the circumstances of his life. After being interrogated and arrested without knowing English on the morning of his birthday, the protagonist, Joseph K, continues to feel that someone is watching him and continues to feel psychological and mental pressure. Here, Joseph K’s arrest is not an arrest in the sense of being caught and judged by the police for committing a crime, but an arrest in the sense of mental restraint. Even though he doesn’t feel like he has committed a crime worthy of arrest, and the officers who want to arrest him only mention the trial and not what the crime is, he continues to feel psychological pressure.
When Joseph K was first told he was being arrested, he tried to laugh it off. But as the officers, lawyers, priest, judge, and everyone around him treat him as a criminal, he begins to feel psychologically uneasy. He tries hard to prove his innocence, but the people around him don’t care. Even his father, who is his only family, seems to be concerned only with the family name and not with Joseph K’s psychological state or whether he is guilty or not. This seems to emphasize the isolation of individuals in modern society. A vulnerable individual can be made to feel guilty (or stupid) at a moment’s notice, and is powerless in the face of an organized system. They are always under surveillance and have to live their lives under psychological pressure. Although they have many relationships in society, they have few people to whom they can actually confide in and talk about their problems. If Joseph K, the protagonist of the play, had just one person to whom he could confide in and share all his problems, the outcome of the play might have been different. In fact, the only characters in the play other than the protagonist are not people with whom he has a close relationship, but people with whom he has a formal and dehumanized relationship, such as the bank employee who is jealous of his position, the woman next door who tries to seduce him, and the family patriarch who is only interested in his family. From this perspective, it makes sense why the author “chose to have the protagonist be a self-made man with no family.”
If this were to happen to me, I wonder if I would be in the same situation as Joseph K. I would shrug it off at first and then panic and do the same thing. I think I would go crazy if I didn’t do anything to deserve arrest, but everyone around me was treating me like a criminal and looking at me strangely. At this point, one of Joseph K’s lines from the second half of the play sticks in my head. “Yes, I am guilty. Guilty because I can’t prove that I’m not guilty.” It was a line that made me take a second look at myself and the society I belong to.
Modern society is a rule-of-law society where the law maintains order, so whether an individual is guilty or innocent is a very important issue, and there is no way to prove innocence except for the testimony of others. In this situation, if everyone accuses an individual of being guilty without any evidence, and if no one opposes the accusation, it is quite possible that the case that comes out of the ‘judgment’ will become a real case, and it is terrifying to think about.
It reminds me of a situation in the modern world where an individual goes to court against a large corporation. It’s not uncommon for an individual to sue a large corporation for damages on a product, or to report an unpleasant foreign object in food they’ve purchased, and the corporation turns a blind eye. In these cases, the big company is clearly at fault, but the individual is often isolated and loses, no matter how strong their case is against the giant organization. These examples alone make me skeptical of the current human society as a rule of law society.
Obviously, our human society relies on the law to judge and balance everything in the name of the rule of law. However, in reality, the individuals who make up that society are often in the role of the weak, isolated, and falling apart without proper protection. We all need to be more concerned about this contradiction, which is that society is made up of individual people, but its members are often isolated from society.