1. What is this book about?
2. For those who've seen it, what are your thoughts on the Orson Welles film adaptation?
I love Welles but The Trail is one of my favorite books so I'm hesitant to watching the film becuase I'm afraid it won't do the book justice.
Should I see it?
>>7786039
It doesnt do the book justice but you should still see it. He makes a lot of changes but he tries his best to stay true to the events that happen in the book. Of course he does it in the usual baroque Welles-ian kind of way which some people argue goes against everything that Kafka was about. I still enjoyed the film with the exception of the ending.
If you like Gilliam's Brazil then this is a must watch
The ending of the movie tho.
>>7785975
it doesn't mean anything, its degenerate art, by nature jewish and nihilistic. True art expresses spirituality and builds character
>>7786161
Liked the ending from the book more, but the movie was kinda fun.
Overall the book is just better.
>>7785975
Am man is prosecuted for wasting his life, possibly by a subconscious part of himself.
>>7786212
No.
>>7786232
It's about a man struggling to find the reason of why he is arrested and slowly begginning to believe the accusations of society of him being a criminal who should be punished, even though he doesn't know of what he guilty.
One could make different interpretations, but he is not prosecuted for "wasting his life". There is just nothing in the book that would suggest that.
>>7786268
>It's about a man struggling to find the reason of why he is arrested and slowly begginning to believe the accusations of society of him being a criminal who should be punished, even though he doesn't know of what he guilty.
Yeah this is obviously what the book is about but I added "really" at the end of the question in the OP to ask for what people's different interpretations are
>>7786296
Then its about how a person can struggle to achieve his goal (winning the process) to the point of him giving up on life altogether.
>>7786296
Society, specifically bureaucracy, is shit. No, forget shit, because shit is gold besides the worth of bureaucracy and rutine.
That's the whole core of Kafka's works.
>>7785975
I mean it's about an infinite number of things but mainly the ritualization and spirituality of the working male in a world where God is Dead. After God was found to be dead, the working male took on a new system of rituals, masochistic pleasures in bureaucracy, socializing in obligatory situations, abstract finances (the Bank) becoming the new figurehead. To call the book a commentary or a satire would be missing the point, its a novel embodying a new ritualized system of religion in daily life. See In the Penal Colony as well for another example of the transfer from Old World spiritualism to New World mechanization.
It's about Kafka's problems with his own father. Not even joking. He says it in the Letter to his father, how he was writing to cope somehow with the issues his father left him with. The thing is, Kafka writes in a way that can be interpreted in many ways. Also, the fact that he was a lawyer explains how Trial was written in such a way.
