kafka book of job.pdf

The Trials of Job and Kafka's Josef K.Author(s): Stuart LasineSource: The German Quarterly, Vol. 63, No. 2, Focus: Jews and Germans/Jewish-GermanLiterature (Spring, 1990), pp. 187-198Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Association of Teachers of GermanStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/406344 .

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STUART LASINE Wichita State University

The Trials of Job and Kafka's Josef K.

Assertions of a strong relationship between Kafka's work and the Book of Job have been made and reiterated since the decade of Kafka's death, when Margarete Susman declared that none of the achievements of Western Jews bears the traits ofJob's primeval dispute with God more purely and profoundly than does Kafka's work.' Similar claims have been made concerning a specific connection between Job and Kafka's Der ProzeJ3, a novel that Frye calls "a kind of 'midrash' on the Book of Job" (Great Code 195).2

Several factors have prevented any of these studies from providing a satisfactory analysis of the perceived relationship between DerPro- zejf and the Book of Job. First, comparisons of the two trials have not made adequate use of recent research into technical legal terminology in the two works. Nor have they considered the way the trial metaphor prompts readers to take on the role of juror in order to make ethical judgments about the characters and the events. Most important, scholars making this comparison generally accept K.'s distorted perception of the court as corrupt and nefarious, if not his perception of himself as an innocent victim.

In this paper I will argue that the court in Der Prozefl actually affirms the same set of moral values found in the Book of Job and in Biblical law. Biblical legal collections include many exhortations designed to prevent individuals from acting in unethical ways or even feeling negative emotions toward others.3 These laws carry no penalties, for individuals could not be prosecuted by the state for failing to live up to such moral dictates. In his "oath of clearance" (chapter 31) Job demonstrates that he has not been guilty of failing to live up to these ideals.4 In Der Prozef3 the court

system is activated by K.'s failure to put these values into practice. In effect, the novel answers questions such as: "What would a court be like that did prosecute an individual for failing to live up to such moral standards, even in his most private emotions and attitudes? What would happen if he had none of the self- knowledge that Job possesses to such an extraordinary degree -if, in fact, he dis- played the same tendency to twist the facts to fit his theories that characterizes Job's friends, rather than Job himself?"

This study will demonstrate that there is ample justification for the long-standing inter- est inJob-Kafka comparisons, once one recog- nizes that Job and Josef K. are tried according to "justice" in its most fundamental sense, as the virtue that puts another's good ahead of one's own. At every point Job and K. mark opposite poles of moral behavior and attitude in relation to others. This opposition extends to their status as scapegoats. While Job may well be the community's failed scapegoat, as Girard contends, K. merely adopts the pose of victim in order to evade his personal responsibility toward others. For this K. is held accountable by the court and is punished in much the way that God tries the guilty in the He- brew Bible. In contrast, Job's claim of innocence and his charge that God allows the poor to be victimized are adjudged correct by God Himself.

In the end, the affinity between the Book of Job and Der ProzeJ3 stems from the fact that both works employ a complex juridical metaphor to make fundamental statements about moral agency, statements that readers are called upon to affirm or deny. Readers of the Book of Job are led to share Job's perception of social injustice and divine inaction and

The German Quarterly 63.2 (1990) 187



188 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 1990

are challenged to take a stand on Job's indict- ment of God. In contrast, readers of Der Pro- zeJ3 are led to identify with a self-obsessed protagonist who refuses to accept responsibility for his predicament, and then they are challenged to renounce that identification and to pass judgment on K.5 Indeed, it is only when readers transcend K.'s motivated ignor- ance of himself and his case that it becomes possible to appreciate the moral orientation of this strange court.

A number of Biblicists6 have recently detailed the pervasive use of legal metaphor in the Book of Job. Similarly, Kafka scholars7 have given increasing attention to the role of legal vocabulary in Der ProzeJ3. Our first task is to determine whether the basic trial metaphor and its attendant legal terminology serve a comparable function in the two works. Bibli- cal scholars typically explain legal metaphor in Job as a means of organizing narrative and theological components of the book in a crea- tive and dramatic way (Habel 54) and, on a deeper level, as a forceful way of communicat- ing "the bankruptcy of conceiving the man- God relationship along the lines of legal justice" (Dick, "Legal Metaphor" 50). In studies of Der ProzeJ3 the function of legal metaphor is usually discussed only in very general terms and in ways that support the commentator's prior interpretation of the novel's meaning.

Such explanations do not consider the possibility that one function of the legal metaphor may be to determine the reader's relationship to the text. However, this possibility is enter- tained by Cox, who asserts that the legal metaphor in Job serves as "a vehicle for involv- ing the reader in the affair. . ." as "the 'judge"' (21). Because the prologue has established the reader as the only one who stands outside the action, it is the reader who is "called on to decide: who is 'in the right'. ." (15). And when W. H. Sokel asserts that the court functions as K.'s observer and audience and that "we the readers are an extension of K.'s court" (7), he is placing readers of Kafka's

novel in the same position that Cox places readers of the Book of Job.

General comparisons between jurors and readers have been made by a number of writ- ers and critics (e.g., Watt 31, 34, 57; Booth 69). Recently critics like Mailloux have ana- lyzed the ways in which authors create an implied ethical reader by conducting a "trial of the reader's judgment" that makes possible "the experience of an ethical position" (Inter- pretive Conventions 81, 87). Mailloux notes that for reader-response critics, judging characters often leads to "having the reader judge himself... in everyday life," as an authorial means for educating the reader ("Learning to Read" 309-10). In this scenario the reader is put in the position of K. and of Biblical figures who listen to parables aimed at increasing their self-awareness and their ability to accept responsibility.

The fact that the trial metaphor leads readers to make judgments similar to those made in daily life can be demonstrated by contrast- ing the trial structure with that of the drama, a genre to which both Job and Der ProzeJ3 have been assigned." Scarry contends that "the trial audience, the jury, is there to 'make- real' what the audience of a play can ordinarily only 'make-up"' (298).9 This contrast requires qualification. In his typology of audiences, Rabinowitz distinguishes between the authorial audience, which is the author's hypothetical audience, and the narrative audience, which pretends to believe in the existence of the people and events about which the narrator is speaking (126-27). It is the narrative audience that is called upon to judge both the characters and the narrator, especially when the issue is ethics or motives and the data to be pondered is ambiguous (135-36). Scarry's distinction does not hold for the narrative audience. In this capacity, readers invited to play the role of jurors will make the same kind of judgment that they would want to "make- real" if they were members of an actual jury.

According to Scarry, a trial remains "incom- plete" until the jury acts to reverse somehow the inversions of justice related in the story of the crime (298).1o The Book of Job prompts



LASINE: Franz Kafka 189

readers to pass judgment on the conflicting testimony of Job and his friends concerning the possibility of rectifying real social injustice. While Spinoza (149) envisioned the author of Job as something of an armchair writer who never suffered like his protagonist, members of the book's actual audience are sum- moned to rise up from their chairs and pass judgment on perceived injustice, as did Job before and during his trial by God. Conversely, Josef K. is convicted by his failure to abandon the pose of detached spectator in order to help others.

II

Having established the basic function of the trial metaphor and having noted the presence of legal terminology in the two works, we are in a position to make an initial comparison between the two trials at each stage of the proceedings. Although this comparison will reveal a number of similarities, each points to even greater dissimilarities between the two protagonists and their situations.

The trials begin when Job and K. are visited by higher powers because of the way they had conducted their lives up to that point. Both are "jiberfallen" (Job 1:17; Der Prozej3 [here- after "P"] 12, 18)" without being told why, an experience neither expected. Both then go through a process of testing that shows whether they have reacted to the initial rever- sal of their life patterns by altering their attitudes and character. Yet these similarities ultimately serve as a backdrop against which more profound differences become percepti- ble. The most glaring difference is that, from the court's point of view, K. is arrested because of his guilt, while Job is afflicted precisely because God sees his innocence. Fur- thermore, only K. is told that he is being arrested. Nevertheless, only he retains free- dom of movement. While this actually increases K.'s interaction with others in his sur- roundings, it is Job who becomes alienated from those around him after he is immobilized, in spite of the fact that he is not informed of any arrest. While Job has thereby lost a rich

social life, K. had no meaningful social interaction that could have been disrupted by his arrest (see P 27-28).

Once their lives have been turned upside down, both Job and K. feel "hunted."'2 Both demand to know the charges against them (ob 10:2; P 11, 58). Both are "ungeduldig" (ob 21:4; P 223) as they repeatedly proclaim their innocence and insist that they are victims of injustice. However, while readers are told that Job is innocent in the first verse of the book, the first sentence of Kafka's novel merely reflects K.'s assumption that he has done nothing wrong. K.'s guilt is assumed by the court. Job could become guilty only by the way he reacts to being made to suffer unjustly (which is precisely what Satan pre- dicts will occur [1:11; 2:5]).

Job demonstrates his innocence of any social injustice by going over the details of his past ethical conduct in his oath of clearance (ob 31). While Job even offers to announce "the count of his steps" (31:37),13 K. merely speculates on the need to examine his past in detail (P 137, 154-55) without submitting even a Beweisantrag, as do other accused persons (P 82).14 Admittedly, it is difficult to en- vision K. making an oath like Job's when one considers that, in contrast to Job, K. was attracted to a married woman (ob 31:9; P 72), was willing to raise his hand against poor children (ob 31:21; P 49), and did rejoice at the idea of his enemy's ruin (ob 31:29; P 75). K.'s vague proclamations of innocence cannot be very convincing to listeners who can see guilt on his lips (P 210). In contrast Job, who did not sin with his lips (2:10) at the start of his trial, finishes his testimony with detailed, definitive proof of continued innocence.

While both Job and K. perceive judicial authorities as corrupt, their basis for this opinion differs considerably. Job describes corruption among authorities primarily to indict God for elevating and sustaining such immoral and in- competent leaders (Job 9:24; 12:17-25). Al- though these descriptions are often taken to be hyperbolic, nothing in the book implies that they have no basis in fact. In contrast, at the time that K. levels his charges at his first




interrogation (P 57-61), he knows practically nothing about the workings of this court or the status of the other accused persons he purports to represent. Even though he has witnessed the behavior of the warders at his arrest, he nevertheless accuses them of mis- deeds they did not commit (cf. P 57-58 with P 9-18). When K. visits the corridors of the court soon thereafter, he actually acknowledges that his visit is motivated by his desire to make the facts fit his assumptions, that is, by his desire to affirm that the inside of this legal system is just as repellent as its outside (P 85).

During their ordeals, both Job and K. receive some sort of advice and comfort from "friends." However, while Job's friends appeal to established wisdom (e.g., 8:8; 15:18) in order to deny facts that do not fit their theories, we have just found evidence that it is K. himself- rather than his advisors- who de- nies facts in this way.15 K. continually jumps to conclusions and seeks new information merely in order to confirm prior judgments and bi- ases.'6 Job's friends begin with the theory that God cannot be guilty of injustice and then accuse Job of guilt; K. begins with the theory that he cannot be guilty and then accuses the court of guilt and injustice. Thus, Eliphaz's specific trumped-up charges against Job (22:5-18), to which Job responds in his oath of clearance, are just as groundless as the accusations made by K. at his interrogation.

Whereas Job can only long for an impartial umpire or referee (9:33; 16:19; 19:25), K. fails to seek help from those agents of the court who do not share the partiality and ignor- ance of defense lawyers and their minions, none of whom works with the full approval of the court. Thus K. misses the opportunity to seek direction from the examining magistrate, the information officer, and the court chaplain. K.'s false helpers are not only those who tell him to accept guilt, in the manner of Job's friends, but also those who support his desire to evade responsibility by accepting as a work- ing premise his claim to innocence.

Because both Job and K. argue against injustice on a personal basis and as human be-

ings per se, both have the opportunity, based on this double perspective, to act on behalf of other humans as their advocate or intercessor. However, only Job acts in good faith on behalf of others, both on principle (the human condition is the same for master and slave [3:19; 31:15; cf. 7:1; 14:1]) and in response to the suffering of victims, which he now perceives with his new worm's-eye view of the human world (24:1-12; 29:12-17; 31:13-22).17 K., on the other hand, appeals to humanity in general ("wir sind hier doch alle Menschen" [P 253]) only to exculpate himself as an individual;'18 he is unconcerned about the suffering of others. This is true even when K. learns that he may be able to alleviate that suffering (e.g., P 79; cf. 66) and even when he says that he is acting on behalf of others (P 57). In fact, K.'s pretended advocacy of other victims may actually cause new victimizations.19

The court may well be interested in grant- ing K. a close-up, worm's-eye view of the poor in order that he might identify with, and feel concern for these fellow citizens. The court directs K. to its offices, which are lo- cated in a neighborhood composed of tene- ments. Significantly, K. has no personal experience of this part of his city. In Der Prozef3 the court is (literally!) on the side of the poor, as are the ideal just kings of Israel (e.g., Sol- omon, to whom even harlot-mothers have quick access in 1 Kings 3:16-28) and formerly regal figures like Job. Like all his contacts with other people and places, K.'s only connection with this area is in conjunction with business dealings. In contrast to K., the people here keep doors and windows open, and they are just as open and trusting with this stranger. Yet K. can only respond to their straight questions with clumsy fabrications, which are nevertheless taken literally by these people, just as the court takes literally K.'s assumption about the time set for the interrogation (P 46, 52).

Finally, toward the end of their trials both Job and K. are given the opportunity to under- stand their delusion about the workings of the higher powers by being granted visions that they must interpret themselves. In Job's case




the opportunity takes the form of God's speeches, while in K's it is given by means of the prison chaplain's doorkeeper legend. While the chaplain's words are intended to enlighten K. about his delusion concerning the court, God's attempt to correct Job's perception of cosmic governance is also His legal response to Job's countersuit (rib [31:35; 40:2]; Habel 548-49; Cox 17-20). Job has suc- ceeded in having his legal charges taken seri- ously by the higher powers and has even seen God (42:5). In contrast, K.'s last thoughts before his execution still question the where- abouts of the judge he has never seen and the high court to which he has never come (P 272).

Job reacts to the speeches of his Divine Respondent by giving up his case against Him. In so doing, he implicitly acknowledges that what he had perceived as corrupt in the divine administration of cosmic order was an error generated by his human vantage point and a notion of justice that is not appropriate for the cosmos as a whole. K., on the other hand, never grasps the essential concept: that his charges against the court are based on a fundamental inability to put himself into the equ- ation, that is, to recognize that what the court does is a function of K.'s own assumptions and his refusal to be personally accountable for his thoughts and deeds.20

III

Comparing the trials in this way highlights the fact that the court in Kafka's novel investi- gates and punishes K. according to the Biblical concept of divine administration of justice, not human justice. Ideal human justice would have required an immediate judicial response to the perceived crime, according to established impartial procedures regarding evidence and wit- ness testimony. No knowledge of the accused's character would have been required beyond that necessary to establish the fact that this person committed the illegal deed.21 In contrast, divine justice, like that practiced by the court, is primarily aimed at establishing the true character of the accused. In the Bible

only God has perfect insight into human character and the power necessary for exact punishment according to the retributive principle of talion.22 In fact, God can judge "without investigation" (Job 34:24). Nevertheless, divine punishment often tends to take time - for a different reason. God sentences people by allowing "suspects" to act out their character freely, in effect giving them what they ask for. As the rabbis say in reference to God's treatment of Pharaoh and Balaam, God leads a man down the path he chooses to tread.23 A divine "trial" is investigative or probative, not in the sense that God must determine the accused's character in order to decide whether he/she committed an offense before the trial began, but to see how the offender will respond freely to the new divine "visita- tion." That is, because trespassers are corrected by God "little by little" (Wisd. Sol. 12:2), a divine trial allows space for accused persons to gain more knowledge of themselves and of God so that they might change themselves and thereby annul their sentences.

K. is arrested precisely because the court knows his true character without investigation. Unlike his Biblical namesake, the Wun- derkind Joseph, Josef K. does not receive great power, wealth, a wife, and a new name at the age of thirty (Gen. 41:46; P 12-13). Instead, he is arrested because the court is attracted by guilt and must send out warders (P 15). The arrest well illustrates Moses's warning to the Transjordanian tribes: if they sin, "their sin will find them out" (Num. 32:23).

To be sure, K. perceives the arresting of- ficers to be corrupt, as he later finds the examining magistrate. In the latter instance, this is due in part to the "dirty books" K. discovers in the empty courtroom, which he takes as evidence of the magistrate's character even though they clearly portray his own character and even his situation at the very moment he is perusing them (see Lasine, "Kafka's 'Sacred Texts'" 124). The court's ap- pearance as shoddy and corrupt should be understood in terms of one psalmist's declara-




tion to the Lord: "With the wicked Thou does show Thyself perverse" (Ps. 18:26).

The court tests K. "little by little" by con- sistently taking him at his word, following his lead over a yearlong period, always showing but never telling him where the resolution lies. In this way the novel depicts how an accused person would respond to such a "divine" procedure in the interstices of his/her everyday life, when that person's major goal is to remain militantly ignorant of his/her responsibility for what was occurring by continually casting blame outward instead of looking within.

The chaplain's doorkeeper parable, which functions analogously to Nathan's parable of the ewe-lamb,24 provides the best illustration of the way the court refuses to tell the accused the correct answer for his/her "test." The chaplain recites the story but does not tell K. how it illustrates his delusion about the court. Similarly, Nathan waits for David to judge himself, even though the prophet could have begun his speech with the announcement of David's sins and the impending punishments for those sins and could still have prompted David's acknowledgment that he had sinned against the Lord (2 Sam. 12:13).

Finally, because K.'s continuing insistence on his own innocence prevents him from learning more about himself and his situation, that insistence itself leads to his execution on the eve of his next birthday, not for his moral deadness before his arrest but for his failure to learn from his long trial."2 In this sense, his sentence is identical to that pronounced by the Lord against one group of sinners in the time of Jeremiah: "You say 'I am innocent' . .. Behold, I will bring you to judgment for saying 'I have not sinned"' (Jer. 2:35).

IV

Rene Girard has recently proposed a bold and provocative interpretation of the Book of Job in terms of his scapegoat theory."26 Girard believes that there is a "universal tendency of human beings to transfer their anxieties and conflicts on to arbitrary victims" (Des

Choses 154). He highlights passages in the Book of Job that show the friends and the other representatives of the community to be unanimous in their perception of Job as worthy of being hunted down and violently punished. The God who persecutes Job is the God of the friends, comparable to the Greek Erinyes, who signify collective, social vengeance (La Route 192, 216). Noting the presence of a "cluster of metaphors centered on the hunt," Girard identifies this deity as "the god of the manhunt" (La Route 192). Job is a failed scapegoat, however, because he refuses to accept the community's image of him as guilty and culpable, thereby preventing the complete unanimity required for the maximal efficiency of the scapegoat mechanism. In this respect Job presents a sharp contrast with Oedipus, whose "success" as a scapegoat derives from his total acceptance of the community's assessment of his guilt, to the extent that he orchestrates his own victimization (La Route 56, 165-67).

Girard's reading of the Book of Job invites comparison with Der ProzeJ3, precisely because many readers of the novel view Josef K. as the victim of a brutal transcendent power that hunts down and persecutes its ar- bitrarily chosen prey. According to Girard (La Route 11-12, 38, 155-61), commentators on Job have ignored the fact that the community is responsible for the misfortune of this scapegoat. In contrast, Josef K.'s perception of himself as a victim of hostile groups is merely another attempt to ignore personal responsibility for his deeds. Once more the stories of Job and Josef K. prove to be diametrically opposed. If Biblical scholars have failed to recognize Job as the community's intended victim, Kafka scholars - when they identify with K. and accept his self-presentation-fail to recognize that K. is not such a victim.

Critics who interpret K. as a victim typically point to the court artist Titorelli's portrait of "die Gerechtigkeit" (P 176). As K. observes Titorelli's work on this figure, which also rep- resents "die Siegesgdttin," it no longer looks like either deity; rather, it looks completely like "die Gottin derJagd" (P 177). Spann (102)




suggests that this goddess might lead readers to recall the Erinyes, "the unrelenting hunt- resses of the guilty," the same figures Girard had compared with Job's divine persecutor, the god of Job's friends. For Bassoff, who explicitly applies Girard's theory to Kafka's novel (but without mentioning Girard's work on Job), this indicates that "in The Trial ... 'Justice' is identified with... the Goddess of the Hunt" (305). Bassoff's desire to support a Girardian reading of Der Prozej3 is so great that he actually employs "violent" ad hominem tactics against critics like Marson, who interpret the court in a positive manner. Speaking as if he knew Marson's actual life history, Bas- soff judges Marson to be indicative of readers who resemble K. in the way they "can be made to rationalize the violence to which they are subject" (311; emphasis added).

The many commentators27 who take "die G6ttin der Jagd" as an emblem of the court's conception of Justice do not take account of the fact that it is only to K. that the figure appears as such. The novel itself does not necessarily identify Justice and Victory with "the Hunt." (Because the Justice figure lacks the conventional sword,28 this figure becomes a goddess of the Hunt without any of the tools of her trade.)

Like other books and pictures viewed by K., this depiction of Justice and Victory is more reflective of his own nature than it is of the court's, even before K. sees it as trans- formed into the Hunt." It is when one views his entire life as a series of battles fought alone (P 20) that being judged becomes a mat- ter of victory or defeat. And when one is an evasive suspect like K., Justice must have wings if the accused is to remain on the scales long enough to be weighed. Admittedly, K. seems to scorn evasion when he responds to the painting by objecting that Justice must stand still if the scales are not to waver because that would make a just verdict impossi- ble (P 176). In contrast, the merchant Block will later advise K. that suspects are better off in motion than at rest, for they might be sitting on the scales of a balance without knowing it, being weighed together with their sins

(P 230). Yet, while K. ultimately rejects Block's defense strategy of Verschleppung, he too continues to evade being accountable. Un- like Job, who reviews his past life after implor- ing God to weigh him on a just balance (31:6), K. never weighs his life in an autobiography, even when sitting motionless in his office after announcing that he was not to be disturbed (P 137).

K.'s perception of the goddess figure is often linked with a later remark made by the lawyer's nurse (and K.'s mistress) Leni. She calls K. on the telephone just as he is about to leave for the Cathedral where he will hear the now-famous doorkeeper legend. Upon learning where he is going she says, "Sie hetzen dich." After hanging up the phone K. mut- ters his acceptance of Leni's view: "Ja, sie hetzen mich" (P 244). Leni's idea has also been accepted by a number of scholars,3" in spite of the fact that, from the court's point of view, she is the prime example of the wrong kind of help K. has been getting, particularly from women (P 253). Such "help" only dis- tracts the accused from thinking about himself and from taking full responsibility for the conduct of his trial. It is significant that Leni makes her comment after hearing that K. is headed for the Cathedral, since it is there that K. will hear the most emphatic warning against the dangers of the wrong kind of help and the folly of projecting responsibility. Adopting Leni's perspective allows K. to con- tinue projecting responsibility for his plight onto others, the nebulous31 "sie" who are al- legedly after him.

From the court's point of view, an accused person who views himself as "gehetzt" may be attempting to obscure the fact that his own actions have brought the court down on him. Thus, in the unfinished chapter "Zu Elsa," K. receives a telephone summons to go immediately to the court. K. asks if he will be punished for noncompliance. When he hears that the answer is "no," he asks what reason he could have for obeying that summons. The voice fades away as it answers: "'Man pflegt die Machtmittel des Gerichts nicht auf sich zu hetzen'" (P 276).




According to one Kafka aphorism, evading responsibility by claiming the status of victim is itself the original sin: ". . . die Erbsdinde, das alte Unrecht... besteht in dem Vor- wurf, den der Mensch macht und von dem er nicht ablil3t, dab ihm ein Unrecht geschehen ist, dab an ihm die Erbsiinde begangen wurde" (Beschreibung 295-96).

V

Human nature is an open question at the beginning of the Book of Job. Can a human being, even one with complete integrity, display disinterested piety when his/her world is turned upside-down by the God who created and sustained that world? Can a person re- duced to such a pitiful condition even forget himself/herself and his/her own case against God in order to become the advocate for the masses of suffering victims seen from his/her worm's-eye vantage point?

While many issues are left unresolved at the end of the Book of Job, these questions are answered with a definitive "yes." In addition, the reader learns that Job was "correct" (42:7-8) in his perception that God does not intervene swiftly to rescue victims of injustice by crushing their oppressors. It is only humans who react to perceived injustices with immediate action, as Moses acted to stop the Egyptian overseer from beating the Hebrew (Exod. 2:11-14). God does not see as humans see (Job 10: 4). Whereas God sees the cosmos sub specie aeternitatis, human moral agents view the human social world under the aspect of urgency. Moses's reaction to the victimization of the Hebrew illustrates the rabbinic maxim, "If there is no man, try to be one" (Abot 2.6). Indeed, when Third Isaiah describes God looking down and putting an end to the injustice He sees, God is acting as a Moses-like human being, for He does so only because He was astounded to discover that "there was no man" to do it (Isa. 59:15-16).32

If justice is the social virtue par excellence, the only virtue that puts another's good ahead of one's own," then the Job who castigates God for allowing the victimization of the poor

- even when his own community is attempting to victimize him- is a just man as well as a pious one. By these same standards Josef K. is an unjust man in the most fundamental sense, for he never considers the good of another-neither before nor after himself.-

Kafka himself was as personally troubled by social injustice as was Job.35 The fact that as a writer "Kafka is incapable of the god's-eye view of human suffering," as Robertson puts it (53), also aligns Kafka with the Biblical Job. Kafka also assumes that suffering viewed from the human worm's-eye view urgently calls for moral action by the viewer, while the godlike posture of the detached spectator- a posture adopted by K. whenever possible- removes moral urgency from what is seen, allowing the viewer to withdraw from "the scene of the crime."36 One cannot act heroi- cally to rectify injustices when these are perceived from "up in the gallery."37

The detached beholder observes events as though he/she were in an audience watching a theatrical play. When K. beholds the whipping of the warders, the most urgent of the court's presentations on his behalf, he is unable to disengage himself completely. To be sure, he quickly rationalizes away the thought of going on stage to offer himself as a substi- tute victim (P 109). Instead, he himself uses violence to silence the victim Franz (P 106-07) after offering a bribe to the whipper. Both modes of intervention are typical of K. Throughout the novel he "identifies with the aggressor" against accused persons,38 and he attempts to control others by obligating them to him financially.39

Significantly, Kafka had used the metaphor of a theatrical whipping scene to describe human moral agency in a diary entry of 1911. He notes that if, because of his "Erregung,"40 an actor goes beyond the script and really whips the other person, "dann mul3 der Zuschauer Mensch werden und sich ins Mittel legen" (Tagebiicher 220). While Kafka's spectator and Biblical figures like Moses and Job illustrate the dictum: "If there is no man, try to be one," K. illustrates the failure to be a just human being. The fact that he himself was the cause




of the injustice he fails to rectify only increases the seriousness of this moral failure.

Robertson obscures this crucial point when he concludes that K.'s failure may merely tes- tify to the moral weakness of all human beings. The court can begin to arouse K. "from his previous moral indifference into the begin- nings of self-awareness," but it would still be "superhumanly difficult" for K. to escape his guilt (104-05; cf. 111). As evidence Robertson cites an aphorism, written several years after the novel, in which Kafka is said to imply that since the Fall "no human being is strong enough" to "lead a good life" (103).41

At first glance, this interpretation might seem to increase the similarity between Der

ProzeJ3 and the Book of Job. The weakness of humanity is repeatedly stressed by all speakers in Job, as well as in other parts of the Hebrew Bible (see Lasine, "Bird's-eye Views" 31-35). Moreover, humans are said to be incapable of knowing whether they are truly innocent, while they are quite capable of self- deception.42 At the same time, however, many Biblical texts depict human beings as morally strong and vigorous and- in the case of Job - as having complete moral self-knowledge. Indeed, the Fall story should not be used to gauge the high moral potential of human beings in either the Hebrew Bible or Der Pro-

zefJ.43 In both cases it is clearly possible to choose "a good life.""44 In fact, both Kafka and Biblical speakers imply that what prevents people like Josef K. from "choosing life and good" is their tendency to obscure the fact that they already possess the knowledge necessary to make this choice by positing such knowledge as a goal still to be reached.45

Finally, Robertson's interpretation does not consider how little is required to "do justice," either in Kafka's view or from the Biblical perspective. Admittedly, it takes a superlative human being like Job to forget his selfish inter- est and even his pain in order to intervene on behalf of many others (see, e. g., 29:17), even though, as a human being, he is unable to answer God's challenge (40:9-14) and abase all the proud. Ancient Jewish tradition is no less sober in its assessment of human selfish-

ness than modern theorists, as is evident from the proverb: "Man is close to his own bones."46

Indeed, the social virtue of justice is most remarkable precisely because it goes directly against the grain of human nature. At the same time, the fact that justice means putting another's good ahead of one's own implies that one can practice justice if, in the words of Camus's guilty character Clamence, one can "forget oneself for someone else, one time, at least" (167).47 Nothing in Kafka's writings implies that humans cannot achieve this goal, even if Josef K. chooses to die "wie ein Hund" (P 272) rather than live as a fully human being.

VI

It is now evident that the Book of Job and Der ProzefJ both employ an extended legal metaphor to involve the reader in making basic decisions concerning moral agency. However, this comparative analysis also has significant implications for the interpretation of Der Pro-

zefJ itself. Kafka scholars usually assume that K.'s guilt must stem from either his deeds or his very being. This study has undercut that dichotomy by showing that the guilt attracting the court is generated by K.'s absolute failure to live as a personally responsible, yet social, human being-in Biblical terms, his failure to do justice (Mic. 6:8). From this perspective the court is a sensitive moral agency designed to give K. the opportunity to undergo a moral metamorphosis; it is neither an oppressive, bureaucratic organization nor even a represen- tative of strict, absolute justice without mercy.48

Notes

Susman 49. Brod also discusses Kafka's work in terms of "die uralte Hiobsfrage" (155), concluding that "die Haltung Kafkas [ist] der Haltung Hiobs

verwandt-- und

doch in manchen Punkten eine ganz andere" (159). Theologians like Buber, Scholem, and Rosenzweig are more emphatic. Buber considered Kafka's work to be the most important Job commentary in our generation (see Glatzer, Dimensions 48). Scholem (212-13) coun- seled Walter Benjamin to begin any inquiry into Kafka with the Book of Job. Rosenzweig declared that, "The people who wrote the Bible seem to have thought of




God much the way Kafka did" (qtd. in Glatzer, Franz Rosenzweig 160). Literary critic Northrop Frye is no less enthusiastic, asserting that from one point of view the writings of Kafka "form a series of commentaries on the Book of Job" (Anatomy 42). Cf. H. Fisch: "The Trial is surely very Jobian (166)." Critics like Kartiganer (31) and St. Leon (29-33) suggest that Kafka was consciously influenced by Job when he wrote his novel, even though Kafka never mentioned this Biblical book in his diaries, notebooks, or extant letters (see Glatzer, Dimensions 48). Such claims of affinity and influence are muted in Suter's 1976 study, which is considerably more cautious than the Job/Trial chapter (133-67) in Wilk's more recent book. Suter's analysis, the most exhaustive to date, makes reference to some of the research on legal terminology in the Book of Job available at that time.

3 See, e.g., Weinfeld 265-77, 288. 4 On Job's concern about attitudes that cannot be con-

trolled legally, see Fohrer 13-17. On the relationship betweenJob 31 and the "internal dimension" of Israelite law, see Dick, "Job 31" 48-53.

6 See Lasine, "Kafka's 'Sacred Texts"' for a more detailed discussion of this process. See the studies cited by Habel (54) and Cox (16-20). The most extensive treatment is that of Kirchberger. Like Kirchberger, Gray (244) stresses the need to know Austrian legal procedure in order to interpret correctly the actions of the Examining Magistrate and other characters. Spann (98-101) asserts that Huld's account of the "Secret Court" is a satire on officials in real courts and that K.'s execution resembles the methods of the Vehmic Courts of the later Middle Ages. Addressing the legal aspect in terms of speech-act theory, Koelb argues that the story turns on performative utterances and that "legal actions . . are nothing if not a set of illocutionary acts.. ." (39). Finally, Stern (29-35) attempts to draw parallels between the actions of Kafka's court and Hitler's courts. For an interpretation of the Book of Job as a drama, see Alonso Schbkel, who argues that readers are to enter into, and participate in the action as characters who, like Job, are subjected to a test by God (47-48). For the theatrical in Kafka, see Rolleston, who concludes that the reader of The Trial "is in a claus- trophobic mental theater ..." (142).

" Cf. legal theorist J. B. White, who distinguishes between readers of literary and legal texts by noting that the reader of the legal text is "its servant, seeking to make real what it directs" (95).

10 Legal philosophers like Wolgast (126) point out that criminal wrongs can never be essentially corrected; things cannot be returned to their original equitable state. The epilogue to the Book of Job acknowledges this fact by reminding readers that the original children "who were born to [Job]" (1:2) are not the children he "has" at the end (42:13- with no mention of the mother's identity or even of their having been born). In Der Prozej3 the fact that the guilty cannot return to their original state is communicated when Titorelli con- cedes that he knows of no accused person who has ever been granted a "wirkliche Freisprechung," that is, an acquittal in which all records of the case, including those of the acquittal itself, are completely annihilated (P 185, 190-91).

" Luther uses the verb "iiberfallen" when translating the Hebrew verb pagat in Job 1:17.

1" See Job 16:9-14. 13 Far from being willing to declare the count of his steps

to the highest authority, K. cannot even see two steps ahead, as he is told by the court chaplain (P 254). In K.'s transfiguration dream- "Ein Traum," which Kafka chose not to incorporate into Der Prozef- K. had hardly taken two steps before he was already at the cemetery where his tombstone is about to be inscribed (Siimtliche Erziihlungen 145).

14 For the technical use of this term in German law, see Kirchberger 113, n. 23.

15 In contrast, Krieger contends that it is the unaccused who are like Job's comforters. His only evidence is the fact that they are not shocked by the circumstances of K.'s arrest. For Krieger, this indicates that "they all seem to assume that somehow K. must have been guilty to have been arrested" (128).

'6 The most exhaustive analysis of such cognitive strate- gies on the part of Kafka's characters is that of Kobs.

" On Job's responsiveness to social injustice, see Gutier- rez 31-34 and passim, and Lasine, "Bird's-eye Views" 34-38. Ironically, a midrash asserts that Job was afflicted because he failed to intervene on behalf of helpless victims (the doomed male Israelite babies) when he was one of Pharaoh's counselors (B. Sota 11a; Exod. Rabbah 1.9).

18 The chaplain's response to K.'s remark calls attention to K.'s motive: "'Das ist richtig,' . . . 'aber so pflegen die Schuldigen zu reden"' (P 253). For more on the way K. attempts to obscure his individual accountability by "hiding in the collective" (and similar attempts by the man from the country in the chaplain's parable [P 256]), see Lasine, "Kafka's 'Sacred Texts' " 125-26.

19 K.'s irresponsible charges against the warders at his interrogation, which led to their harsh punishment, immediately follow K.'s taking the role of intercessor for other, hypothetical, accused persons (and not for himself[!], P 57). This suggests that those charges may have been prompted by K.'s playing the role of advocate. K.'s behavior toward actual accused persons tends to be condescending, if not cruel--another example of K. "identifying with the aggressor," as he understands "aggression" and authority (see n. 38 below).

20 On God's speeches and Job's response, see Lasine, "Bird's-eye Views" 33-35, 38-47. On the doorkeeper legend and K.'s response, see Lasine, "Kafka's 'Sacred Texts.'"'

21 It is doubtful that Biblical legal proceedings recognized character witnesses. See Jackson 166-67.

22 This interpretation of the Biblical concept of talion was favored by the Rabbis; see Jackson 82-83. Contrary to popular opinion, in the Hebrew Bible humans are not presumed capable of meting out justice according to the principle of talion.

23 Numbers Rabbah 20,12. On the relevance of this dictum for the merchant Block, who strongly resembles the Biblical Balaam, see Lasine, "Kafka's The Trial" 34-36.

24 A comparison of the two parables is given in Lasine, "Kafka's 'Sacred Texts'" 122-27.

25 K. himself is aware that his year-long trial should have taught him something (P 269). Yet he continues to project blame on others even as he lies on the ground at the stone quarry, unable to reach for the knife that




he assumes it is "seine Pflicht . . . selbst zu fassen und sich einzubohren" (P 271).

26 La Route is Girard's most recent and most complete treatment of Job.

27 In addition to Bassoff, see, e.g., Politzer (K. is wit- nessing "the pictorial self-revelation of the Law" that discloses "the Law's irrevocable hostility toward man" [210]); Heller 81; Kirchberger (the picture "is a significant source of information about the organization served by the painter" [85]); and Hiebel 16, 214-15. Hiebel (9) even uses K.'s perception of this figure as the epigraph for the "Einleitung" to his study of justice, power, and desire in Kafka's works. In his view, the sword of Justice has been exchanged for the poisoned arrow of Artemis-or Eros (16).

2' This aspect is also noted by Marson (206) and by Kirch- berger (85-86). However, because Kirchberger takes the painting as emblematic of the court, she interprets the lack of the sword as an indication of the weakness of the organization behind the artist.

2" This in spite of the fact that the painting has been commissioned by a specific low-ranking judge who gave the artist detailed instructions on how to paint it and who intends to give it to a particular lady (P 176).

3o E.g., Marson 282 (Leni is showing sympathy and offers the possibility of "informed help"). Nicolai connects Leni's remark with K.'s impression of the Goddess of the Hunt and concludes that her comment is correct (208; cf. 181).

3' The pronoun "sie" can refer to the bank or the court (see Marson 321, n. 4), if not to both.

32 For a full exposition of the arguments sketched in this paragraph, see Lasine, "Bird's-eye Views" 29-47.

1 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1130a; cf. Plato, Rep. 343c. Del Vecchio (54, 56, 70-72, 77-81) argues con- vincingly that alteritas is a fundamental mode of con- sciousness that is the essence of justice.

I Cf. Marson: ". . . Josef K. never once acts or thinks with any other motive than personal advantage or avoidance of personal disadvantage. . ... [He] has broken a law which enjoins humility and concern for others .. ." (16).

3" See Brod 76; Marson 16-17; and Robertson 42-44, 53, 101.

* On the moral implications of a viewer's station point, see Lasine, "Bird's-eye Views" 30-38.

37 See Kafka's two-sentence long story "Auf der Galerie"

(Sdmtliche Erzdhlungen 129). " For example, K. automatically takes the role of the

Inspector, and not the accused, when he replays the arrest scene for Fraulein Biirstner (P 39). K.'s play- acted "Aufseher" is a loud ruffian, unlike the actual Inspector. Later he grabs an elderly, dignified, accused man, and then, after speculating that this gentleman might take K. for a judge, gives him a violent shove (P 82). Finally, he tyrannizes the merchant Block as though the latter were a lowly person in a foreign country (P 202).

:" For example, K. assumes that he can make Frau Grubach truly believe his lie about attacking Fraulein Buirstner because she has borrowed a large sum of money from him (P 41). Similarly, he is confident that his mother, to whom he sends money, will always believe that he is the Manager at the bank (P 277, 280).

" Interestingly, Josef K. uses his "Aufregung" as the excuse for his violence against the warder (P 109).

4' For the aphorism, see n. 45 below. 42 See, e.g., Prov. 20:9, 26:12,16; 28:11; Jer. 17:9.

43 The aphorism used by Robertson actually fits the apoc- ryphal book of 4 Ezra much better than either Job or Der Prozei. In this work, Adam's transgression is in- voked as the reason that the vast majority of humans cannot lead a good life, and Ezra bemoans the fact that humans are painfully aware of their eventual moral failure and its consequences, as well as the fact that divine justice is not only absolute and unyielding but also ex- ceedingly harsh. On the inappropriateness of the concept of original sin for an understanding of Der Prozei, see Sokel 1.

" Moses makes this point forcefully in his farewell address (Deut. 29:28; 30:14-16, 19-20). In Kafka's novel the opportunity for a positive moral existence is illustrated by characters like Friiulein Bilrstner, and it is implied by the life-choices K.--and the man from the country-fail to make. This implication is also discussed by Goodden, whose understanding of the court is some- what different from that given here. Clearly the Hebrew Bible and Kafka's work both display a tension between what is said about human nature in aphoristic pro- nouncements (which themselves vary in their degree of pessimism) and what is shown in narrative texts.

45 See, e.g., Deut. 30:11-14. For Kafka, see the aphorism cited by Robertson, which concludes by noting the attempt to falsify knowledge obtained in the Fall by making "die Erkenntnis erst zum Ziel," and this aphorism, which appears on the next page: "Erkenntnis haben wir. Wer sich besonders um sie bemfiht, ist verdlichtig, sich gegen sie zu bemiihn" (Hochzeitsvorbe- reitungen 102-03, 104).

4 "'dddm qdr6b l casm6," i.e., a human being is partial to himself. See Leibowitz 194. Cf. Satan's assumption that all humans are selfish (Job 2:4), a hypothesis that is invalidated when tested on Job.

47 Cf. Levinas: "The forgetting of self drives justice" (203).

4" Contrast Marson ("This is a grim utopia where the absolute law is always successful in the hunt" [16]) and Robertson ("The Court is the limited embodiment of absolute justice" [107]; "Absolute justice, being absolute, can make no concession to human frailty" [120]).

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