A mystery for some, The Trial sparks discussions in small group sessions

From right, Ross Brann, professor of Near Eastern Studies, leads, with LeNorman Strong, assistant vice president for student and academic services, a discussion group on Franz Kafka's The Trial in the Carol Tatkon Center in Balch Hall, Aug. 23. Among the students in the group are Kevin Brodsky '06 and May Zaw '08. Photos by Robert Barker/University Photography

Emily Meyer '08 comments on issues in The Trial during her small discussion group in the Tatkon Center, Aug. 23.

By Linda Myers

Was the central theme of Franz Kafka's The Trial -- individual helplessness confronted with a faceless, relentless, all-powerful authority -- relevant to the lives of the Class of 2008?

While many freshmen questioned the relevance, some in the 236 small groups that discussed the book Monday afternoon, Aug. 23, saw links between the loss of individual rights under the U.S. Patriot Act and the brutal bureaucracy that destroys Kafka's protagonist Joseph K. after he is jailed for an unnamed crime in the Czech writer's 1925 masterpiece.

Provost Biddy Martin said of the discussion group she led in Goldwin Smith Hall: "I had a wonderful, impressive, engaged group of students, some of whom enjoyed the novel, and others of whom found it frustrating because of its dreamlike quality." They discussed its social and political implications as well as its religious overtones, she said.

The students who met with Isaac Kramnick, vice provost for undergraduate education, also talked about the book's religious themes, and they "were much more interested in its insights into modern life, in general, than in its applicability to contemporary public events," said Kramnick, who, along with Martin, oversees the annual New Student Reading Project.

In Gail Holst-Warhaft's discussion group in Uris Hall, several students said they had not heard of Kafka before they encountered him for the reading project. However, some were aware of the term "Kafka-esque" and associated it most with the web of bureaucracy enveloping the Communist regime in the former Soviet Union. Its dissolution might have led to less interest in Kafka in recent years, some guessed.

"Has anyone you know or heard about been confronted with a blank wall?" as Kafka's Joseph K. was, probed Holst-Warhaft, an adjunct professor in classics and comparative literature who directs the Mediterranean Initiative at Cornell. One student cited the Patriot Act and the U.S. detentions of terrorist suspects in Guantanamo.

Holst-Warhaft's students also discussed the symbolism in the portrait of a low-ranking law official by the "painter," a character in the book. What does it mean that the figure in the portrait is compared both to the image of "Justice and the goddess of the Hunt?" asked Holst-Warhaft. Noting that the huntress deity of Greek and Roman legend was always accompanied by hunting dogs, she asked: "What does that say about the legal system? Is it really a just one, or something that hunts you down with a pack of hounds?" Joseph K. later says he's "hounded like an animal," she noted.

In a discussion in Akwe:kon led by Jane Mt. Pleasant, associate professor of horticulture and director of the American Indian Program, one student drew parallels between Joseph K's powerlessness and that of soldiers sent to fight in a war and having no say about it. Another talked about the illusion of having choices and, therefore, freedom in American society but, not unlike Joseph K., she said, "we don't have total access to information."

And Mt. Pleasant contrasted the book's view that "connectedness is always something bad -- a web in which the individual is caught," with the overarching view of Native peoples that "connectedness is positive and productive," she said. "In order for people to be their best, they need to be part of a larger system."

One student said she felt the book was "pointless," with no abiding lesson. She was a member of the discussion group in Balch Hall's Carol Tatkon Center led by Christine Schelhas-Miller, associate dean of students for new student programs, senior lecturer in human development and the center's associate director.

"But even if you hated it, it sparked discussion, didn't it?" another student countered.

And that seemed to be the overwhelming consensus.